This excellent episode was written by House of Cards’ Beau Willimon. And it shows.

“the buildings are built atop large retaining walls sloping to the beach, as if to mitigate a violent storm season” - in fairness, a lot of that isn’t the production designers’ doing, more that they’re filming in British coastal towns which do legitimately have pretty violent storms from time to time.

That ending is so good. Just a great portrait of how some authoritarian dictate filters down to petty bureaucratic tyranny and indifference at the local level, with Cassian just having some bad luck in timing and getting slapped with an over-the-top criminal sentence.

My personal favorite line, from the ISB Meeting:

It’s not “mature” in the way it seems like you’re expecting. It’s just that Andor’s set pieces are intensely character-driven, instead of special effects surrounding paper-thin plots and fanservice. And it makes the Star Wars universe feel lived in rather than just looking that way.

I think “mature” just means we’ll shot, written, directed, and acted in this case.

“I have to ask who really wants Star Wars for adults?”

I don’t know your definition of ‘dark’ sci-fi, but if you’re leaning in the ‘gritty’ Blade Runner direction, Andor is in fact not that, and why I feel it’s refreshing not just for Star Wars but the current cyberpunk-obsessed grimdark sci-fi landscape in general. Andor is an ‘adult’ ‘mature’ show insofar as it...…

George Lucas has always said that Star Wars was a fairy tale for children. That certainly tracked with the prequels, particularly Phantom Menace. The Abrams sequels were Star Wars for adults in arrested development.

Even now that it’s gotten good, Andor remains the least interesting thing about Andor by a wide margin.

I was completely against this show when it was announced. I even said “who asked for this show?!” to express my distaste.

If I’m not mistaken, that there’s a Kyber Crystal

The Empire is famously anti-alien. If you’re trying to infiltrate an Empire facility, when the Empire was at its height, bringing aliens along isn’t the best idea.

In defense of Mandalorian, I think it’s mean to highlight the “fun stuff” side of the Star Wars universe. The focus of Andor is to tell a more grown-up style of storytelling, with far less emphasis on the “toy” aspects of Star Wars. I’m glad for this, because these Star Wars series shouldn’t all feel the same.

Maybe I’m just projecting nostalgia, but I got a real kick out of the Ugly 70's Futurism look of the Imperial settings.

I think this was my favourite episode so far, different strokes for different folks I s’pose.

Along similar lines; I know some people felt like it was a pointless scene but, I really enjoyed the propulsion salesman on the bus in episode 2. I feel like we rarely get to meet this sort of “middle class” of citizen in Star Wars, people who presumably exist and are even doing kind of okay, even in a tumultuous…

“Aldhani makes for a great Star Wars planet, ably set in the Scottish Highlands. It all feels very earthy and real until we walk past a pen inhabited by four-horned sheep and it’s like, Oh right, this is an alien world.”

Also, the Ghorman shipping lane issue that Mon Mothma references will later lead to a massacre that causes her to leave the Senate, as revealed in Rebels.

Really enjoying Andor, it’s worlds better than any of the other Disney+ Star Wars shows because it actually feels like a real series instead of a cartoon with real life actors.