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“Andor” defies expectations as early as the season 2 premiere — and even before it, in fact. The creative team famously scrapped their original plans for a five-season narrative and instead condensed years of in-universe events into these final dozen episodes, opting for the most unusual (and unprecedented) of release strategies in this streaming era. Much like the first season, the entire storyline has been divided into four distinct arcs. Unlike before, however, these episodes will drop three episodes at a time on Disney+ every week with year-long time jumps in between, almost as four feature films unto themselves. But to everyone rightfully apprehensive from all those countless, eye-roll-worthy claims of turning serialized television into “one long movie,” this might be season 2’s greatest accomplishment of all: It actually earns that statement.
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“Andor” season 2 begins a year after the events of the season 1 finale, when Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) forced his way into taking part of the nascent Rebellion against the galaxy-wide oppression of the Empire. Season 2 makes it clear that, with several years still to go before catching up to the events of “Rogue One,” our favorite rebel is a long way off from becoming the doomed hero we ultimately know him to be. By now, he’s an established veteran of the cause and a trusted lieutenant of the shadowy, enigmatic operative Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård). But, as these episodes make abundantly clear, rebellion alone is no longer enough. It needs to be organized, effective, and, most importantly of all, motivated in order to achieve their ultimate goal. If the first season was all about the spark that lights the fire (to steal a quintessential line from “The Last Jedi,” in many ways a thematic companion to this), then season 2 is about that flaming turning into a raging inferno … and the true costs revolution has for those involved. The results are nothing short of epic, tragic, and uncomfortably timely.
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But what makes “Andor” a difficult watch at times is also what makes it so urgent and rewarding. Fans won’t miss all the usual “Star Wars” traits they could possibly want, from a surprising amount of humor in the early going to creative choices that only make movies like “Rogue One” (and even “A New Hope”) better in retrospect. But this remains a series that goes much further than any other franchise offering ever has, looking the fascism of the Empire right in the eye and showing it in all of its evil, rather than flinching away or merely gesturing towards it in the vaguest of terms. Boardroom meetings casually discussing plans for genocide will hit differently these days, as does infighting among fractured Rebel groups or Mon Mothma’s (Genevieve O’Reilly) storyline of political helplessness in the face of unchecked authoritarianism. (Slightly spoilery trigger warning: It’s worth noting that there’s an attempted sexual assault in episode 3, a sequence more harrowing than any in this franchise to date.)
A potent political allegory, an adrenaline-pumping espionage thriller, and a Greek tragedy playing out in devastating slow motion, “Andor” is all of these at once — building to a conclusion that might be written in the stars, but which never feels anything less than the most original and exhilarating experience in “Star Wars” history.
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