The Crowning Achievement
No Skywalkers. No lightsabers. No space battles (mostly). No problem.
The other day, I was chatting with one of my best friends about new television shows. I brought up The Pitt, which had an amazing Emmy-winning first season, but we also talked about the recent Star Wars television shows. He hadn’t seen Skeleton Crew or The Acolyte yet and was wondering if they were any good. I provided my opinion, but failed to mention the best Star Wars *anything*, which was, of course, Andor Season 2.
The episode, “Welcome to the Rebellion,” is one of the best pieces of Star Wars that has ever existed. I’m so glad the script won the Emmy.
Back in May, I wrote a long, extended love letter to the show, and I felt like it needed a bit of a boost here. Enjoy.
There is little doubt in my mind that Andor has been the best Star Wars show on Disney+. The Mandalorian’s first few seasons were exceptional and, luckily, were good enough to establish Disney+ as a place to find original Star Wars shows. However, the pinnacle is easily Andor’s two, and only two, seasons. Andor is, quite simply, the crowning achievement of Star Wars streaming shows.
That isn’t to say Ahsoka, Skeleton Crew, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and even the Acolyte were not entertaining. The Star Wars universe is large enough to have a fun early-Spielbergian style show with Skeleton Crew and a hard-hitting, this-is-what-fascism-actually-is show like Andor, and that’s a good thing.
I was eight, about to turn nine in May 1977, when I saw the original Star Wars movie (without the “A New Hope” subtitle) twice in two days. It captured my young, impressionable imagination. It was a swashbuckling adventure with spaceships and laser swords. The bad guy wore black. The good guy wore white. I loved it. I understood it.
Three years later, The Empire Strikes Back hit theaters, but I was nearly finished with the novelization before I saw the movie. I was aware of some of the twists and turns. On the cusp of being a teenager, I was slightly more seasoned as a watcher of pop culture. As with Star Wars, I let the movie wash over me. The music, the visuals, and the characters elevated the experience. I was too young to understand why the story felt stronger, the dialogue sounded sharper, and the acting seemed better, but I knew everything had improved.
Over the next few decades, Star Wars practically didn’t exist. Of course, we got Return of the Jedi in 1983, and then there was pretty much nothing. I was in my early twenties and in graduate school when the Timothy Zahn books came out, and they were so well-written, massively entertaining, and felt like a natural extension of Star Wars. Over the years, I've remained a fan of Star Wars, but I've also grown to appreciate more sophisticated storytelling.
Soon after, there were more books, more comics, a new theatrical run of the original trilogy, now with updated technology, scenes, and “specializations.” Then the prequel trilogy happened, and all the character development and natural progression of the story and the universe turned Star Wars back into a kids’ movie.
I didn’t know it at the time, but it was a regression.
From the end of the prequel trilogy to the sale to Disney and the sequel trilogy, Star Wars was a dominant player in pop culture. Unfortunately, I never felt that the quality matched the original Star Wars movie and Empire standards. I had high hopes, but it wasn’t great. If anything, Star Wars, this go around, featured okay storytelling with occasional bumps in entertainment value.
Then, somehow, we got Rogue One. This was a serious war movie with nary a space wizard in sight. It was Band of Brothers. It was a ragtag team of mostly regular people going up against a seemingly unstoppable force. The writing was real. It was nuanced and complex. The final 40 minutes were some of the most extraordinary Star Wars visuals ever filmed.
Most importantly, when we finally see Darth Vader and his red lightsaber, the scene is terrifying.
A Star Wars movie that moved me at age 48 was unexpected. Never in my wildest dreams did I think a Star Wars movie, 40 years after I saw the very first one, would evoke such strong emotions.
George Lucas' sale of Lucasfilm to Disney meant that original Star Wars shows would appear on their fledgling streaming service. At the time, the anticipation of The Mandalorian was palpable. More than any of the sequel trilogy movies, this new slice of Star Wars captured the early days of Star Wars fandom. The creators, Dave Filoni and John Favreau, grew up with Star Wars. Filoni had created his distinctive Star Wars story with the Rebels cartoon and added his singular creation, Ahsoka Tano, to the list of interesting Star Wars characters. The Mandalorian was good Star Wars. Inventive Star Wars. It had the perfect cast and a breakout star with “Baby Yoda.”
More original Star Wars programming started to appear on the service. If it were live action, I watched it. However, I noticed a decline in quality. It felt a little like the new directors, writers, and producers were playing in the sandbox, creating fan service shows, rather than trying to say something new or interesting.
Somehow, through all this original programming, we ended up with Andor, a prequel show to a prequel movie of the movie that started it all.
The guy who made Rogue One and Andor wasn’t a fanboy. Dave Filoni is a Star Wars fanboy who can write. Tony Gilroy won an Academy Award for writing Michael Clayton. They are both extremely talented, but one is clearly a better storyteller.
When Kathleen Kennedy finally steps down as President of Lucasfilm, Filoni is the apparent successor. Tony Gilroy just went ahead and made the best Star Wars “anything” since The Empire Strikes Back.
Gilroy would be the wrong choice to lead Lucasfilm. He is the right choice to write and direct more live-action Star Wars. Who knows if he wants to go down that path, though? I imagine he has other aspirations than playing in the Star Wars universe again.
But never say never.
In the meantime, we get the brilliance of Andor, a show I believe generations of media nerds will analyze repeatedly. Andor stands as nothing short of a masterpiece in television craftsmanship. A rare constellation of creative elements aligned with such perfect precision that we may never see something like it on our screens again. This isn’t hyperbole or fan exuberance; it’s an acknowledgment of lightning captured in a bottle.
Make no mistake, Andor isn’t merely excellent television; it’s the exception that illuminates the boundaries lesser works cannot cross. More than any other recent science fiction media, it is also of this time. It is a direct reflection of the reality we are living in. It is a reminder it's everyday people who fight the fascist Empire and that it is right and just to do so.
Andor is the first Star Wars story written for me at my current age. Yes, eight-year-old me loved the original Star Wars, and to a large extent, it was written with me in mind at that time. But Star Wars can be more than just a kid’s movie, and Rogue One and Andor showed me that.
One of the ways Andor sets itself apart from other Star Wars projects is by removing the concept that it’s a Star Wars project from the beginning. I think the reverence for the original trilogy and George Lucas’ vision of Star Wars holds many projects back. Gilroy understands the universe but isn’t beholden to the trappings of what has come before.
When he was tasked with creating what was then known as the Expanded Universe, Timothy Zahn wasn’t thinking about staying true to a vision either. He was trying to craft an entertaining story that created a new generation of Star Wars fans. There wasn’t a creative constraint that locked his story into a nostalgia trip or devolved into fan service. Frankly, that constraint didn’t exist. The Expanded Universe, ahem, expanded and was loved by both new and old fans.
Like Zahn before, Gilroy made sure Andor wasn’t shackled by legacy. Watching Andor, it becomes impossible to ignore how liberating it feels as it dared to expand the boundaries of what a Star Wars story could be. The show’s willingness to break from tradition, to explore complex themes and nuanced characters, is a testament to the creative potential that emerges when a franchise is allowed to grow beyond its own legend.
Andor has raised expectations of what a Star Wars story can be. I can’t help but feel a little sad when the next project falls short of how great the last one was.
Be seeing you.
An Escalation in Every Way
Let’s be crystal clear: Jimmy Kimmel was just suspended indefinitely because the Trump regime didn’t like what he had to say and threatened ABC/Disney until they shut him up. We are seeing an administration that wields whatever authority it has in order to silence critics, not because they're doing anything illegal, but because they don't like the content of the message. That’s fascism.
The Football Coach Who Built an Army of Elite Recruiters: His Players’ Moms
I find it interesting that the Wall Street Journal featured this story about Coach Bielema and the Illinois football program. I’m not a big fan of the “FamILLy” branding, but it is clearly working, so what do I know?
What Cameron Crowe’s ‘Almost Famous’ Years Taught Him About Life | The Interview
I have a strong affinity for Cameron Crowe and his work. This interview is amazing.
Robert Redford, Screen Idol Turned Director and Activist, Dies at 89
He was probably best known for films like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, and Ordinary People, among others. Personally, I loved him in The Natural, Three Days of the Condor, and Sneakers. I need to watch those last three again.
The Last Days of Social Media
“While content proliferates, engagement is evaporating. Average interaction rates across major platforms are declining fast: Facebook and X posts now scrape an average 0.15% engagement, while Instagram has dropped 24% year-on-year. Even TikTok has begun to plateau. People aren’t connecting or conversing on social media like they used to; they’re just wading through slop, that is, low-effort, low-quality content produced at scale, often with AI, for engagement.” Yuuuuuup.
A Sunny Day is Coming to YouTube: YouTube’s Expanded Partnership with Sesame Street
What a great idea. Watching YouTube programming on your living room TV has become ubiquitous in 2025. Especially for younger children (and their parents).
From Scholarship Winner to Wanted Man: The Path of the Kirk Shooting Suspect
As a society, we want details about the alleged perpetrators of violent acts in the hopes that they might help explain the unexplainable. We’ve barely scratched the surface of Tyler Robinson. I’m not even entirely sure anyone can trust the FBI regarding the investigation. In my opinion, there is something very wrong online, and we know internet slop dominated his psyche. Also, everyone should remember that there are monsters everywhere.
We Must Not Devolve Into This (Or We Risk 2,500 Years of Progress)
Ryan Holiday writes eloquently about the reactions to political violence. “We all deserve better than the level of discourse that Charlie Kirk practiced, which was the classic toolkit and style of a demagogue, but discourse is better than murder. Virtue (and just plain human compassion) also demands better than the insensitive and cruel responses to his murder…as well as the anti-democratic and authoritarian rhetoric that politicians have thrown about after.” If you are confused, here’s where Charlie Kirk stood on key political issues.
The Most Difficult Position in Sports
Quarterback is the most glamorous position in all of American sports. But it’s also “an isolating and lonely position,” writes Seth Wickersham, “despite entire infrastructures reverse-engineered in service of those who play it, to say nothing of the elaborate playbooks created for them.” Wickersham pokes inside the mind of Hall of Famer Steve Young in this interesting read.
The one-hour studio
I love Austin Kleon’s idea here. “At some point in the day, I go into the studio. I don’t touch my computer. I set a timer for one hour. I try to make some art. When the timer goes off, I either stop or keep going, depending on what’s on my calendar.”
