'Andor' Is Sexy, Fun, and Damn Good
I can blame three things for my permanent brain fog: Adam Levine, COVID, and Disney+. Though I'll use the last shred of today's attention span to explain why Mickey Mouse's streaming service makes me cry three times a week. I cover Star Wars and Marvel for Esquire, which means that—after injecting several doses of The Book of Boba Fett, She-Hulk, and Obi-Wan Kenobi into my bloodstream—I've got a warped sense of storytelling.
Is a show good if Daredevil shows up at the end of it? What if it references a maligned film trilogy from two decades ago? The resurrection of a dead fan-favorite hero, wee! Does Disney+ just plug terms like "Darth Vader" + "Post-Credits Scene" + "Tobey Maguire" + "LOLz" into a supercomputer in the basement of the Magic Kingdom castle and a script poops out?
Given that we live in a post-Grandpappy Palpatine Star Wars world, I wasn't expecting much from Andor, which debuted its first three episodes on Disney+ Wednesday. Andor, if you're unfamiliar, is a prequel to 2016's Rogue One, chronicling how Diego Luna's Cassian Andor went from quasi-scoundrel to the powder keg of the rebellion. Imagine the flickers and firings coming from my dysfunctional brain circuitry when Andor's opening scene takes us to a space brothel. After years of watching my beloved Baby Yoda goo-goo ga-ga across the galaxy, I did a double-take. Is Disney+ wading into PG-13 territory? Has it lifted my parental controls? It's my pleasure to report that the rest of the opening scene in question is sexy, fun, mysterious—and, eventually, deadly. It's a damn good start, and, I am pleased to report, the show genuinely gets better and better until the credits roll at the end of Episode Three.
This may be a surprise to you (it was to me!), but Andor isn't just Rogue One: The Prequel, where some rebellious young buck musters up the feistiness to smack a Stormtrooper in the gut. Instead, it's our best look at day-to-day life in the galaxy far, far away yet. Sure, the series follows Cassian Andor, a man after a MacGuffin, as expected, but also his lost sister. (Read: actual stakes.) But back at home, Andor is surrounded by family, friends, enemies, and frenemies. Nearly every character we meet and relationship we glimpse has a worn-in feeling—beefs we don't know about, romances brewing—that aren't presented to us in baby-exposition-speak. For example, in Episode One, Andor catches a glimpse of two of his associates making eyes at each other. He makes a sassy-ish quip about the relationship apparently turning romantic. In any other Star Wars jam, Andor would've just focused on the Big Space MacGuffin at hand. These moments aren't only a nice touch, but a reminder that nearly every word in a miniseries like Obi-Wan Kenobi was intended to send us hurtling toward the tip of Darth Vader's lightsaber. Life is about the journey, people!
Did I mention the cast is stellar? Episodes One, Two, and Three introduce us to Kyle Soller's Syril Karn, who, I swear, has the makings of an all-time Star Wars villain. Karn is essentially a space cop, whom Soller plays with a frenetic, self-doubting teacher's pet energy. It's weird, it's fun, and you get the sense that we're seeing the origin story of a powerful Imperial officer. Rounding out the cast, we glimpse Stellan Skarsgård's Luthen Rael, who perfectly understands his assignment of acting as the Nick Fury of the rebellion. Adria Arjona's Bix Caleen is a delight, too, with an Episode Three cliffhanger that makes you desperate to know what the end of her Andor arc might look like. Hell, there's even a lovable new droid sidekick! What else do you need?
This will probably come off as a tiny bit simplistic, because I'm praising Andor for clearing an admittedly low bar: but the show isn't only a good Star Wars story... it's a good story, period. That's what the whole Star-Wars-and-Marvel-on-Disney+ experiment has needed all along—something that can stand entirely on its own, outside the trappings of the massive multiverse in which it exists. You can thank showrunner Tony Gilroy and his writers room for deftly working in a little bit of subtext, dealing with some unsavory anti-immigration sentiments in our country. At one point, we and get a hint that Andor's early scuffle may have been a hate crime, and later learn that Andor's foster mother had to list a different planet on all of his legal papers. After months of watching Star Wars stories with themes I can simply describe as Cameo, it's refreshing.
Here's hoping that the rest of Andor builds on where its first three episodes have taken us. And Disney+, if Megan Thee Stallion shows up to twerk with Cassian Andor? There will be a rebellion.
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