Andor Episode 8: Tony Gilroy must become the Kevin Feige of Star Wars! I can’t stand another Boba Fett

It’s been like this for two months now: Every Wednesday I can hardly believe my luck that I can experience this series. It’s almost like a dream to me, because Andor is not only in a completely different league in terms of quality than Boba Fett, Obi-Wan and yes, even The Mandalorian. It’s also completely different in tone, looking at the conflict through modern, adult eyes.

I could think I’ll wake up at any moment and I’ve only fantasized about this great piece of television while I’m half asleep. Good thing I’m neither creative nor talented enough for this, otherwise I’d be almost certain it’s just my imagination. Episode eight, Narkina 5, underscores once again how accurately Gilroy and his crew – this time the screenplay was written by House of Cards creator Beau Willimon – turn their magnifying glass to the most interesting facets of the Star Wars idea. Instead of endlessly pumping up myths about heroes, we experience credibly and intensively how a tyrannical regime like the Empire oppresses normal people.

It doesn’t take five minutes before Star Wars Andor makes it clear that Luthen and Kleya are not entirely wrong in trying to eliminate Andor. The ISB, or Dedra, correctly concludes that Andor was in contact with Luthen, whom they refer to only as the Axis. She sees him as the mastermind behind the rebellion, and Dedra has no idea how right she is. What is not entirely clear to me: Why don’t the rebels also have Bix on their backs, which Luthen also saw?

It doesn’t matter for the moment, because first of all the arc is artfully drawn from Dedra to Karn, who in his desk job at the Office for Standardization constantly placed false inquiries about a Cassian Andor. The clash between the two was fantastically played, and even surprising. If you thought at the end that he himself would end up with the Empire, Dedra then dismisses him coldly. She senses that deep down he’s a loser, but maybe she doesn’t want to have the butter taken off her bread. Denise Gough is in top form once again. But with this cast, that doesn’t need to be mentioned.

The arrival at the oppressive underwater prison or labor camp on Narkina 5, to which Andor is shipped after the empire tightens the thumbscrews after the attack on Aldhani, was also wonderfully oppressive. The transfer to the fantastically designed future jail alone was incredibly intense. Here, all prisoners are barefoot, only the guards wear (enviably stylish) boots, which insulate them from the tension that grills prisoners at the touch of a button.

Ergo, this prison is superficially very orderly, which fits insanely well with the empire. At the same time, the tension can be felt at all times, because the inmates are divided into work groups that assemble machinery as a team. The slowest team is punished, the fastest gets a touch of flavor in the barren food paste, which otherwise has to serve as food. Inmates are exploited and competed against each other to be more productive. diabolical Due to the rebel activities, all prison sentences have recently been doubled, including the current ones, which only makes the atmosphere in the white walls even more hopeless. To the point where one of the night’s inmates dies on the hallway floor and no one’s really sure if he fell or jumped on purpose.

Elsewhere, Mon Mothma still navigates the Coruscant dinner reception life, smiling “political differences” to avoid being exposed as a rebel. These scenes show very well the contrast between the powerful, who cultivate politics as a hobby, as an area of ​​interest, and the governed, who feel the effects of decisions and mildly drunk indifference.

On Ferrix, Bix, Brasso and Maarva are not only targeted by the rebels Vel and Cinta, who realize that they have different ideas about how their relationship will continue. The Imperial Stasi also becomes aware of her when Bix, worried about Maarva, tries to get in touch with Luthen. This in turn leads to the moment when you can feel a little bad for having your fingers crossed for Dedra in the past episodes. When she puts Paak and Bix through their paces, you start to get really worried. They’re all played fantastically, but Gough pulls off the precisely written, machine intelligence officer with a chromed, singular charisma that’s downright terrifying. I will remember her performance for a long time.

Two guest stars just had memorable performances this week. For one thing, Andy Serkis surprised me as a kind of inmate foreman and, as always, delivered a pithy and physically very present performance. As a prisoner who can already see the end of his sentence, he will probably do everything possible to see it sooner rather than later. On the other hand, there was a theatrical King Kong vs. Godzilla as Stellan Skarsgard’s Luthen meets Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera. It’s a parley between two enemies of the Empire, as it quickly turns out. Not necessarily one among the Allies. Saw Gerrera lists all the different protesters and doesn’t seem to think much of them.

Like the extended sequences around Dedra Meero, Blevin and Partagaz at the ISB, the gates to this universe are pushed open much further than all the other series and films have done so far. It is wonderful. That being said, it was telling how even a conversation between two characters who aren’t nominally opponents can suddenly become uncomfortably intense when one of the participants is Forest Whitaker. He manages to read my favorite Korean’s menu to me in such a way that I put myself in an embryonic position under the table.

All in all, another great episode of one of my new favorite series. The one thing that I found out of the question and borderline catastrophic: why do I have to wait seven days again for it to continue?

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– Andor doesn’t feel like Star Wars. And I love that!