This show is different. It is incredible. The writing, acting, plot, themes, visuals, all of it. It’s borderline offensive in the sense this is what Star Wars could of been.

lmao, totally. watching it made me realize just how much star wars stuff is mostly a bunch of fan service mixed in with high dollar special effects of weird beasts, laserswords and telekinesis. then fuckin' Tony Gilroy shows up and puts us in the living places to tell a story about living characters in living communities changing under the heat and pressure of a pervasive, ascendant oppression. for shit's sake, he made me fear tie fighters.

spoiler

the sequence on aldahni where occasionally one would scream overhead triggered a memory i had from 15 years ago, when i worked outdoors in a field in the middle of nowhere on an undeveloped flat coastline, but was maybe 50 miles from an army base with an air wing. and like once or twice they would be doing some weird low-flying manuevers where with only 4-5 seconds warning of sound, some gunship hauling ass would scream overhead less than 1,000 feet off the ground. exhilarating and terrifying, the experience coupled with the knowledge that if they had wanted to, i would be in pieces on the ground. i literally hadn't thought about it in years until they recreated that perspective on the show.

i was in the same boat, having just come out of Obi Wan (on a friend's recommendation) thinking like, "man, who even gives a shit about this anymore?" i thought Moses Ingram was compelling, but i was so fatigued on it all. i started the first ep of Andor fully expecting to not give a shit and quit, but it had me in just a few minutes and only set its hooks deeper over time.