The second and final season of Star Wars: Andor is airing now on Disney+, with three new episodes dropping tonight. Critics have heaped praise on this show, and I'm going to join them now: it's adult, it's mature, it's meticulously written and performed. It's a deeply felt show about the difficulties of trying to get a rebellion off the ground.
The rebels are fighting the Empire, the fascist state lording over the galaxy. At the movies, the Empire has usually been represented by Darth Vader and the Emperor, apprentice and master, strong silent enforcer and cackling leader. But neither of these characters will show up in Andor, although Emperor Palpatine has been mentioned by some of the Imperial bureaucrats showrunner Tony Gilroy likes to write for. "He was too big a piece of meat for me to introduce," Gilroy told Rolling Stone about the Emperor. "It was too heavy a lift. I thought about it at one point, but it was too heavy a lift."
As for Darth Vader, Gilroy never contemplated introducing him in Andor. "No, that was never on my agenda," he said. "Writing for Darth Vader is really limiting. I’ve done it. He doesn’t have a lot to say."
Andor is a prequel show to the movie Rogue One, where Vader does appear. Although granted, his most famous scene is pretty light on words:
Instead of focusing on those iconic characters, Andor has taken a different approach, which has helped it stand out amidst all the other Star Wars movies and shows out there. "I think what’s cool about the show is it’s really about ordinary people, just regular people who are just going about their lives. And all of a sudden history is knocking on the door," Gilroy said. "What happens when the shit comes to your neighborhood? I’m trying to be timeless, really. So any similarity is a very unfortunate repetition of all the shit that’s happened in the past that I’m basing this on."
Andor has successfully created new characters who may go on to be iconic in their own right. Take Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), the uncompromising antiques dealer who started what will eventually turn into the Rebel Alliance. "He’s so warped by his commitment, and by what’s happened to him, by where he finds himself, and the desperation to see some sort of activity, that he shoots himself in the foot along the way and makes things worse," Gilroy said of Luthen. "He clearly is not a friend to any romantic relationship. He’s careless with the people that he should be taking care of more. He manipulates them in ways that are complicated."
"He’s a guy who built a startup in his garage. He built a revolution in his garage, and now he’s gonna go public and he’s got VC funding. And man, how do you scale up a revolution when paranoia and secrecy and all the things that got you there, that’s your basic code — how do you work with others? "
Then there are my personal favorites, Imperial cogs Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), true believers in the mission of the Empire who have started up a cursed romantic relationship I recommend everyone stay 50 feet away from at all times.
"One of them is a romantic and fantasist. Syril is a romantic, really. His inner conversation must be very loud and very extreme," Gilroy said. "Dedra, on the other hand, is a zealot. I think her imagination is like a Formula One driver. I think it’s just, keep on going and get it done. It’s so fascinating to me what happens between the two of them and how they interact, and I don’t have anybody else for them to be with."
And we can't forget Cassian Andor himself, the selfish thief turned earnest agent of the Rebellion...who now steals things for good. In the opening episodes of Andor season 2, he stole a whole TIE Fighter and then piloted it to Yavin 4, which will eventually become the site of an important rebel base. But when Cassian lands there, it's full of idiots who are nominally working for the Rebellion but who keep bickering about rations until things devolve into a Lord of the Flies-like standoff, with Cassian caught in the middle.
"I went to work and I was like, I really wanna have some stupidity in here," Gilroy laughed. "The rebellion has to have some idiots. I’ve started so elegantly and it’s gonna seem so prissy if I just leave it on that [level]. What would it be like?"
That's the thing about Andor: it's not going to be the Star Wars experience you expect.
Hayden Christensen looks back on playing Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader
If you're looking for the classics, you want to head to the theater and see Revenge of the Sith, which is back after first bowing way back in 2005. Hayden Christensen, who played Anakin Skywalker, the man who would become Darth Vader, looked back on that experience with StarWars.com.
“None of it has really faded yet for me,” Christensen said. “I was a 19-year-old kid living out my wildest dreams as an actor — making Star Wars with George Lucas. I got to know and work with all these incredible people like Ewan [McGregor], Natalie [Portman], Sam Jackson, and Ian McDiarmid.”
Christensen took a break from playing Anakin for a while after the end of the prequel trilogy, but has recently come back for shows like Obi-Wan Kenobi on Disney+, where he picks up with the character several years later. “It is very unusual to get to return to a character this many times and after such a large passage of time," Christensen said. "In some ways, each time it's a little bit different. I feel even more connected to Anakin now than ever before. Just because I'm a little bit older and I've lived more, I can understand his struggles with more depth, perhaps.”
"Back when we were making the prequels, it was a great honor and a big challenge for me to step into this role. But I guess my focus was really on trying to bring to life Anakin's passion and his struggles, and of course, his eventual fall to the dark side. When I got to come back to do Obi-Wan with Ewan, it was a much different experience mainly because I wasn't just playing Anakin, but now I was really playing Vader too, or rather Anakin within the timeline of Vader."
Christensen will be back again as Anakin/Darth Vader in the upcoming second season of Ahsoka. “The affection that people have for Anakin means a lot to me,” he continued. “Of course, it's a really nice thing, and I hope Jake Lloyd feels that too. [But], getting to play this character has been an incredible honor and a privilege. Getting to be a part of this amazing world that George created, hearing from all the fans over the years who have shared with me how much Star Wars means to them — I just want to say, on behalf of all of the fans that have come up to me, I want to thank George for making such an amazing world that is Star Wars, and then inviting us all to be a part of it.”
So if you're looking for classic Star Wars stuff, there are still plenty of opportunities to get it. If you want something new, three new episodes of Andor drop tonight on Disney+.
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