‘Andor' Season 2 cements its legacy as the boldest, best ‘Star Wars' story yet

San Francisco Chronicle​

21-04-2025

When 'Andor' premiered in 2022, it was widely praised as the best 'Star Wars' series yet and one of the best shows of the year. Now, after an interminable three-year wait the second — and final — season not only delivers a masterful conclusion but cements 'Andor' as one of the most remarkable works of ' Star Wars ' storytelling ever produced.
Premiering Tuesday, April 22, 'Andor' Season 2 deepens its characters and sharpens its political commentary while closing the gap with 2016's ' Rogue One,' which led into George Lucas' original 'Star Wars' film from 1977.
As conceived by creator Tony Gilroy, this has never been a show about lightsabers, chosen ones or prophesied destinies. Instead, it's about entrenched systems of oppression and the ordinary people caught within them, highlighting the cost of resistance and the psychological toll that comes with fighting for a future you may never see.
Set against a backdrop of rising authoritarianism, the spinoff series charts the final phase of Cassian Andor's transformation from cynical survivor to committed revolutionary, setting the stage for his heroic final act in 'Rogue One.' Star (and executive producer) Diego Luna continues to give the performance of his career in the title role — quiet, restrained and deeply human. The show also smartly surrounds him with a constellation of characters reflecting different modes of resistance, each with their own moral calculus at play.
Foremost among these is Genevieve O'Reilly's Senator Mon Mothma, now a central player in the Rebellion's formation. She brings gravitas and empathy to a character who was once little more than a footnote in the Original Trilogy. Meanwhile, Stellan Skarsgård's Luthen Rael, a master manipulator who knows the fight for freedom is as much about compromise as conviction, remains the show's conscience and cautionary tale in equal measure.
Another key figure is Senator-turned-Rebel leader (and adopted father of Princess Leia) Bail Organa, with San Francisco native Benjamin Bratt stepping in for Jimmy Smits who originated the role. Bratt is dependably solid, grounding Organa with measured resolve and undeniable charisma, though longtime fans will no doubt miss the familiar presence Smits brought to the character across multiple eras of the franchise (most recently in 2022's 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' miniseries).
The show also reintroduces Ben Mendelsohn as scheming Director Orson Krennic, a symbol of the Empire's suffocating, bureaucratic menace and the quietly monstrous ambitions that lead to the creation of the infamous Death Star. Mendelsohn, as ever, knows how to project charm laced with danger, and his return helps tether the narrative even more firmly to 'Rogue One' without ever feeling like pandering.
In fact, fan service is one thing this show staunchly shies away from. Instead, 'Andor' is defined by its unwavering commitment to moral complexity. The Rebellion here is not a unified front, but a fragmented movement built on fragile alliances, conflicting ideologies and personal sacrifice. Though written and conceived several years prior, the depiction of bureaucratic indifference, surveillance states and the slow erosion of civic life resonates a bit too deeply in our current moment. That these echoes are unintentional doesn't make them any less haunting.
Tonally and thematically, the season's 12 installments — divided into three-episode arcs set one year apart from each other — unfold with a quiet urgency. Gilroy and his team aren't just constructing lore, they're using worldbuilding as emotional architecture to explore how oppression functions and how resistance forms, frays and solidifies into something greater than the sum of its parts.
It's not hard to imagine the many ways this project might have misfired. A prequel to a prequel centered on a character whose fate is pretty definitively sealed could have easily been another entry in the franchise assembly line. But Gilroy has delivered a collective work that feels both personal and mythic.
'Andor' challenges what 'Star Wars' can be while honoring what it has always been at its core: a story about hope in dark times.