Too clever by half. Did Andor Just break Star Wars?

Your latest SFcrowsnest.info and Stephen Hunt's Readers Universe update.

May 23, 2025

There are moments in science fiction history when a franchise, almost by accident, transcends itself. When something built to sell plastic lightsabers and LEGO sets suddenly veers into Shakespearean territory, like a theme park animatronic getting possessed by Hamlet.

Andor was one of those moments.

The show that shouldn’t have worked - and by all traditional Star Wars metrics, absolutely shouldn’t have existed - became a quiet thunderclap in a galaxy long known for binary morality and binary suns. A prequel to a spin-off prequel about a bloke who already died in Rogue One? Surely the pitch meeting involved nervous coughing and someone from accounting saying, “Yeah, but can’t we just put Baby Yoda in it and call it a day?”

But Andor arrived not with the screech of TIE Fighters, but with long silences, moral ambiguity, and characters who looked like they hadn’t slept in years because, frankly, rebellion is exhausting.

And thank the Maker for it.

The second and final season has now concluded, and with it, a truth as sharp as Luthen Rael’s cheekbones must be faced: Andor was far too clever for most of its audience. Not because its average viewer is dim; but because we’ve been trained, by decades of pew-pew storytelling and moustache-twirling Sith Lords, to expect rebellion to come with a John Williams fanfare and a side of redemption. Instead, Andor gave us tax audits, espionage, failed revolutions, properly brutal prison labour, and the kind of dialogue that belongs in Le Carré, not Lucasfilm.

It wasn’t a war cry; it was a whisper in a dark cell. It was Mon Mothma trading her daughter’s freedom to fund a cause. It was Luthen saying, “I burn my life to make a sunrise I know I’ll never see.” It was the Empire not as space Nazis, but as something far more horrifying: banal, bureaucratic evil. The kind of blob-level evil that files your name, forgets your face, and crushes your soul with a compliance form.

This was Star Wars for grown-ups. Star Wars for those who realise rebellion doesn’t begin with destiny, it begins with despair. With people who just can't take it anymore.

And so now, we ask: how the hell does Disney go back?

How do you pivot from Andor, with its Sorkin-grade monologues and morally compromised heroes, back to some sorry sod in a plastic mask cackling about ‘mo power? How do you follow up Luthen Rael with whatever evil smurf Thrawn's supposed to be?

It would be like airing Battlestar Galactica 1980 right after the finale of the 2004 BSG reboot. Imagine being handed a tumbler of Lagavulin, sipping its smoky depth, and then being told your next drink will be Capri Sun. With a bendy straw.

Even the usually unshakeable Disney PR juggernaut seems rattled. Andor didn’t just raise the bar for Star Wars - it launched it into orbit. It posited what if we told a story without Jedi? Without the Force? Without hope? And then, just when things were bleakest, it reminded us that hope isn’t a glowing sword or a Chosen One. It’s people. Flawed, frightened people who choose to resist anyway.

Nemik’s posthumous manifesto says it best: “Freedom is a pure idea. Tyranny requires constant effort.” It was an existential sucker punch to the status quo, and not just within the show.

Now, we stand at a strange crossroads. Do we return to the safety of heritage characters and merchandising checklists? Or do we embrace the inconvenient truth that Andor has shown us. That Star Wars doesn’t need Skywalkers to be sublime?

There’s no going back, not really. We’ve seen the scaffolding now. The wires behind the magic. And some of us rather like it that way.

So here’s to Andor, the clever, conflicted, quietly devastating show that dared to treat its audience like adults.

And here’s to the poor old sod who has to write the next Star Wars show.

Good luck, mate.

Now, on with your latest updates from the ‘Nest.

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That’s it for now, folks.

May your next hyperspace translation be clean and your jump point empty.

Stephen

www.StephenHunt.net
www.SFcrowsnest.info

V.M. Harrigan

May 27

Oh man, I hope you're right. Grown-up me has appreciated the deconstruction or elevation of several things I grew up watching or reading.

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Hugh Matthews

May 23

I wholeheartedly agree with your point of view, however I feel that the whole thing was made better, not worse, by it's connections to the canon Star Wars Universe. Spaceships, blasters, aliens, unfathomable yet weirdly basic looking technologies, and all.

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Too clever by half. Did Andor Just break Star Wars?

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