Andor S2E01-03 Review | "One Year Later," "Sagrona Teema," "Harvest"

The Revolution Starts Now.

Diego Luna as Cassian Andor. Image credit: Disney

[Welcome to Decoding TV’s coverage of Andor Season 2! For each of Andor’s four 3-episode drops, you should expect a written recap by

Dan Gvozden

, plus a bonus podcast episode. If you’d like to support what we’re doing here, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. The below review contains spoilers for Season 2, Episode 1-3 of Andor. It does not contain spoilers for any future episodes or previews.]

Andor’s ambitious first season of television, now nearly three years since its bombastic conclusion, remains the most daring creative venture launched during Disney’s tenure as the new owners and architects of the ongoing Star Wars stories. Following a series of creative changes during Andor’s troubled development, Disney decided to bring back writer/director Tony Gilroy to run the show after his miraculous reworking of the troubled Rogue One project, providing him with the creative freedom and financial backing to explore a more grounded Star Wars universe. The series not only delves into the early formation of the Rebellion that would steal the Death Star’s technical plans in Rogue One, leading to its destruction and the eventual defeat of the Galactic Empire, but also offers a nuanced exploration of radicalization. Through Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), we see how one event can trigger a domino effect that ultimately leads them to choose sides in a developing Galactic Civil War.

However, the show started with a severe handicap: it was a prequel story that followed a supporting character, Cassian Andor, from the previous spinoff prequel film, Rogue One. The series also featured few of the iconic visuals and mythology-building concepts that have come to define the various Star Wars trilogies: the Jedi are entirely absent, the hum of a lightsaber is a distant fantasy, the Rebellion is only in its nascent form, the concept of an X-Wing is yet to be born, and there’s no cute Baby Yoda equivalent to sell plush toys of (unless you like to cuddle up next to an art dealer that’s secretly facilitating terrorism across the galaxy). Its first teaser trailer had to rely on atmosphere alone, apart from the familiar face of Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), with the now-familiar drumbeats of Ferrix driving the pounding music alongside images of the Rebellion’s birth and the promise that we might “explore a new perspective from the Star Wars galaxy.”

It also arrived after the debuts of the mini-series The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, which genuinely dampened the good vibes that the first two seasons of The Mandalorian reinstated in the Star Wars franchise following the calamity of The Rise of Skywalker. Additionally, the show adopted a structure in which every three episodes completed a mini-arc, essentially crafting its own series of smaller-scale Star Wars movies. It largely disregarded the traditional serialized format, where each episode concludes a small segment of a larger narrative. This approach required a greater investment from viewers, as patience was crucial; the first two slow-burn episodes of any arc would ultimately lead to a thrilling third act, elevated by the deliberate pace of the preceding episodes. For those who remained engaged, they quickly realized how satisfying the show could be. However, the limited data on the show’s audience has indicated that many never experienced the payoff, resulting in the smallest audience of any Disney+ Star Wars show.

With eight Emmy nominations and a growing audience discovering it since its debut, the second season of Andor is arguably the most hotly anticipated Star Wars show to release in 2025. Disney has wisely adapted its release strategy for the new season, embracing the show’s movie-like mini-arcs and releasing three episodes each week. This pace may challenge some viewers to keep up, but should ultimately enhance the viewing experience for many.

So, how are the first three episodes of season two of Andor? Well, if you enjoyed the show’s first season, I suspect you’ll be pleased with how everything starts here, as nearly all of the show’s strengths are front and center. However, in this humble reviewer’s opinion, it also maintains and amplifies some of the series’ weaknesses. The result is an opening arc that asks for the viewer’s patience, reestablishing all the players in this world, but it doesn’t quite crescendo to the heights of the four previous arcs from the first season.

The first batch of episodes follows four distinct, intercut plotlines, two of which ultimately collide in a race-against-the-clock finale that ends in tragedy. Each narrative’s genre, locations, and tone vary wildly, but never enough to fracture the sense that they are all part of one shared universe. This highlights the extraordinary diversity of the Star Wars universe and the skill of the writing, acting, and production teams that crafted each of these scenarios. The clarity of how these stories relate to one another, together with the formal structure of how they fit into the episodic format, is where this first arc falters, especially when compared to the clarity of the easily discernible arcs from the show’s first season: a harried planetary escape, a high-stakes heist, a deadly prison escape, and the frenzied revolt that sparked the Rebellion.

The show begins a year after the events of season one, now four years Before the Battle of Yavin (BBY 4), the daring space attack that saw Luke Skywalker deliver the killing blow to the Empire’s Death Star. We reunite with Cassian Andor, who wears an orange jumpsuit vaguely reminiscent of those worn by future Rebel pilots. However, he’s impersonating an Imperial test pilot at Sienar Test Facility 73, which further establishes the Empire’s penchant for designing their facilities to resemble their logo when viewed from above (after last season’s prison design). With the help of Nia, an Imperial defector, he’s there to steal a TIE-fighter for the burgeoning Rebellion. In the year since we last saw Andor, he’s grown into a leader among his group of revolutionaries, as he encourages Nia, “You’ve become more than your fear. Let that protect you.”

Cassian hijacks a TIE-fighter for the Rebellion, but is met with swift opposition by the Imperial stormtroopers. Image credit: Disney.

Disney+ must have reached out to Tony Gilroy and his team about starting the season with a reason to stick around, because it’s not long before Andor launches into its first major action sequence of the season, which highlights the attributes that defined the adventure-heavy Star Wars feature films. He quickly exploits the Empire’s greatest flaw, their frankly piss-poor security at their weapons facilities, fries a droid, and has to overcome his lack of familiarity with the Imperial’s brand-new TIE-Avenger’s controls by torpedoing a hole into the side of the facility. His ship blasts out of the side of the hangar and dangles precariously over an icy ledge – “location, location, location” – before making a frantic escape from a group of pursuing TIE-fighters who are crushed in a subsequent thread-the-needle collapsing cave chase. It doesn’t get more Star Wars than this; all we needed was Andor shouting, “Never tell me the odds!”

Cassian quickly pilots the ship to an unnamed forest planet where he hopes to reunite with Porko, who may or may not be a relative of the famous X-Wing pilot “Red Six” Porkins. Either way, it quickly becomes clear that Porko shares Porkins’ fate; he was killed by an abandoned splinter group of Rebels who mistook him, and now Cassian, for an Imperial pilot. They take him prisoner, giving him a front-row view of their fracturing alliance as hunger and fear of a man-eating creature called a doodar, which comes for them at night. The divide between the men erupts into violence, with one group slowly turning the TIE-Avenger’s guns on the other group’s encampment. Amid the chaos, Cassian frees himself from his bindings, kills a few men, and escapes in the battle-damaged TIE. It is only as he flies over the horizon that it’s revealed that he was stranded on the moon Yavin IV, which would come to house the Rebel Alliance’s headquarters in Rogue One and Star Wars: A New Hope.

This story, which dominates the first two episodes of Cassian’s narrative, offers decent creature-feature thrills and some insight into the still-fractured alliance forming against the Empire. However, once Cassian crashes on Yavin IV, he feels like little more than a passive observer of the unfolding events, providing only limited commentary and escaping through no unique skill or character trait that we haven’t encountered before, except perhaps for his willingness to kill others in pursuit of the Rebellion’s goals and his survival. As a result, the exchanges between the splintering factions on the planet become repetitive and formulaic to the conventions of the genre.

Compared to Cassian’s role in facilitating and provoking the prison break from season one, where we saw Cassian first take on a leadership position against the Empire, this story feels like a regression for the character after a promising opening sequence. Not every storyline needs to be driven by our protagonist, but ideally, they should reveal something new about his character, or in this case, how he has changed since the last time we saw him. Even the reveal of Yavin IV seems like the kind of fan service this series has otherwise avoided, except for the revelation that the prisoners were key to the construction of the Death Star. Thankfully, Cassian has more exciting things to do by the episode’s conclusion, but we’ll return to that later.

Adria Arjona as engineer Bix Caleen, a Rebel fighter and refugee from the planet Ferrix. Image credit: Disney.

While Cassian is held prisoner on Yavin IV, his fellow refugees from Ferrix pose as farmers and have established a temporary home in the galaxy’s Outer Rim on an agricultural planet called Mina-Rau. Cassian’s on-again, off-again lover Bix (Adria Arjona), close friend Brasso (Joplin Sibtain), droid B2EMO (Dave Chapman), the young Wilmon (Muhannad Bhaier), and newcomers Talia and Bila anxiously await his return, keeping their eyes on the horizon for Imperial troops, farming some sort of wheat into impossibly giant silos, and kindling romances despite wartime. When an Imperial starship appears overhead, they learn that the planet will be subjected to an audit, threatening their anonymity.

It isn’t long before a squad of Imperial officers and stormtroopers appears at their farm, rifling through their shop and homes. One officer, Zala, uses his position to belittle Bix’s life as a lowly farmer while also propositioning her to join him for dinner in the capital city of Rau. When she rejects his offer, it becomes clear that Zala isn’t accustomed to hearing “no,” and he will be back later to retaliate. It’s a simple scene, but it illustrates the small-scale abuses that the fascist rule of the Empire permits, separate from all the genocide, planetary destruction, and slave labor.

To avoid the audit, Brasso is offered an Emergency Work Order by a fellow farmer who has joined their Rebellion. They hastily pack to flee, but are too late; the Imperials arrive at their farm and give chase to Wilmon. Only then can Cassian get through to Bix on the TIE’s communicator and learn of their pending fate. He guns the TIE towards his friends – somehow without the aid of a hyperdrive – as the show indulges in the classic third-act Star Wars intercutting between multiple stories’ simultaneous climaxes.

I couldn’t help but wonder why this information wasn’t provided to Cassian earlier in the narrative, if only to give his imprisonment on Yavin IV the ticking-clock tension it desperately needed. The slightest plot restructuring would have recontextualized Cassian’s earlier adventures, allowing the show to explore his priorities regarding saving his fellow Rebels or friends from Ferrix. Instead, as Cassian dramatically dive-bombs his TIE to the surface of Mina-Rau, avoiding the watchful eye of an Imperial Star Destroyer, it’s as if he’s racing his way into the conclusion of a different movie, transformed into a living, hurtling deus ex machina.

Meanwhile, the Imperial officer Zala returns to confront Bix, this time threatening to imprison her and her family if she doesn’t comply with his sexual advances. Bix plays along just long enough to launch an attack on Zala, and the two engage in an unusually brutal fistfight for a Star Wars story. Bix eventually gains the upper hand and bashes Zala’s head in. Honestly, I was surprised, even in the context of this show, that Gilroy and his team were allowed not only to depict sexual assault but also to use the word “rape” in a Disney Star Wars series. Star Wars doesn’t have the cleanest track record for depicting the objectification of women in a way that allows the characters to retain their dignity, even if Princess Leia did strangle Jabba to death. However, this is also the series that famously tried to end its first season by having Andor’s mother posthumously shout, “Fuck the Empire!”

Brasso uses the confusion to save his friend and escape from the stormtroopers on a speeder. As he races across the wheat fields, Cassian shows up in his TIE and swiftly dispatches the remaining Imperials and their fleeing transport ship. However, it is too late, and the cost of the Rebellion’s actions is revealed when Brasso is caught in the volley of laser fire and falls to his death. As Cassian, Bix, and Wilmon flee in the TIE, he is tearfully forced to leave Brasso’s body behind. Yes, we’ve known that these characters’ futures will likely end in tragedy, particularly for Cassian. Nevertheless, Brasso’s death serves as a powerful emotional conclusion to this series of episodes. How it will change Cassian’s evolving role in the Galactic Civil War remains to be seen, especially considering that he’s already faced the deaths of his mother and the idealistic Karis Nemik at the hands of the Empire.

For the first arc of this season of Andor to provide so little insight into the changing relationships and ideologies of Cassian and his fellow Ferrix refugees is disappointing, particularly given the extended runtime of their adventures. The drama here is primarily situational, rather than the superior character-based struggles that emerged from the circumstances the first season put them in. The spectacle of Cassian returning to save his friends is thrilling and effectively elevates the scale of the story. Still, it lacks the same impact as Luthen and Cassian blasting their way off Ferrix, TIE-fighters racing through the Aldani fireworks, a late-night duel over the stolen Imperial financial reserves, Kino Loy’s (Andy Serkis) impassioned speech over the Imperial prison’s speakers, or Wilmon throwing a bomb into the crowded streets of Ferrix as a hologram of Cassian’s mother shouts, “Fight the Empire!”

Ben Mendelsohn reprises his role as Director Orson Krennic. Image credit: Disney.

After season one’s conclusion, many speculated about the fates of the villainous Imperial Supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and the whimpering Syril Karn, particularly after a growing number of fans began shipping their union. We pick up with Dedra, without mentioning Syril, as she participates in a secret Imperial meeting alongside Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser). She has been removed from the “Axis” project to identify the Rebels she and Syril first encountered on Ferrix. Instead, she is now assigned to work under Director Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), who would eventually oversee the completion of the first Death Star in Rogue One, before it unleashed its planet-destroying laser directly at him. Together, at the Maltheen Divide, Krennic has gathered them to oversee the Galactic Energy Initiative on the planet Ghorman to provide the Emperor with stable, unlimited energy for his Empire (or perhaps for those thousands of Star Destroyers with Death Star lasers from Rise of Skywalker).

As it turns out, Ghorman’s main export of spider-like ghorlectopod-extracted silk isn’t the Empire’s primary interest on the planet; rather, it is the underground mineral kalkite, which they will need to coat the lenses of their various reactors. However, the project that Dedra and the fellow officers will be embarking on involves not mineral extraction, but pre-emptive forcible control over the Ghorman people, all 800,000 of whom would face eradication with the removal of the planet’s kalkite core. Several high-ranking officials – who resemble the Nazi Party’s chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels – detail how they plan to utilize propaganda to change public sentiment about the Ghorman people, comparing them to the very spiders they use to harvest their popular silk. Others suggest staging a fake natural disaster as a cover-up for their war crimes. If not for the precedent set by history and today’s worst political actors, I’m sure these men’s craven and nakedly evil statements might seem cartoonishly arch. Still, Krennic has brought Dedra along to utilize her uniquely twisted perspective, despite her recent history of disaster on Ferrix. She dismisses the use of propaganda, offering instead the unique idea of fomenting a rebellion on Ghorman that they can control for their purposes.

This suggestion showcases the evolution of Dedra’s character, as she clearly learned something from her first encounter with the burgeoning Rebellion. However, upon returning to Coruscant, she makes it plain to Major Partagaz that she has no interest in the Ghorman project and wishes to resume her work on “Axis.” Meanwhile, Syril has seemingly grown into his role at the Bureau of Standards, while also appearing more pathetic than ever, despite his slick new haircut. He lectures a new hire about the importance of his work, saying, “There’s a future here for those that dare.” But it’s all a front for the most shocking revelation of the episode: that he and Dedra are not only a couple and living together, but they are scheming a way to get back to working on “Axis.”

In the meantime, aside from listening to Mon Calamarian opera, they have a date to plan with Syril’s suffocating, dismissive mother, Eedy Karn (Kathryn Hunter). When the night arrives for Eedy to make her appearance, it immediately becomes a battle of wits between Dedra and Eedy to claim control over Syril. Eedy belittles her son, calling him soft, but she’s unaware of the depths to which Dedra’s hardened, sociopathic mind can descend. It’s here that we learn that Dedra was orphaned by her criminal parents at the age of three (eat your heart out, Rey) and raised in the Imperial Kinder-Block, which I’m sure is just as warm and welcoming as it sounds. It’s only when Syril leaves the room that Dedra drops any attempt at warmth with Eedy and lays down the law: if Eedy continues to antagonize Syril, she will withhold him from her life. Here, we get our first look into what makes Dedra and Syril’s relationship work; he craves a strong woman who can replace his mother, and she enjoys wielding control over him. It’s a clever bit of character writing, despite the minimal focus on this corner of the galaxy, that both enriches our knowledge of Dedra and Syril and delivers on the desires of fans without altering the characters.

Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma at her daughter’s wedding on Chandrilla. Image credit: Disney.

I’ve saved the most frustrating and narratively rewarding section for last, as we join the Rebellion leaders Mon Mothma, Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård), Vel (Faye Marsay), Tay Kolma (Ben Miles), and Kleya (Elizabeth Dulau) at the Mothma Estate on Chandrila for the wedding of Mon’s daughter Leida to banker Davo Sculdun’s (Richard Dillane) son Stekan (Finley Glasgow). The cast of characters in this storyline is, frankly, dizzying and requires that one brush up on their handy Wookieepedia while they watch, particularly because so much of the time spent at the various parties that preempt the wedding ceremony revolves around conversations about actions that happened off-screen. It’s in this section of the story that the limitations of the Disney+ format are most visible, as the script struggles to keep the limited locations interesting (though the costumes and sets do dazzle), maintain the flow between so many different characters, and keep the various plots spinning just long enough to balance their inclusion across a three-hour story arc.

One of the two main plots of the wedding involves Luthen and his assistant Kleya trying to get updates on Cassian’s theft of a TIE-fighter, despite having no access to communications until the third episode. It may be uncharitable to say that their scenes together consist solely of Luthen asking for an update only to be told by Kleya that there isn’t one, but it never feels more engaging than that. Meanwhile, Mon Mothma learns that her daughter is having cold feet about the wedding, and Tay, whose money is helping to fuel the Rebellion, is having similar doubts about his future involvement. Mon learns that he has just gone through a rough divorce, is growing impatient about the return on his investment, and has been seen publicly intoxicated around members of the Galactic Senate who could end the Rebellion overnight if they discovered her involvement. Concurrently, Vel has been increasingly frustrated by her inability to communicate with her partner Cinta, who was sent on a secret mission by Luthen at the end of the previous season.

Eventually, however, all these plots come together in a brilliant final episode where Mon’s hesitation about handling Tay leads her to confront her daughter regarding her own arranged marriage, imploring her that “you do not have to go through with this.” Genevieve O’Reilly delivers a desperate emotional catharsis for the character, searching for any reason to back out of the path she has laid before herself. It is Leida who first resists her mother’s pleas, but Luthen pushes back the strongest against Mon’s resistance to getting her hands dirty. Mon knows that Luthen won’t hesitate to utilize violence to achieve the Rebellion’s needs and that they need Tay removed from the chessboard. The answer to their problems has become self-evident to her, no matter how hard she tries to resist it.

And so, in a bravura sequence that closes out the arc, Leida is wed to Stekan while Tay boards his ship back to Coruscant as Vel watches. It is then that she notices Cinta piloting his craft, no doubt ordered by Luthen to assassinate Tay before he can do further damage to the rise of the Rebellion. The show wisely avoids spelling out the details of Tay’s demise, instead allowing the audience to piece together the unspoken orders of Luthen. The narrative concludes with a sequence where Mon Mothma dances to composer Brandon Robert’s digital beats, a drink in hand, as she loses herself in the rhythm, keenly aware that she has sacrificed her moral high ground and been a party to murder to further her pursuits. For anyone familiar with director Bong Joon-ho's work, it’s a sequence that directly mirrors the final shots of his film Mother, including the bright sunlight that filters through the windows of the wedding hall and illuminates Mon in a sort of hellish light.

Altogether, this first arc of season two of Andor has high ambitions that aren’t always achieved. Not all its plotlines are treated equally, and many feel padded to provide exposition or fill the full runtime of a three-hour weekly drop. It’s still early on, with nine episodes to go. Still, my hope for future episodes is to learn more about the greater context of the Rebellion’s growth and operations, if only to give additional meaning to the artful, spycraft mechanics of the smaller players within the movement. Additionally, I’d like to see the stories of Mon Mothma, Luthen, and the survivors of Ferrix come together meaningfully, as their narrative distance from each other can make the episodes and their climaxes feel unrelated. In contrast, the best of Star Wars’ third act structures, including many from the first season, can show us how all the different pieces of a multifaceted war effort can come together to achieve some victory.

Stray observations:

• In the previous season, continual updates to the title theme by composer Nicholas Britell built - seemingly one instrument at a time - toward a cacophony, in parallel with the slow buildup of the Rebellion against the Empire. But here, season two’s new composer Brandon Roberts recrafts the motif so that each episode features a different flavor of instrumentation that hints at what each new story contributes to the unfolding narrative of Andor.

• I’m often amused when Star Wars introduces something that looks or operates similarly to its Earth counterpart. In these episodes, it is the farming of wheat, which I’m sure has some other name in this universe. However, it is curious that the decision was made that “eh, wheat is good enough, no need to change it.” But, “Rock, paper, scissors” wasn’t good enough to stay, so they replaced it with “Roski Rules,” which only furthers the popular fan theory that Star Wars is a universe without paper.

• Meanwhile, I found the wedding ceremony involving circles and headbands to be laughably weird until I started thinking about the customs of various Earth-based wedding ceremonies and realized, “Nope. That’s right on the money.”

• Remember when Ben Kenobi, upon seeing a TIE-fighter near the remains of Alderaan, tells Luke Skywalker: “No, it’s a short-range fighter. A fighter that size couldn’t get this deep into space on its own”? I guess he never heard of a TIE-Avenger, which I admittedly only learned about while writing this piece. Apparently, it’s the first of a series of TIEs built with fully functional hyperdrives and evolved into the TIE-Advanced series, which Darth Vader would pilot. But wait! That actually clears up another lingering plothole from 1977! If Darth Vader’s ship had a functioning hyperdrive, that's how he survived being stranded in space after the Death Star’s destruction. Thank god Disney didn’t create a whole movie just to explain that! Wait, was Andor greenlit just for this reveal? I don’t know what to believe anymore…

Andor airs Tuesday nights at 9pm ET on Disney+. Look for recaps/reviews of the latest batches of episodes here later the same evening. Dan Gvozden is a film and comics critic who lives and works in Baltimore. If you enjoyed this review, check out his Spider-Man podcast, The Amazing Spider-Talk.