Andor, Season 2
Created by Tony Gilroy
Friends everywhere
I watched the final episode of Season 2 of the Disney+ series Andor yesterday, 10-Aug-2025. It was good. I was struck by how seriously Andor takes its source material.
I saw the first Star Wars film in the theatre in 1977 in a movie theater. (That was the only option then.) I saw it with my sister. I was in my first year of college and was visiting home—I guess it was spring break. Of course, when I say “the first Star Wars Film,” what I really mean is the one that Lucas eventually retconned into Episode IV: A New Hope of his trilogy of trilogies. Both my sister and I thought it was a silly, fun film. Neither of us imagined that it would become the cultural phenomenon it is now.
It is in that light that I comment on the seriousness with which Andor treats its source material. Andor, both seasons, together with Rogue One are the story of how we got to that silly, fun 1977 film, which begins when Luke Skywalker’s uncle scavenges a couple of used robots for use on their farm, and Luke, trying to get the R2 unit in working shape, stumbles on a holoprojection of a princess saying, “Help me, Obiwan Kenobi—-you’re my only hope.” Andor takes us to the point where the rebellion, in the person of Caiian Andor, has become aware that the empire has built a giant new weapon, the Death Star.
Andor is darker and more serious than A New Hope. I doubt “silly and fun” would be the first adjectives to come to the mind of any watcher. It is about an oppressed people standing up a rebellion against a brutal ruler. My title comes from the tag line with which rebels grett each other, “I Have Friends Everywhere.” In fact, by the end of the final episode, episode 12, many of those friends have died. Two of the characters, Cassian and Vel, offer a toast to “dead friends,” and name them. The list is long.
Overall, I think this is better film-making than A New Hope. It’s not that I don’t appreciate “silly and fun,”—I do, absolutely. But A New Hope never was, in my opinion, all that great a film, even compared to other silly and fun films. Obviously the verdict of time is against me.