Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing well. Today on The Star Wars Journal, I'm going to be talking about season 1 of Andor. I'm so excited to be doing this review finally. I finished season 1 last night and I'm ready to talk about it. There will most likely be spoilers. In fact, on this blog assume there will be spoilers for everything I talk about because it's Star Wars and there's so much to talk about both in universe and in the real world when it comes to Star Wars that spoilers have to be spoken of. Also, any information I talk about here is coming from Wookieepedia, so if you'd like to read the page on Andor there and check out the sources it links to, please feel free to do so. So, let's get into it and talk about season 1 of Andor.
I was extremely skeptical about Andor. I hadn't enjoyed Rogue One as much as a lot of other people had when it came out back in 2016 and I thought Cassian Andor was a less interesting character than Jyn Erso was and felt she had a more interesting backstory that needed to be told due to her connection to Galen Erso, one of the scientists working on the Death Star, and her connection to Saw Gerrera, the radical leader of the Rebellion who had also fought the Separatists during the Clone Wars, as shown in the 2008 animated series of the same name.
The interesting thing about Andor is that the show was planned as far back as when Rogue One came out, and Cassian Andor turned out to be a popular character, alongside his droid, K2-SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk), before Disney started its own streaming service. Apparently Disney's original concept for the show was just Andor going on adventures with K2 prior to the events of Rogue One, and the company's CEO, Bob Iger announced the series in 2018 as one of the live action Star Wars shows Lucasfilm had planned for Disney+, alongside The Mandalorian. However, it wasn't until Tony Gilroy, who'd written Rogue One in the first place, came along and decided to make the show more nuanced than Disney's original concept seemed to have allowed it to be.
As happens with many shows, Gilroy's concept for Andor changed and shifted during the development of the first season. Initially Gilroy pitched a five season series to Lucasfilm, which would focus on Cassian's life beginning five years before Rogue One and A New Hope and leading into Rogue One, with the season five series finale leading directly into Cassian's involvement in the story of the movie. But, during production on season 1, Gilroy realized how long it took to make the first season and decided he didn't want to take fifteen years to make the show, as there would've been a two to three year gap between each season. Plus with Diego Luna physically aging during that time, and their decision not to use age reducing computer graphics to de-age Cassian so that he'd match up with how he looked in Rogue One, they decided together to reduce the number of seasons for the show from five to two. I'll talk about that more in my season 2 review, which I'll be doing on Thursday.
I love this show. Season 1 was incredible. Diego Luna, who has already aged a bit in the last ten years since he filmed Rogue One, was amazing as Cassian. I also loved Fiona Shaw, who we all know as Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter films, as Cassian's adopted mother, Maarva. However, my absolute favourite character in this show so far is Bix Calleen, played by Adria Arjona.
I also really enjoyed the characters of Dedra Meero, played by Denise Gough, and Syril Karn, played by Kyle Soller. They're both evil and true believers in what they're doing for Palpatine and the Galactic Empire, and yet they're both just people doing their jobs and navigating a system that devalues their contributions to the jobs they have, with Dedra being one of the only two women in the Imperial Security Bureau, and Karn being a bit more ambitious and Imperial for his job at the Preox-Morlana Company's law enforcement department as a deputy inspector. I'm hoping to see more of that in season 2.
Other characters that I absolutely love in this show are Mon Mothma, played by Genevieve O'Reilly, who originally played her in deleted scenes in Revenge of the Sith in 2005, and has portrayed her ever since, Vel Sartha, played by Faye Marsay, who is a member of Luthen's network of Rebels, and Mon Mothma's cousin, Cinta Kaz, played by Varada Sethu, who is Vel's girlfriend and a member of Luthen's network of Rebels, Kleya Marki, played by Elizabeth Dulau, who is Luthen's second in command, and Luthen Rael, played by Stellan Skarsgard, who is a leader of the just starting out Rebel Alliance.
As I said in a recent blog post, I am absolutely thrilled that Mon Mothma has gotten so much to do starting with Star Wars: The Clone Wars in 2010. I always felt she got shafted in both her original appearance in Return of the Jedi back in 1983, and in her deleted scenes from Revenge of the Sith that I always wanted to know more about her. Especially since the Legends novels never focused on her as a character. She appeared quite often in the novels, particularly in the '90s during the Bantam Spectra era of Star Wars Publishing, but none of them focused on her. She always served as a supporting character for Princess Leia, or as a guest character in books like the X-Wing series. So I was so happy to see her have a major role in Andor.
Vel and Cinta surprised me. They were introduced as part of the team that infiltrated the Imperial garrison on the planet, Aldhani, and I thought that that was all. But then it was revealed that Vel is Mon Mothma's cousin, and that Cinta was Vel's girlfriend, and my jaw dropped. Unlike many shows and movies these days, too many in my humble opinion, Andor treats Vel and Cinta's relationship as normal. It doesn't make a big deal out of it and doesn't try to hold itself up as the first lesbian relationship in Star Wars. It just shows it as the natural thing that it is, and as it should be portrayed as. I think what surprised me the most and the thing that I didn't hear about at all from people online, was Vel being Mon Mothma's cousin. Like that astounded me, because not only does it portray this badass woman who would do whatever it took for the mission on Aldhani to succeed, but she's also related to Mon Mothma, another badass lady who would go on to lead the Rebel Alliance to victory against the Empire at Endor in Return of the Jedi. Like what?
Luthen fascinates me. In Legends there's a character named Garm Bel Iblis, who was the senator from Corellia and who joined Bail Organa and Mon Mothma in forming the Rebel Alliance. However, shortly after the destruction of Alderaan in 0 BBY, he took his Corellian faction and withdrew from the Alliance for fear that Mon would declare herself Emperor once Palpatine was disposed of, as the way she dealt with things as the head of the Alliance was very much like how Palpatine handled things, being that as a revolutionary force, the Alliance needed a single leader rather than a committee, which is why it was so difficult for the Alliance to return to politics and diplomacy once it became the New Republic in 4 ABY.
Luthen reminds me of Senator Bel Iblis a lot in this first season. He's the one doing a lot of the legwork concerning the burgeoning Rebel Alliance, along with Saw Gerrera, which is how Bel Iblis was portrayed as doing in the 1992 novel, Dark Force Rising when he told his story to Han and Lando. So I see Luthen as serving a similar role, as he's also more militarily minded than Mon Mothma and Bail Organa are.
Overall I love the first season of Andor. It was engaging and more character driven than I have seen any Star Wars show or movie be even after Rogue One came out. And I really enjoyed that aspect of it. If you're still on the fence about Andor, as I was, I highly recommend trying the first three episodes, which is the first story arc of the series, to see if you like it. If you don't that's fine, but definitely give it a try.
That's it for me for today. I'll be back tomorrow for a Star Wars book review, where I'll be reviewing the first book in the Reign of the Empire trilogy, The Mask of Fear by Alexander Freed. Until then have a great evening and May the Force be with you!
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