Andor: Star Wars series lets go of Skywalker baggage — and is all the better for it

A pall of rain blankets a futuristic metropolis divided into pockets of light and shadow at night. A man in a brown hooded coat paces through seedy alleyways festering in neon-lit grime. He enters a brothel looking for someone. He quizzes a sex worker, runs into trouble with a couple of surly guards, and ends up killing both. No, this isn’t Blade Runner fan fiction, but the opening images of the new Star Wars prequel Andor. Yes, Star Wars has never looked, sounded or felt this gritty, murky or textured before.

Besides borrowing cues from Blade Runner, creator Tony Gilroy builds the show’s foundational ideas off his own past work: the corporate conspiracy of Michael Clayton and the espionage thrills of the Bourne series. In the three episodes released so far, we see planets being plundered for resources, the concentration of power in the hands of few, and the machinations of a bureaucracy greasing the wheels for the slide of a republic into a despotic regime. We see all this through the eyes of regular folk — factory workers, mechanics, tradespeople, scrap collectors — trying to keep their heads down till they can’t. These are working-class heroes, some of whom will become vital cogs in the Rebel missions to come. Joining the rebellion or navigating an intergalactic conflict isn’t as easy when you don’t have the powers of a Jedi or the bravado of a swashbuckler. Andor maintains a dialogue with the core values of Star Wars, while considering the sacrifices and compromises those values ask of these regular folk.

The man from the opening scene is the eponymous character, played by Diego Luna, first introduced in Rogue One. To be sure, the Andor Cassian we meet in the series isn’t the same person we met in the film. Not yet. He is five years away from becoming the battle-hardened Rebel officer who helps steal the Death Star plans in a daring heist, only to die in the arms of co-conspirator Jyn Erso. Andor is the story of how he came to work for the Rebel Alliance.

What made Rogue One a bit of an outlier in the Star Wars franchise was its ballsy move to kill off its entire cast of heroes in one decisive blow. The film, whose screenplay was co-written by Gilroy, added a touch of grey to the dark-light binarism of the original series. Andor does likewise, intent to position itself closer to the prestige TV variant of today’s sci-fi and fantasy fare. The score by Nicholas Britell doubles down on this, with a delightful mix of synths, drones and strings colouring a mood of paranoia. It’s also why the double-murder acts as the opening salvo, in a manner not too dissimilar to how we meet Cassian in Rogue One.

Only this Cassian is an aimless thief who steals from the Empire not to resist, but to simply survive. He steals by walking in like he belongs. “They’re so proud of themselves they don’t even care,” he says. “They’re so fat and satisfied they can’t imagine it. That someone like me would ever get inside their house.” On his home planet of Ferrix, we also meet the ever-worried adoptive mother Maarva (Fiona Shaw), the agreeable droid B2EMO (Dave Chapman), and the salvage yard mechanic Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona). We learn Cassian and Bix have a long and complicated history. When the killing of the two guards attracts the attention of Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), a low-level security officer eager to make an impression with the Empire, Cassian must turn to Bic’s mysterious associate Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) for a way out of Ferrix. Flashbacks take us back to a traumatic memory from Cassian’s childhood growing up on his home planet of Kenari and being separated from his sister. Luna rounds out the character substantially with the anger and pain of an outsider trying to get by, even if he is portraying a rawer version of the character he played in Rogue One.

Andor is still Star Wars, but it doesn’t feel overly regulated by the franchise’s rulebook. Not being tied to all the Skywalker baggage allows it to flex its atrophied muscles a little. For too long, every instalment has been picking the bones of the original movies, instead of launching into fresh corners of the galaxy far, far away. If Star Wars: Visions was a testament to all the storytelling possibilities, Andor shows a firm commitment to move beyond the theme park ride of space warfare and lightsaber duels. Following the recent disappointments of Obi-Wan Kenobi and The Book of Boba Fett, it is such a welcome change of tone, pace and focus. The opening three episodes sure lay out the groundwork for a Star Wars experience worth sticking around for. Though the show may be a prequel to a prequel, it sets the right way forward for the franchise.

The first three episodes of Andor are now streaming on Disney+ Hotstar, with new episodes to follow every Wednesday.

Prahlad Srihari is a film and music writer based in Bengaluru.

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