On September 21st, the premiere of 'Andor', a new series in the 'Star Wars' universe, took place. We analyze what was shown to us in the three episodes that form one hour-and-a-half pilot, and try to understand what to expect next.
Episode 1. "Kassa"
It all begins as if, in addition to the original 'Star Wars' trilogy, the creators were also shown 'Blade Runner' – rainy streets flooded with neon, a gloomy man in something like a leather coat sits in a half-empty bar-brothel, making him simultaneously resemble Rick Deckard and Indiana Jones. The man's name is Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and, as we know, in five years he will die fighting the Empire in 'Rogue One'.
For now, nothing about him betrays a fiery revolutionary, and on the planet Morlana-One at the edge of the galaxy, he is looking for his sister who has run off somewhere. One of the brothel employees, offering her services, tells him that his sister did work there but disappeared long ago. Where she ran to and how she ended up there in the first place seems clear to Andor, but not to the viewers.
Outside, Cassian is pursued by the planet's security officers, intending to intimidate the insolent foreigner and rob him at the same time. In the ensuing fight, Andor kills both and escapes. The dead are discovered by their colleagues, and a young, zealous servant of the Empire, Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), is eager to find the criminal. His more experienced superior advises the newly minted security inspector to calm down – the dead were in a brothel where they shouldn't have been, and publicizing such a crime would attract the attention of the Empire, from which no good can be expected. Karn disobeys his elder and begins searching for the unknown killer, armed and extremely dangerous.
Cassian, meanwhile, returns home to the mining planet Ferrix, located in the Morlani system. There, he first meets with his old friend Brasso (to whom, like many on this planet, he apparently owes money) and asks him to confirm his, Cassian's, alibi for the night of the murder – met up, got drunk, woke up, cast – and then with his friend, the mechanic Bix, who has some secretive fence friend. It's him that Andor needs – he wants to sell him the 'NS-9 Starpath' (in the original, alas, it's not Startrack, but Starpath, no reference there), an important part needed to detect Imperial ships. Bix reluctantly agrees to help her old friend, although her boyfriend Timm (James McArdle) is, to put it mildly, not thrilled by her actions. He is either jealous of Bix for Andor, or simply unhealthily worried about her.
Episode 2. "That Would Be Me"
The second episode begins unexpectedly – on the wild planet Kenari, young Cassian (Antonio Viña), speaking an unknown language, cautiously moves with his teenage friends towards a frigate from the late Republic or early Empire era. Andor and his friends are dressed in rags and resemble characters cut from 'The Blue Lagoon'. In this group, Cassian looks more like a 'Lord of the Flies' than the others, but that's basically it – over the course of two episodes, they will slowly move towards the starship that crashed before their eyes.
Meanwhile, Timm, Bix, Andor, and the others wake up to the sound of a bell (yes, there is a bell in 'Star Wars'. There is even a bell-ringer, you have to see it) and gradually start their confrontations. Cassian tries to find out if Bix told anyone that he is from the planet Kenari (he himself told this in the bar on Morlana-One, and that's how this information ended up in Imperial bulletins); it's not exactly a secret among friends, but right now it's better for everyone to forget about it. Jealous and offended, Timm (who knows about Kenari) turns Cassian in to the Empire, and on Morlana-One, young Inspector Karn assembles a squad to apprehend the criminal. Although the inspector is senior in rank, actual command begins to be exercised by a burly and formidable sergeant, an experienced soldier who, among other things, resembles either a KGB officer or a military commissar.
Meanwhile on Ferrix, Cassian visits his adoptive mother Maarva (the fantastic Fiona Shaw, also Petunia Dursley from 'Harry Potter'), she has health and heating problems – this backwater planet is clearly in an economic crisis – but she still seems active and sharp. Maarva immediately understands that Cassian is hiding something, but he escapes from her to Bix as soon as their 'family' droid B2EMO (once again, 'Star Wars' amazes with its droids, this one is magnificent) informs him that she stopped by. Reaching Bix, Cassian learns that she has arranged a meeting with her fence friend Luthen Rael and he is already on his way to Ferrix.
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The episode ends with parallel editing of Rael (the inimitable Stellan Skarsgård immediately draws attention to himself) and Cassian moving towards the meeting point. The restless Inspector Syril Karn also flies there. To somewhat confuse the viewers, the director even inserts scenes from 'Lord of the Flies' into the finale: the teenagers finally reached the ship, the bravest one was killed, but most of the crew are already dead, so there's no particular revenge. But why they are dead and why they have yellow faces is, frankly, not very clear. Probably, the ship's hull was breached while still in the air. In any case, the corpses and death in general are shown with unexpected realism.
Episode 3. "Reckoning"
The most energetic of the pilot episodes begins with young Cassian wrecking the frigate's interior and his meeting with Maarva and her partner Clem, smugglers who, out of pity (primarily Maarva's), save the boy from certain death and take him with them. This is the last flashback, after which the action moves to the present: Cassian asks Brasso to take care of Maarva, Bix meets with Rael and confirms the meeting will take place, and Inspector Syril with his squad lands on the planet and visits Maarva.
Maarva, true to form, doesn't crack under the threats of the local KGB, especially since there seem to be no irons or other small torture delights in the 'Star Wars' universe (although Rian Johnson thinks otherwise). But trouble comes from an unexpected quarter, and Cassian gives himself away by trying to contact the droid B2EMO via comlink (local phone). The sergeant, inspector, and their troopers scatter through the unfriendly city, while part of their group runs to detain Cassian. Following the tradition of this quaint working-class town, they are accompanied by the ringing sound coming from everywhere – in this town named after Ringo Starr, the police are intimidated by such an unorthodox method.
At the same time, Andor and Rael finally meet in an old hangar, and Skarsgård and Diego Luna play out a scene worthy of 'The Parallax View' or any other paranoid thriller from the seventies. Luna's character hates the Empire, Skarsgård's smuggler, who is actually probably an important figure in the forming Rebel Alliance, hates it too; on this basis, each delivers a short programmatic monologue (Skarsgård is great), then they unite against the arriving squad of soldiers. The shootout between Andor, Rael, and the local special forces is also filmed in an unusual manner for 'Star Wars': firstly, the shots fly dangerously close; secondly, the fight has interesting choreography using chains (!); thirdly, no one is wearing a helmet, and that's a victory.
Parallel editing is used mercilessly in this episode, so simultaneously with the shootout, we watch Maarva display amazing resilience and Bix realize that her boyfriend helped the Empire, run away from him, and run straight into the special forces. She is chained to a wall, and the frankly dim-witted Timm, who walks straight into the gunfire shouting 'don't come closer', is shot dead by the patrol he himself called. (A more comprehensive metaphor for the fate of a collaborator, by the way, hasn't been seen in a long time.)
In the episode's finale, Andor and his new ally manage to break through to the latter's ship, thanks to the protagonist's considerable ingenuity, while Inspector Syril suffers a rather inglorious defeat and loses all authority in the eyes of his colleagues. The final shots show how, in the past, Maarva saved young Cassian and how the elderly woman now looks at the sky, where, inevitably, as always in 'Star Wars', the hero heads towards a feat or death. Or, as often happens, the first and second in turn.
Based on the first episodes, it seems that 'Andor' has a chance to become one of the best series of the year – it is a dark and oppressive story in which the classic 'Star Wars' optimism of struggle collides with the inescapable melancholy of any decent spy detective. The main adornment of 'Andor' is the actors. Luna is predictably good, Skarsgård is predictably magnificent, and Fiona Shaw is as unlike Petunia Dursley as possible. Playing something between a Decembrist's wife and Gorky's mother, she perhaps leaves everyone else a mile behind in terms of the precision and poignancy of her character.
Unexpected advantages of the series include location shooting (watching the show's main competitors – 'House of the Dragon' and 'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' – one can forget what nature looks like), thanks to which the show achieves the necessary degree of old-school feel, the relevance of the theme of fighting totalitarianism, and the cyberpunk aesthetic – neon, dark, dirty, yellow vests, no replicants, but someone there is definitely thinking about electric sheep, and that can't help but please. Skarsgård, moreover, resembles Christopher Walken from 'New Rose Hotel', another great example of cyberpunk. Also, Disney should, of course, get around to handing out awards to those capable of making a 'Star Wars' series without helmeted characters and Tatooine. These are rare people, as practice shows.
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