There’s prestige TV, and then there’s a one-of-a-kind show like Andor, the live-action Star Wars prequel series on Disney+ that viewers are still raving about weeks after the conclusion of its second and final season.
Over the course of 24 episodes in total, Andor — always more of a cerebral political thriller than a space opera — managed to pull off a stunning feat: It’s actually the first show in TV history to rack up five consecutive episodes with a 9.5 or higher rating on IMDb. In other words (not that fans of the espionage-filled drama will need any reminding), this is as near to flawless as TV can get.
The streak responsible for that distinction begins with Season 2’s Episode 8, titled Who Are You?, and runs through the finale, titled Jedha, Kyber, Erso. Each entry in this five-episode stretch, which includes the horrific Ghorman massacre, crackles with devastating moral clarity, and the kind of writing that elevates a TV show into art on par with literature.
Season 2 has actually been laying the groundwork for this crescendo from the start. In the early episodes, we see Cassian Andor slipping like a thief into an Imperial facility, Bix struggling to reclaim her sense of self, and Syril climbing the ranks of bureaucracy like a man possessed. The rebellion is still scattered, but the fire is starting to rise.
By the time the massacre unfolds in Episode 8, Andor is firing on all cylinders. A peaceful protest shattered by Imperial blasters, a political system that suffocates truth, and a politician (Mon Mothma) risking everything to call genocide by its name — say what you will about the franchise, but Star Wars will arguably never be this real again. And the show kept going from there. In Make It Stop (Ep. 10), Luthen’s past catches up with him, Kleya’s loyalty is tested in ways that leave a body count, and Cassian makes the fateful choice to sacrifice peace for purpose.
Bix, meanwhile, delivers a direct-to-camera farewell that left some viewers in tears (and, by some viewers, obviously I mean me).
In its final three-episode arc, Andor refuses to give in to nostalgia or happy endings. Given that the show was meant to set up the events of 2016’s Rogue One, that was obviously always going to be the case. But still, what makes the show so unforgettable, and why it’s so hard for fans like me to let it go, partly has to do with the way its characters stare into the abyss and ask profound questions we never got from Star Wars before. Like, what if the fight for freedom never ends? And what if the rebels fighting that fight never live to see the new world they’re building?
