Rix Road

I have to admit the series started off slowly, but it was all very important for the set up of what was to come. This was a brilliantly written piece of work, the sets were fantastic and varied (unlike other Star Wars shows), there was tons of wonderful costumes and props that were brilliantly made, albiet sometimes it was a piece of 1970s tech with some tweaks to make it look good (like the colapsable poloroid phone) but then again, this is what makes Star Wars so wonderful. Everyone remembers the guy with the ice cream maker.

Diego Luna does an amazing acting job as Cassian Andor, his acting and range of emotion give the character life and make you feel for his plight. His characters hero arc was perfectly done, from somoeone who just wanted to be left alone to slowly becoming the freedom fighter he would become. I could go on about all the other cast too but no one wants to read a novel. Let's just say the actors playing Imperials did such a good job I REALLY wanted to see them dead.

I don' want to give spoildes so you will read this and decide to watch the episode (though TBH if you are reading this you either already have or pretty much commited to the show) but if you look at my other reviews of movies and shows I do NOT often give out 10s, and I don't like to do it, unless a show is so good it was near perfection. I have given the entirety of the show a 9/10 and know there are those bots designed to pad a show or trolls out to dis a show and I am aware that IMDB tends to ignore 10s and 1s for this reason but I have to give credit where it is due. This is a good show.

Hope they continue this excellence in the future shows.

This was an amazing way to close of the season! Its great to see a finale or conclusion that doesn't feel rushed instead it concludes everything that was set up, while also making us excited for season 2! It all began on Ferrix!

This episode had some very tense moments! You can slowly feel that it is building towards something waiting to go off! It was dark, mature and realistic! The action was great in terms of direktion! The empire truely felt like a great and you could feel the webs of influence and control! The speech was amazing in terms of how the empire was described and the actors once again did a great job!

Overall i have enjoyed this show a lot! More than i thought! A very welcome surprise within the Star Wars Canon and a lecture for future Disney+ shows!

Despite quite liking "Rogue One" I wasn't particularly enthused about the idea of "Andor". I felt it was another relatively minor character given an unnecessary back story. The show, however, was so much more than that, and maybe the best writing that "Star Wars" has ever had.

With the Galaxy increasingly falling under Empirical rule, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) a low-level thief is recruited by Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard) for a dangerous mission. Whilst no fan of the Empire, Andor does not have a passion for their destruction, but the money promised is too tempting. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) is a politician on Coruscant, whose outward chiding of the Empire for various overreaches and power grabs hide her real work, of financing rebellion missions. However, in the Empire's intelligence services, a bright and under appreciated officer, Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) comes to believe that the Rebellion is far more organised than her superiors realise.

This first season of "Andor" can be split into four subsections, each of three episodes. In non-spoiler terms they could be described as "Setting the scene", "The Mission", "Detainment" and "Returning Home". I'll have to admit that during the first three episodes, I wasn't overly struck on the show. The performances were always really good but not a whole lot happens. It's only looking back on those episodes in retrospect that I see how important they are as building blocks for what is to follow. Those four elements show the radicalisation, for the want of a better word, of Andor and why he's prepared to kill, and die, to defeat the Empire when we meet him again in the future.

Though I enjoy "The Mandalorian" and "Obi-Wan" (and have mixed feelings about "Boba Fett") one thing I liked about this series was how unlike any Star Wars we've seen before was. There are no heroic Jedis fighting with Lightsabres, there are no debates about the nature of the force. There are scenes though showing the crushing banality of evil, Empirical officers bickering over which planets they have oversight on. Prison sentences arbitrarily dolled out because they do have the time or manpower to properly try anyone. But the other side is displayed too, the rebellion is not only led by the virtuous, but by those willing to make hard and costly decisions about which pieces advance and which are sacrificed. There are some speeches, across this season, that demonstrate some phenomenal writing and performers like Skarsgard, Fiona Shaw and Andy Serkis perfect with their delivery of them.

As I say, even three episodes in I wasn't convinced, but by the end this was a genuine highlight of the year.

Despite the retcons and rebrandings and wiping the name "Slave I" away, some of us remember how Old People Star Wars used to get Oscar nominations. When George Lucas said Star Wars was "for 12-year-old boys", he wasn't wrong, but he also said that to deflect the criticism he knew The Phantom Menace was about to be greeted with. Making things "for kids" in our culture has become an excuse to either not try so hard, or even peddle absolute garbage to a market that just doesn't know better. Kids' shows... kids' breakfast cereals, even. (Face it, kids are tricked into eating junk food to replace a daily meal, and keep doing it until they grow out of it.)

This doesn't pretend to be a kids' show, when Star Wars has become reduced to a string of cliches presented on screen. Obi-Wan Kenobi should have been a walk in the park for Disney to produce an entertaining show that fleshed out characters without straining continuity or insulting the audience who know the characters and situations better than the writers do. No one should have to suffer a Boba Fett mini-series where the Most Notorious Bounty Hunter In Yne Galaxy inexplicably decides to become a humanitarian crime lord without the crime when he's not indulging in lengthy flashbacks that have no relevance to the the scenes before or after and offer no insight into why he's not longer the character audiences tuned in to see.

Yet, amidst this cynical feed trough approach Disney has towards this property, it's a wonder how anyone can bring achieve the creative control over of production values and storytelling reminiscent of Star Wars when we didn't know for 3 years if Han would survive the carbon freeze, of Luke finding the charred bodies of his aunt & uncle, when Han was a drug smuggler, or interrogation droids entered the room with huge hypodermics. Even at its best, Old People Star Wars never even had dialogue this good.

As a single episode, I can't say it tops the previous one for me, but that's still 11 episodes in a row where I went from impressed to genuine amazement at how each was better than the last. Ep12 comes close. Plenty of plot threats are deliberately dangled to line up Season 2. I didn't need to see them all resolved yet, and I'm glad they didn't try to.... But so much develops here!

If you're reading reviews of a season finale, I don't need to tell you to watch the rest first. After a slow start, this series gets it's direction 3 episodes in and each episode stands up to repeat viewings. It's not going to replace the Original Trilogy and it's not a half-asses attempt to keep the ball rolling by retooling and remaking what's already been done to death.

I did not have high hopes - or any hopes at all for this show. I didn't want to see a Cassian Andor spin-off. It's just such a shame hasn't applied the level of care to their previous live-action Star Wars shows (Mandalorian will be the bigger crowd pleaser, but it has filler problems, too much winking at the viewer, and that ugly modern Star Wars plastic look that doesn't match the greasy, rusting patina that used to make Star Wars look "lived-in".

I may not have been spoon-fed everything I wanted from this finale, but I'm in awe at what this 12-episode season has done to explore different corners of the setting and taking the time and care to find nuance and get solid-or-better performances from every speaking role.

Thanks, Tony Gilroy, for not insulting your audience.

Watching this from episode one thru to the end, I was constantly worried they'd lose their nerve and mess it up. So watching the credits roll on this scintillating finale, I felt a dizzying combination of relief and ecstasy. They didn't just bring it home intact, they put a gold cap on what has been the most refreshing tv I've seen since in decades and delivered a thrilling and heartfelt denouement that took the building momentum of the entire 12 episodes and channeled it into a punch to the face of tyrants everywhere. Andor is nothing short of a masterpiece of understatement; a thunderous testament to the power of a single idea and the balls to build an entire show around it. Stunning!