I haven’t written much about Disney+’s Andor. I wasn’t an immediate fan. Here’s a movie that wanted to tell the story of a fairly minor character, albeit one in one of the better Star Wars films. To be quite honest, I’ve been largely unconvinced by most of Disney’s straight-to-streaming Star Wars fare. It’s been uneven at best, pandering at worst, and in almost every case it tells stories that didn’t need to be told.
As Andor started and we got to know the guy who (uh, wait a minute while I look it up) sort of helped steal the Death Star plans, it seemed like another waste of my time. Early episodes went back and forth between the character as a young person and him as an adult. It didn’t seem special at all, and I almost tuned out.
And then, things started to gel. The flashbacks to Cassian Andor’s past stopped, thankfully. What emerged was an interesting case study of the Empire. See, obviously we all agree the Empire was a bad thing. But up until this show, there were two kinds of Imperials shown on screen. Neither were terribly interesting.
For the most part, it came down to this. First, there were anonymous minions who simply existed to do their jobs badly. Then, there were ubervillains who were seemingly indestructible until the plot called for their destruction. Andor added a third, and most welcome, dimension. These were the everyday functionaries who were chillingly good at their jobs and who thought they were doing the right thing. That sort of villain is scarier than any other to me. A cadre of smart middle-managers bent on destruction can do a lot more than just one mystic lord.
The best part of Andor isn’t Andor himself
And therein lies the magic of Andor, and the reason I’m still watching. I’ll be clear and honest that I don’t care about the Cassian Andor character. I’m not sure you’re supposed to. He’s just our entry into this world, the character through whose eyes we see. He’s not the only point of view, of course. We see bits of the Empire and of the Rebellion that he’ll never see. But he’s the hook that drew us in so we could see the really good storytelling that surrounds him.
This is never more obvious than it was in the middle episodes where Cassian Andor was captured and sent to prison. With nothing for him to do, you’d think there would be nothing for us to watch. But instead, we get to see the machinations of the Imperials and proto-Rebels as they head toward the clash we know is coming.
Apparently Andor season 2 will give us several time jumps to help us move from the current storyline into the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, where Andor still isn’t the main character. Seeing how well that (didn’t) work for House of the Dragon, I’ll reserve judgment until I see the show.
The worst episodes are heading to broadcast and pay-TV
I’ve been saying for years that studios like Disney and Universal should start shows on streaming and then, if they find an audience, move them to traditional pay TV. Today, a streaming show can get the same viewership as a traditionally broadcast show, so I haven’t said it a lot lately.
Still, Disney execs must have been listening. They’ve decided to run the first two episodes of Andor on ABC, FX, Freeform, and Hulu to try to draw people in. It’s an odd choice since these are, for my money, the worst episodes of the series. It’s also not the first time this has been done. CBS did it with Star Trek: Discovery back in 2017 to get people to sign up for what was then called CBS All Access. (It’s now called Paramount+.)
This is an odd move for Disney, which is known for family entertainment. The last two months of the year are usually thought of as family time. And yet, here they go. I’m curious if we will ever find out if it worked. Disney doesn’t reveal subscriber numbers other than very vague estimates so we may not know.
Ironically, like Andor himself, all we can do is stand by as a giant bureaucracy full of passionate middle managers tries to control the universe. See what I did there?
Here’s the airing schedule for Andor:
- ABC: Wednesday, November 23, 9-10:30 pm ET
- FX: Thursday, November 24, 9-10:30 pm ET
- Freeform: Friday, November 25, 9-10:30 pm ET
- Hulu: Available from November 23 through December 7
New episodes of Andor drop on Wednesdays on Disney+. The season finale airs this coming Wednesday.
