Tripwire Reviews Andor Season Two Episodes One To Three

The Rebellion Strikes Back?

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows reviews the first three episodes of Andor Season Two. Warning:a few spoilers ahead…

Andor: A Star Wars Story  Season Two
One Year Later/ Sagrona Teema/ Harvest
Directors: Ariel Kleiman
Writers: Tony Gilroy
Stars: Diego Luna, Adria Arjona, Genevieve O’Reilly, Denise Gough, Stellan Skarsgard

Two and a half years since Andor Season One where showrunner Tony Gilroy set up arguably the most cerebral and intriguing Star Wars tale of all time. Beset by delays thanks to the writer’s strike of 2023, the second season was reformatted, with its original intentions of running Andor to five seasons cut back. So after the 10 episode season one, we have 12 episodes of season two, with three ‘chapters’ released each week.

Season Two jumps forward a year from the end of the previous run. It kicks off with Andor stealing a Tie fighter to make a rendezvous with a fellow member of the rebellion. As with the first run, the scale and ambition of the opening scene is massive, easily worthy of any of its big-screen predecessors. We have four different settings to get our head around here: set four years before Luke destroys the Death Star in A New Hope, season two flits between The idyllic farming planet of Mina-Rau; the jungles of what becomes a future rebel moon base, Yavin 4; the opulent houses of Chandrila, carved into the planet’s rocks and the bustling urban megalopolis of galactic capital city Coruscant.

So the first three episodes here feature Andor making his way through the rebellion, the traumatised Box (Arjona) hiding out on Mina-Rau with a few other escapees from Ferrix, aware that the Empire could crash her idyll at any moment and senator Mon Mothma (O’Reilly), organising her daughter’s wedding while playing a dangerous political game supporting the rebels from afar. The puppetmaster Luthen (Skarsgaard) attends the ceremony, despite all that he risks just by his presence.

On the Imperial side of proceedings, Deedra Meero (Denise Gough) is making her way up the greasy ladder, put in charge of a new Imperial mission to planet Ghorman, a planet that can provide much needed raw materials for the Empire.

So the programme makers have a lot more plot to pack into Andor now that it’s just one more season rather than the originally announced four more runs.

Gilroy and co have thrown us in at the deep end once again and it’s a bold move to split the action between the four places. Bix and co’s precarious existence on Mina-Rau is under threat from Imperial inspectors and the sense of dread in these particular scenes is palpable. Bix is still reeling from the torture meted out on her on Ferrix from the Empire and she may have physically escaped from it but mentally she is still suffering.

The scenes on Corruscant where we see Deidre continuing to try and manipulate her position in the Imperial ranks are very effective as we are beginning to see the seeds of the Empire as witnessed in the later films, a hierarchy bogged down by a evil sort of mundanity. The Empire is run by ambitious functionaries bent on bringing order to the Galaxy at the cost of individuality and personal freedoms. Andor’s scenes where he is held prisoner by two warring parties on Yavin is possibly the least engaging here as it feels that it goes on a little too long but it obviously serves a dramatic purpose. The wedding of Mothma’s daughter to Stekan Sculdun, a union of political expediency, is a clever set piece, offering us further insights into Mothma’s home planet of Chandrila as well as seeing more of her political games, games that could make her position untenable in the long run. Of course, we all know what choices she makes later on regarding the Empire.

As with the first season but perhaps even more so, Andor is easily the densest and richest Star Wars work to date. It’s an impressive start with a lot of questions asked and enough drama to pique viewers’ interest again. The second season feels more widescreen and less confined visually with lots of plot Easter eggs to satisfying the show’s regular viewers as well as more general Star Wars aficionados. It will be interesting to see how they ramp up the plot momentum over the next three weeks. Again it seems the least typically Star Wars show continues to confound and absorb viewers.

JOEL MEADOWS

Andor Season Two is on Disney Plus each week