Andor Was A Star Wars Miracle That Enriched Every Era Of The Saga

Contains major spoilers for the Andor Season 2 finale. And all of Star Wars.

Andor is over, and I’m bereft. It’s been about 12 hours since I watched the final episode, and my chest still feels heavy with those glorious final moments – not an explosive reveal or rug-pull, but a sumptuous, score-laden sweep over where our survivors end up as the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story beckon. Any fallen heroes – Luthen Rael, Cinta, Brasso – are notable by their absence. And – ah! – there’s Bix, with Cassian Andor’s baby, safe on Mina-Rau, waiting for a reunion with her partner that we know isn’t coming. Surely, she had to know she was pregnant when she left Yavin. Cassian’s son is one he’ll never meet. He burnt his life for a sunrise he’ll never see.

But we, Star Wars fans, do. Back in 1977, the saga basically began with that sunrise – or, at least, the (twin) sun’s first peek above the horizon, in the form of Luke destroying the Death Star. Now, nearly 50 years later, we have a story that enriches that original narrative to unparalleled depths, while re-contextualising a character we first met (and, let’s be honest, largely forgot) nearly a decade ago.

In the wake of the Andor finale, I can’t escape the weight. Of everything that everyone gave up. Of lives lost, sacrifices made, communities destroyed, compromises forced. All in pursuit of that one, desperate, now-or-never shot at the Empire’s biggest weapon. Since we’ve known for nearly half a century the events of the Battle Of Yavin, the Death Star’s destruction has long seemed like an inevitability; now, it’s never felt more like a one-in-a-million shot, itself arising from a toppling Jenga tower of desperate, long-fought, hard-won Rebel activity. That the Yavin base even knows about the Death Star is a miracle. That Jyn and Cassian are able to get to Scarif, find the plans, get them to the Rebels, in order for Luke to even be able to attempt that shot, is a miracle on top of a miracle on top of a miracle.

Back before Andor Season 2 started, Diego Luna promised me that the show would forever change the way I watched Rogue One. “You're gonna hear some lines [on a rewatch], and go [huge guttural gasp]“ he said. “Before, you just passed over them. Not anymore.” It’s true. There is a specificity to Andor’s sacrifice now, to the absolute stakes of Rogue One’s mission. I think even Luna – and Andor creator and Rogue One re-tooler Tony Gilroy – would agree that Cassian’s impact in that film was never quite what it could have been; he was simply a cool, capable Rebel fighter who spouts the usual rousing dialogue about fighting the Empire, a cog in the wheel of Jyn Erso’s mission. Now, knowing what we know about Andor – everything he’s been through, how his entire life has been shaped by Imperial rule – his somewhat generic statements in Rogue One hit like a brick made of Maarva Andor’s ashes.

But the impact of Andor doesn’t end there. The intention of Rogue One was always to ensure you never saw Episode IV: A New Hope in the same way; that the mention of the Death Star plans in the opening crawl would be accompanied by unforgettable images of a ragtag crew on a tropical planet, all giving their lives for the cause. Andor has hit that emotional impact with a hyperdrive – the show now reverberates across all Star Wars canon. Because without Andor there’s no Rogue One, and without Rogue One there’s no A New Hope, without which there’s no Luke-Vader confrontation in Empire Strikes Back, without which Luke wouldn’t be able to redeem Vader and kill (for now) the Emperor in Return Of The Jedi.

And it doesn’t end with the original trilogy. The prequels, too, benefit from Andor’s unflinching depiction of what life under Imperial rule actually means. Never before has Star Wars explored the tangled tentacles of colonialism like this; occupied planets where stormtroopers terrorise and destroy local communities; innocent people being stop-and-searched, imprisoned to construct a galactic super-weapon; entire peoples displaced and exterminated in order to mine resources. These evils – which Gilroy has drawn directly from centuries of our own human history – are depicted as exactly that: evils. Evil, evil deeds, that spread a sickness from which nobody can escape complicity. Luthen Rael wasn’t kidding when he said that he was condemned to use the tools of his enemy; Andor dared to pose that an evil as great as the Empire might need people willing to plunge themselves into that same darkness in order to destroy it.

All of these horrors arise as a direct result of the event of the prequels. Palpatine’s duplicitous dismantling of galactic democracy is a major thread of Episodes I-III, a point that George Lucas refused to water down. It begins with boring politicking; a subtle removal of liberties; the wrong power given to the wrong person. Before you know it, dictatorship beckons, and liberties are lost. For much of Star Wars, the Empire was a generic force – bad guys doing big bad things (goodbye, Alderaan!) in their stark uniforms. But Andor put the focus on ‘empire’ itself: its form and functions. There is no escaping it. Now, the rise of Palpatine and fall of Anakin isn’t just a mythical tragedy in the balance of the Force – it’s the point that begins everything we see in Andor.

The sequel trilogy, too, feels the benefit of Andor, despite its distance from that era of the Star Wars timeline. For one, sequel-sceptic fans tend to throw scorn on the idea that the Empire would be resurrected so quickly in the form of the First Order after Return Of The Jedi. Would the galaxy really find itself under tyrannical rule all over again? Except, Tony Gilroy has long stated how he didn’t base Andor on any one regime – history is littered in tragedies that repeat themselves. Lessons are not learned. The same fascistic mechanisms replay. Andor’s depiction of the Empire’s insidiousness – how ordinary people like Syril Karn and Dedra Meero are raised on Imperial doctrine, which ultimately swallows them whole, too – only supports the eventual rise of the First Order.

The Last Jedi, in particular, feels like it shares thematic resonance with Andor. Gilroy’s show demonstrates with utter clarity the idea posed by Benicio del Toro’s DJ in Rian Johnson’s Episode VIII: that the ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ end up as two sides of the same coin. “Let me learn you something big,” DJ tells Finn after their Canto Bight encounter. “It's all a machine, partner.”

Elsewhere, Johnson’s film is all about the vital need to protect the spark of the Resistance at all costs. Personal sacrifices are made in the pursuit of saving the final dregs of Leia’s team, because even the smallest remaining ember can become enough to burn a system like the First Order to the ground. These monolithic structures are toppled by chains of individual action; come The Rise Of Skywalker, Palpatine’s Final Order is taken down by an armada of ordinary people inspired to fight back. “It’s not a navy, sir,” Richard E. Grant’s General Pryde is told. “It’s just… people.” Across both of its seasons, Andor never let us shy away from that idea. Its characters were people like never before in Star Wars, with real lives and relationships. Individuals whose ordinariness renders their achievements all the more extraordinary.

I expect I’ll be thinking of Andor for a long time – not just as one of the greatest stories ever told in Star Wars, nor as one of the most impressive pieces of ‘prestige TV’ in the streaming era. It’s now a vital part of the entire saga’s DNA. The show depicted the eventual success of the Rebels as a succession of miracles; Andor itself feels like something of a miracle, a show that beat the odds, that arrived at just the right time, from just the right people, a prequel to a prequel that brings added weight to everything we thought we knew about Star Wars. Andor gave everything to the Rebellion; Tony Gilroy, Diego Luna and their entire cast and creative crew gave their everything to Andor. Cassian will never be forgotten again.

Andor is streaming now on Disney+