a.k.a. V.J.

When Star Wars hit theaters in 1977, I was an eight-year-old boy. That is to say, it was more or less biologically guaranteed that I was going to lap up everything that George Lucas had to feed me. And I did.

As much as I enjoyed the original trilogy, the toys, the novelizations, the comic books, the Holiday Special, the Burger King Empire Strikes Back commemorative glasses, and all the other merch — and continue to enjoy some of those things as an old man — I still hesitate to call myself a “Star Wars fan.” That’s a loaded term.

In fact, the whole modern idea of “fandom” skeeves me out a little bit. I’m all for loving a piece of entertainment. I even approve of being obsessed with some entertainment, when it’s warranted. But the part about forming a community/subculture centered on loving or obsessing over corporate intellectual property is where I get off the fan train. Large, organized groups of people tend to ruin everything. Without relitigating decades of public nerd rage, let’s just say that Star Wars fandom strikes me as a dysfunctional lot and I prefer to keep my distance from it.

And I’m not only picking on the geeks, either. As much as I like a few sports teams, I treat rooting for them as solitary pursuits. I’ve been a Buffalo Bills fan for decades, and have the emotional scars to prove it, but you’ll never catch me jumping through breakaway tables in the stadium parking lot along with “Bills Mafia.” For that matter, it’s highly unlikely you’d even see me watching a game at a local sports bar among a handful Josh-Allen-jersey-clad jamokes. I want to like a thing (or not like it) on my own terms. Once you impose a social dynamic into the middle of things, it stops being fun for me.

I mention all that as a preface to saying that I’ve really been enjoying Season 2 of the Disney+ series Andor. That may seem like an innocuous statement, but in some (mostly online) circles it is tantamount to taking a stance in a vicious tribal conflict, or even the broader culture war. So be it. I think Andor is a great show. I’ll even go so far as to say that it’s the best Star Wars anything to come out since the original trilogy…although that’s not necessarily a high bar.

Andor is atypical of most Star Wars content in that it is relentlessly for adults. Kids are not going to like this show — not even a little bit. A lot of adults aren’t going to like it either. There’s not a lot of action. The plot is dense and subtle. You have to pay close attention to details or you’ll get lost. It’s a slow burn. If you crave light sabers, Jedi, or Jar Jar Binksian hijinks, sampling an episode of Andor is probably going to feel like watching the MacNeil/Lehrer Report.

The whole series is about the nature of rebellions. (Anyone who ever liked Mike Duncan’s Revolutions podcast will eat this show with a spoon.) Most Star Wars movies and series just assume you will accept the Empire as the bad guys because they look mean. Andor shows the oppressive, totalitarian workings of the Imperial system. In this show, the Empire isn’t evil because the emperor is a disfigured wizard who shoots lightning out of his hands; it’s evil because it operates exactly like a lot of police-state regimes that we here on Earth are all too familiar with through our own history books and today’s headlines. Barry McGuire famously told us, “You may leave here for four days in space, but when you return, it’s the same old place.” According to Andor, space is also the same old place.

It’s all very grim, but honestly, Andor is the first piece of Star Wars lore I’m aware of that actually contextualizes the Rebellion in a meaningful way. In this show, people didn’t take up arms against the Empire to help Luke Skywalker fulfill his hero’s journey. They did it because everyday life in the Empire sucked. To me, that essential point alone fills a gaping hole in the soon-to-be fifty-year exploration of the galaxy far, far away.

At this writing, Andor just dropped episodes 7-9 of its 12-episode final season. That last trio of episodes were easily the best of the series. I’m still kind of amazed at how good they were. I’m hoping that the last three are worthy of what came before. They will likely blend the story in seamlessly to the beginning of Rogue One, which will be nice for people who care about stories fitting together perfectly like puzzle pieces. I’m not really concerned with that; I just want some good Star Wars. For the first time since the early 1980s, I’m pretty confident that we’ll actually get some.