The answer is very clear in my eyes… It’s not HIS Star Wars anymore, not his vision, not the franchise he wanted it to be… To put it somewhat bluntly here: In my view, with Andor, Star Wars has now officially lost everything that once made it so great and DIFFERENT from other franchises. Star Wars was never intended to be that gritty, dark, and realistic – in fact, Star Wars was always meant to be a space opera fairy tale that EVERYONE could enjoy. And that’s absolutely nowhere to be seen anymore in anything Disney Star Wars produces.
Why do I address Andor so fiercely here? The point is that the other stuff on Disney+ consists of Star Wars shows that were mainly in my eyes bad fan service and all used the same nostalgia-bait tactics instead of giving us something truly new (like the Prequels back in the day – they weren’t perfect, but they were something completely NEW to the franchise). But through all the instrumentalization of the shows and the deliberate merchandising product placement (Baby Yoda/Grogu… now we have everything with Grogu), all these shows NEVER crossed a certain line – and those lines were absolutely broken with Andor. In my opinion, Andor is NOT Star Wars… not in the slightest way George Lucas wanted it to be (yes, I know that some early concepts of The Star Wars were also darker, but there was a REASON why George changed it into the movie that started it all).
I respectfully disagree. Maybe it’s because I’ve always loved the old Expanded Universe, which could get pretty gritty, realistic, and dark when it wanted to. But honestly, I’ve never bought into the idea that Star Wars needs to stick to one specific tone or genre, or that every new project has to imitate George Lucas in style or mood. To me, that completely misses the point.
Star Wars is huge. We’re talking about a galaxy with billions of worlds, millions of species, and basically infinite scenarios. The whole appeal is that it can go in a thousand different directions. If every story felt exactly the same, the franchise would be incredibly boring. That’s why the old EU was so great. You had stories that tried to echo Lucas’s writing style and tone, stories that leaned hard into realism and grit, stories that lived somewhere in the middle, and even stories that barely felt like they belonged to Star Wars at all. That variety made the universe feel alive.
The problem with Disney Star Wars isn’t that the authors aren’t able to match Lucas’s writing style, it’s that they often don’t know how to craft solid stories in the first place. When they want to, they can. We saw it with Rogue One, with Andor, and with some of the books and comics. There are releases that are genuinely well written, but they’re the exception instead of the rule. And to me, that’s the real problem.