Last time we re-introduced ourselves to Cassian Andor, Rogue One’s most dead character.
Critically interrupted this week by the venerable Blood Knife swooping in and taking all my grand, abstract thoughts about Star Wars following the conclusion of this trilogy of Andor episodes. Go read that first! It’s the official post of the week. I do have a handful of stray thoughts to sit here though, for anyone for who that wasn’t enough.
Dragging ourselves miserably back to the world of Star Wars, it would be remiss not to mention that having showed us that it could be a better Obi-wan, Andor doesn’t miss a beat in showing us that it could be a better Solo — the tight-knit group of proto-rebels lifting improbably defended Imperial resources being the middle act of that film. It’s a very well executed heist movie, giving us the full Ocean’s 11: here are the cast, here are the pieces, here’s half the plan and here’s one or two wrinkles.
In a fashion that feels ludicrously expensive, the show introduces more new characters for this run of episodes than appeared in Obi-wan in total: for our heist squad, there’s the bossy one, the uptight one, the sleazy one, the intense one, the double agent, and the communist. For the opposition: the double agent (again), a rake of subordinates, the squalid provincial governer, a prestigious colonial administrator on a visit, and a plucky comms officer who is going to be in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time.
Some interesting formalisms at play too, with episode 5 following the spread of different characters through a single extended day, breakfast to dusk — all apparently in the service of a pretty good joke where off-the-board player piece Karn, the antagonist of the first run of episodes, appears to spend the entire day miserably eating one bowl of cereal. Karn’s position in the plot is usurped by a run of scenes of bureaucratic intrigue in the Imperial Spy Ministry (or some such), a larger, snobbier version of Karn’s treasured corporate police.
In an impossibly charming move (in a show that is coming to be defined by the quantity of charming moves it cares to pull off in each episode) the scheme is explained to us over a scale model of the target base, which gets a ceremonial burning the night before the mission that manages to evoke Darth Vader’s funeral pyre.
Interesting is the extent to which the show is happy to play on our pre-knowledge of the character of Andor — obviously as the protagonist he was always going to be likely to have some kind of heart of gold, but the specifics go further. The scene where he reassures the other proto-revolutionaries that tensions always run high the night before a mission seems almost to position Rogue One prior to Andor in the running order. We know this character has experience with rebel missions: we’ve seen him steal the Death Star plans. Cassian’s run of shooting first continues unabated too, all the more pointed with the similarities to Solo.
Skarsgard gets to flex his acting muscles and his facial muscles in his mirror life as the smiling curiosity shop owner — the show again cannily shying away from exactly why such a profession might be prudent for a rebel agent. These scenes introduce Mon Mothma, a vintage Star Wars character who has never really had one, except possibly in the extended universe of books that I never read. These scenes are also set on a returning Coruscant, speeder cars and dining chambers looking every bit as grandiloquent as it was depicted in the Prequels. There’s even a scene in the Imperial senate, which was always an incredible bit of visual design and I was thrilled to see it return. We don’t see who is in position on the centre podium, alas.
Up next:
- Andor: Episodes 1, 2, 3
- “Can Andor save Star Wars from itself?”
- Andor: Episode 7
- Andor: Episodes 8, 9, 10
- Andor: Episodes 11, 12
Ranking, best to worst:
- The Phantom Menace
- Andor: Episodes 4, 5, 6
- Andor: Episodes 1, 2, 3
- Flashback recap of the prequel trilogy
- Obi-wan: Episode 5
- Obi-wan: Episode 3
- Obi-wan: Episode 1
- Obi-wan: Episode 6
- Obi-wan: Episode 4
- Obi-wan: Episode 2
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