Oh, Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars, Give me those Star Wars, Don't let them end

Tony Gilroy’s Andor is the masterpiece post-original trilogy Star Wars we deserve

[Ed.’s Note: This essay contains very minor Andor spoilers and does not praise Clone Wars. The Force guides you, but you must choose your own path.]

The first film I saw in a theater was a double-bill of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back at the Bytowne Theatre in Ottawa in what must have been 1980, and I’ve never been the same. The films were everything to my generation, and even now, I like to think that there’s a bit of Han Solo’s rogue in me. Princess Leia was my first crush—I even eulogized Carrie Fisher for FLOOD—and years later, what I wrote explains why I fell in love with my wife: “I knew a badass when I saw one. And Princess Leia became everything I would come to understand and admire in women. She was strong, funny, fiercely independent, direct, fearless, and defined by purpose and not men.” In 1999, I went to see a midnight screening of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace on its opening weekend. My friends and I decided to hit the bar to pregame what we thought would be an epic continuation of the space opera that permeated our youth. I believe, though this may be apocryphal, we also decided to share a bag of psilocybin mushrooms. When, during the opening credits, THX’s Deep Note played, the synthesized crescendo that glissandos three octaves, something in my left ear popped. I attributed it to a late dinner of bourbon and psychedelics, and thought nothing of it as I dug in for the prequel, beyond excited to return to George Lucas’ imagination that had defined the fantasy of my childhood.

But, upon leaving the theatre in downtown Vancouver in ‘99, spilling out onto streets littered with costumed Lukes, Chewies, Vaders, aggressive junkies and their discarded needles, I felt a deep sense of sadness. Not because the hearing in my left ear crackled like a distant FM signal, and not because the shrooms were wearing off, but rather the overwhelming realization that whatever Star Wars had meant to me as a kid was dead, and The Phantom Menace’s infantile video game bastardization of the franchise had killed it.

Twenty years later, three elements of that night bear scrutiny: One, whenever I’m in a crowded room with competing sonorities, my left ear crackles. Two, I can no longer abuse psychedelics. And three, Star Wars should’ve ended with the bonfire cremation of Darth Vader in Jedi.

I’m not the first one to deride the prequels, but my distaste for them isn’t based on weak writing (Lucas was never Shakespeare—he’s barely Dan Brown), or the abuse of early CGI (dude liked tech, let him cook), or the petulant depiction of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen’s portrayal of Vader-in-the-making did verge on satire), but instead it was the Hollywood machinery’s desire to reboot Star Wars for a new generation of fans, rather than appeal to its existing acolytes, who were well into their 20s and 30s. Star Wars had gone from an underdog indie phenomenon to a cynical precursor to the Disney-owned monolithic Marvelization of the film industry, committing the zeitgeist sin of betraying its essence for capital.

I moved on from the franchise.

I returned for the sequels, and even though seeing Leia, Han, Chewie, and Luke back on the big screen activated a long thought dead part of me, the stories didn’t resonate, and if a lightsaber was held to my head right now I couldn’t tell you what happened other than Han dying and CGI improving. I was never a Star Wars extremist, never one who dove deep into the lore. I’m not an animation guy, so the Clone Wars didn’t appeal to me, though I’ve been told that’s a me problem. I never meditated on Mortis to realign my vergence signature with the Anakin-destined Chosen One paradigm, or had a Force-vision of Darth Revan confronting the thought-bomb echoes still trapped in the Valley of the Jedi, just as the last surviving Rakatan mind-prison fragment activated beneath Ossus—probably a residual effect of Bastila Shan’s severed Battle Meditation imprint on the Telos Restoration Project. Also a me problem.

The Star Wars universe has expanded with reckless abandon, and not for the better. Jon Favreau has helmed Disney’s extension of the IP it bought from Lucas in 2012 for a Death Star load of Galactic Credits. Favreau, who ushered in the MCU with Iron Mans 1 and 2, spearheaded the development of a seemingly endless list of small-screen productions, though only The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, Kenobi, Andor, and The Acolyte made it to series. The efforts seemed geared towards finding a new generation of rebels, as opposed to engaging with those who had grown up with the franchise. The Mandalorian was fine—I’d pay a monthly subscription fee just to watch Pedro Pascal drink tea—but Baby Yoda was built for plush toy futures and demographic crossover, and Din Djarin‘s helmet didn’t come off often enough to exploit Pascal’s charm. Kenobi was perhaps what Phantom Menace et al. should’ve been, because Obi-Wan is a compelling legacy character who deserved more of the prequels’ attention. I skipped Ahsoka and bailed early on the others, frustrated that even through my disappointments, I craved reentering the galaxy far, far away. They kept making new content, and I kept falling for it.

Andor set up the road map for what I believe the new era of Star Wars should be. In fact, I’d go so far as to say Andor (and Rogue One) is my favorite additions to the canon, right up there with Episodes IV, V, and VI. The story of the anti-fascist radicalization of Cassian Andor and the events that led up to Leia hiding the Death Star plans and a distress message in R2-D2’s memory sets Andor apart from the gameified prequels, narratively repetitive sequels, and pedestrian series in that it tells an adult story, parallels our current-day political fights, and doesn’t rely on an encyclopedic understanding of esoteric canon to find immersion. One could even, presumably, have never watched any Star Wars, or any sci-fi for that matter, and enjoy the aesthetic and narrative beauty of Andor. In other words, it does what art intends, not whatever it is Disney aspires to.

While the bulk of Star Wars’ extended universe perverts its lore, Andor finds what made the original trilogy and borrows not its plot, but its production elements. Other than its titular lead, Diego Luna, the series stars mostly unknown actors, just as the original did, and rounds out its cast with accomplished character actors in small but essential roles (Stellan Skarsgard, Forest Whitaker, Ben Mendelsohn). When the prequels cast Natalie Portman, Ewan McGregor, and Liam Neeson, it robbed the audience of a culturally untethered immersion in the story, the way newcomers Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Fisher allowed for in the original films. It’s difficult to believe you’re in a galaxy far, far away when Sam Jackson is one frame away from dropping Ezekiel 25:17.

Andor elevates in maturity with complex and nuanced engagements in the politics and morality of rebellion, with themes of generational trauma, the grey areas of war, the politics and methodology of authoritarianism, the battle for resources—both human and natural, community, grassroots movements, and love, and not the incesty love story that confused GenX in the 80s, but rather complex, nuanced, adult relationships that defy rom-com simplicity. I can’t imagine six-year-old me running around in a Han Solo vest and Hasbro blaster enjoying a minute of Andor, and that’s a good thing.

The saving grace of the series is its writer, director, and showrunner, Tony Gilroy, whose Michael Clayton, as fellow Maron fans know, is an underappreciated masterpiece, and the source of a Sydney Pollack line that I quote at least once a day: “People are fucking incomprehensible.” Gilroy’s/thriller pedigree as the writer of the Bourne movies manifests in narrative maturity in his Star Wars contribution. Meanwhile, showrunners on the other Star Wars series have histories rooted in telling stories for younger audiences. Dave Filoni (Ahsoka) helmed Clone Wars and a number of Disney and Nickelodeon series. Favreau, at one point known for Swingers and Made, has trucked mostly in youth fare in the past 20 years—Elf, The Lion King, Iron Man, The Jungle Book. The Skeleton Crew, a coming-of-age story, is overseen by Jon Watts, known for the last three Spider-Man films, whose sole goal was to recreate the essence of a John Hughes movie with superheroes. And while I had great hope for Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte, since she comes from the world of playwriting and adult stories (Bachelorette, Russian Doll, The Cult of Love), by the time it premiered, I had Star Wars fatigue and couldn’t be bothered. It must be great, though, because it was cancelled. This is not the fault of the showrunners, as much as it is Kathleen Kennedy, the Lucasfilm czar for Disney, who seems lost to the financial imperatives of the Mouse House stockholders, opting for spectacle over art. Either way, what ends up on my TV is mostly meant to exploit a growing youth market and not cultivate any type of narrative complexity Gilroy’s Andor engages me as an adult who is interested in storytelling, which is something that the franchise has been reluctant to do. The toxicity within its fan base is, on some level, born of the impeded progress towards adulthood that its fans and series have in common. Though there are infinite reasons to avoid the Harry Potter franchise, mostly because JK Rowling is a TERF bigot and wizards are stupid, what the books and films got right was that with each volume, they asked more of their audience, to grow with the characters, to mature as the narrative did. Star Wars, on the other hand, has built a fandom of perpetual 12-year-olds, whose sense of entitlement is being satiated by Disney, as opposed to challenged. Andor has received criticism from the Antiwoke set, who deride it as “queer and cringe” for daring to have LGBTQ relationships and defying the canon by not featuring any Jedis or light sabers. Again with the fucking wizard shit, which does nothing but extend the adolesence of dudes in masks with 150,000 YouTube subscribers.

My buddy Ian Orti (author of the recent and phenomenal Syringa) wrote me the other day after seeing I was writing about Star Wars and highlighted that Andor is “completely devoid of light sabery jedi and does the one thing no piece of [Star Wars] IP does: deliver monologues [and] one of the most poignant and relevant meditations on fascism I’ve heard in or out of any political writer or pundit; namely that fascism or tyranny is unsustainable because it requires constant attention to its task.” Orti and I are both 1976 babies, and Star Wars children, but not zealots. But his commentary leads into what is most impressive about Andor as it reaches towards the end of its two-season run, and into the narrative of Rogue One, and on to Episode IV.

Andor’s parallels with our current fight against authoritarianism are nuanced and subtle. It is complicated, but a mature and grounded exploration. We’re introduced to an intimate examination of the machinations of evil through the Imperial Security Bureau’s (ISB) (and Dedra Meero (the wonderfully evil Denise Gough) surveillance state and mass incarceration (season one), and the imprisonment and deportations of citizens. We’re witnesses to the prescience of propaganda and manufactured consent, in Maarva Andor's (the estimable Fiona Shaw) posthumous condemnation of the Empire’s “tightening fist,” a direct challenge to the narrative of peace and order that fascist regimes push. We see migrant workers on Mina-Rau being hunted for deportation, like it’s Nashville or Chicago or any other corner of the US in 2025. And the radicalization and resistance we see in the journey of Cassian Andor from thief to revolutionary mirrors the rise against injustice that we’re starting to see in town halls and protests across the country.

In episode 9’s Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) senate monologue, one can’t help but see the reflection of current congressional battles: “​​The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest.” Mothma embodies the open defiance of politicians like Maine Governor Janet Mills stand against authoritarianism, against the impotent devotion to tradition and convention that adulterates the politics of Chuck Schumer and the octogenarian guard, which has led to imperial rule today and a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

But the political and moral parable of Andor is not the only element of its maturity. The aesthetic of the series is a tribute to the late-70s inspired Star Wars settings of the original films. The set decoration and costuming build worlds that are at once contemporarily familiar and nostalgic in fantasy. The non-human, furry beasts and Hasbro-born cutie pies are background in Andor, and a very human, at times domestic world is at the center of the action. People wear ties and deal with human resources, struggle through the monotony of McJobs, and have complicated romantic relationships. It’s essentially a sequel to Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, set in space, and what I found absent from other recent Star Wars productions. Which is to say, I felt too old for them, and what they attempted in escapism and fantasy, they had already done, and better in the original films. I’m not saying I want to see a version of The Office set in Ghorman or a Chuck Lorre three-camera sitcom about Syril (Kyle Soler) and his mother (a transcendent Kathryn Hunter) or a series about being a Stormtrooper, but I actually totally want to see all of those shows. George Lucas, Kathleen Kennedy, and Jon Favreau have created a universe, so why only investigate the elements of it we’ve already seen? Disney owns a world, so let’s see all of it.

Andor season 2 was released weekly in three-episode bursts, each triumvirate directed by the same person: the first six by Ariel Kleiman (Partisan, Yellowjackets), then Janus Metz (True Detective), and finally Alonso Ruizpalacios (La Cocina), and are written by Tony Gilroy, his brother Dan (Kong: Skull Island), Beau Willimon (House of Cards), and Tom Bissell (a video game writer). The diversity of backgrounds, narratives, and forms from that group is part of what allows Andor to build an adult world, because it inherently includes the complexities and nuance of artistic craftsmanship. I was up way past my bedtime last night watching episodes 7-9, and was again reminded of the quiet masterpiece that is this series. Much of the new Star Wars is fucking incomprehensible and pandering, but Andor is the droid I’ve been looking for since my left ear popped.