Series Review – Andor Season 2
Creator: Tony Gilroy
Starring: Diego Luna, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O’Reilly, Forest Whitaker
Year: 2025
I said after Season 1 that Andor was the best Star Wars content since Empire Strikes Back. That was controversial. People got mad. They said I was being hyperbolic.
Season 2 proves I was right.
Tony Gilroy has done something I didn’t think was possible. He made Star Wars about something again. Not just about good guys fighting bad guys. Not just about lightsabers and the Force and family reveals. About politics. About resistance. About what it costs to fight an empire — not just in lives but in souls.
Season 2 covers the four years between Season 1 and Rogue One. We watch Cassian Andor transform from a cynical survivor into a true believer. We watch the Rebellion coalesce from scattered cells into a coordinated movement. We watch the Empire tighten its grip while pretending everything is fine.
Diego Luna is extraordinary. He was good in Season 1 but here he’s operating at a different level. There’s this hollowing out that happens to Cassian over these episodes. A necessary loss of innocence. By the end he’s the man we meet in Rogue One — the one willing to shoot a informant to protect the mission. The one who’s done terrible things for the cause. Luna shows us how he got there.
Stellan Skarsgård as Luthen Rael. Jesus. The monologue he had in Season 1 — “I burn my decency for someone else’s future” — might be the best writing in Star Wars history. Season 2 puts that philosophy to the test. How much can you sacrifice before you become what you’re fighting? Skarsgård plays a man who already knows the answer and hates himself for it.
The political stuff. Mon Mothma’s storyline. The Senate machinations. This could be boring in lesser hands. Gilroy makes it riveting. Genevieve O’Reilly is playing a woman who’s compromising everything she believes in piece by piece because that’s what politics requires. It’s slow and painful and completely gripping.
And the action. When the action comes it HITS. There’s a sequence in episode eight that I won’t spoil but it’s as good as anything in the movies. Practical effects. Real weight. Stakes you actually care about because you’ve spent hours with these characters.
Forest Whitaker returns as Saw Gerrera and his scenes are fascinating. Here’s a man who will become an extremist, who will be disavowed by the very Rebellion he helped create. Watching the seeds of that radicalization is uncomfortable in the best way.
This is the last season. It ends where Rogue One begins. Knowing that destination makes the journey more poignant. We know Cassian dies. We know most of these characters die. The tragedy is built in. Gilroy leans into that instead of away from it.
Andor is what Star Wars can be when you give it to someone who takes it seriously. When you trust the audience. When you make it about ideas and not just spectacle.
Best Star Wars since Empire.
I said what I said.
My rating: ★★★★★
