This show was… good. It wasn’t an uneven mess and knew what it wanted to be. It had things like suspense and characterisation which have been missing from recent SW content, if it was ever present before in these terms. It also had some proper acting talent and proper dialogue instead of the nonsense in recent shows. The tone made sense and people behaved in ways that made sense. It didn’t feel cheap and wasn’t full of cringe references, despite a few name drops.
So it came as no surprise that people hated the pacing and the lack of action. Because for better or worse (it’s the former) this isn’t really SW at all in terms of things like escapism and adventure. SW as a continuation of THX or the crime dramas of the 1970s. After the awkward choppy flashbacks in the first 3 parts it all fell into place. So I fully expect season 2 to be tampered with to make it more appealing to a wider audience, i.e. things like Darth Vader and more deepfakes.
It’s these sort of things that mean I can’t yet accept this as enriching Rogue One after the fact. At least not fully. They could give three episode arcs to Saw and Jyn or to Maze and his pals, but it still leads to creepy CGI faces and Darth Vader’s ‘totally epic’ murder spree. Maybe LFL should avoid this and work towards common goals of quality output instead of just handing out jobs to everyone that is in vogue. It depends on if they recognise what they have here. Disney don’t because they buried it on the app front page.
I watch a lot of shows. The only Star Wars item I am looking for connection on with this is Rogue One. The title of this series is Andor so it should be mostly about him and what led him to the character we see in Rogue One. There is a lot of extra stuff in this series that isn’t related to those events. It is tying into the Rebellion in general and that ties into the Skywalker Saga. Mon Mothma is part of the Skywalker Saga. Luthien is not, but I don’t feel his character had much development and he should have been the focus. Instead we know way more about the culture of Mon Mothma’s family and world than is useful to a tighter story of Cassian Andor.
Given that Mon is in Rogue One, it wouldn’t surprise me if we see other figures from the RO Yavin scenes show up in Season 2, which surely, in addition to being about Cassian’s life, will be about turning a vague network held together by an antiques dealer into a real, functional military. Andor is a prequel to the Rebellion side of that movie, so in addition to K-2SO, we’ll probably see Bail, Jan Dodonna, Davits Draven, Raddus, etc as the season progresses. Also, maybe we’ll see why Saw got kicked out (unless Rebels covered this?)
Did you know that Melshi (Cass’s prison break buddy) was in Rogue One??? I just learned this from Wikipedia.