With that said, Andor is going for a different tone. But I don’t think it’s necessarily just “darker” like people are saying.
Yeah, agreed there. If I had to describe the tone of Andor in just one word, it would be “real”. Every element of the series seems carefully chosen to make the Star Wars universe seem as grounded and believable as possible: the writing is full of subtle world-building rather than on-the-nose exposition, the set design prioritizes real sets and location filming over CGI backgrounds whenever possible, and even the actors look more ordinary and less “Hollywood-ish”. After the ultra-cheesy space opera of pretty much every installment from TROS onwards, it’s really neat to have a series that shows what it would be like to actually live in the Star Wars universe.