After far too long a wait, the second season of Andor is finally upon us! Just as the first season premiered with a three-episode release on Disney+, so too does season 2. But unlike season 1, the rest of this season will follow the same format, unfolding across four three-episode arcs. In these first three episodes — “One Year Later,” “Sagrona Tima” and “Harvest” — audiences are reintroduced to the title character as he steals a TIE Avenger and runs afoul of some fellow Rebels, while Mon Mothma sees her daughter married off as the culmination of a deal that is subsequently collapsing around her and Cassian’s fellow Ferrix-refugees try to avoid an Imperial audit while living as migrant workers. Oh, and the Empire continues to be the worst, putting Imperial Security Officer Dedre Meero in charge of a new project that will surely work out Just Fine before she locks horns with the most insidious of all foes: Syril Karn’s mom.
For the most part, the show doesn’t miss a beat from where it left off, and there’s tons to enjoy and appreciate here, both large and small. With that in find, here are 10 great things from the first three episodes of Andor Season 2 (in roughly chronological order).
1. ‘You’re coming home to yourself’
Early in “One Year Later,” Cassian tells a young, nervous Imperial informant who is helping him in his mission to steal a prototype TIE fighter that “you made this decision long ago. The Empire cannot win. You’ll never feel right unless you are doing what you can to stop them. You’re coming home to yourself.” It’s a brief exchange, early in the episode, easy to forget in the subsequent fireworks and shenanigans that ensue during the actual heist. But it’s a dialogue exchange on par with some of the series’ best, and “you’re coming home to yourself” as a description of having reached the point where you can’t be complacent anymore is a wonderful statement of thematic purpose for the show.
2. Range Troopers
It seems like every new Star Wars project wants to add some new specialization of Stormtrooper or vehicle variant to the mix, often to a point of diminishing returns. The “Range Troopers” from Solo are one example of this, and while not one of my favorite variants, I did appreciate that Andor deployed some during the TIE Avenger escape sequence rather than creating some new “Test Facility Stormtroopers” or some such (the TIE Avenger, btw, is a canonized bit of Legends material, so not a wholly new creation, thankfully, given this era of Star Wars storytelling is already ripe with advanced prototype TIE fighters).
3. Ancient wheat
The wheat fields of Mina-Rau were initially created on location in Watlington, Oxfordshire, England, on a farm where the production crew convinced a farmer to plant an ancient rye specifically for the show (ultimately, the 2023 writers’ strike led to the rye being harvested and recreated with polystyrene sheets, but that’s still an astonishing commitment to production values.
4. Maarva’s picture
Another great little detail in the set design is the picture of Maarva hanging on the wall inside Brasso, Bix and Wil’s shelter on Mina-Rau, right next to the communications device that is probably the most dangerous thing they have. It’s a small thing and it goes unremarked-upon, but it speaks to the level of consideration that went into all the different aspects of the show.
5. Ghorman
All the talk of the planet Ghorman in the Director Krennic portion of the first episode is laying the groundwork for the Ghorman Massacre, one of those bits of established Star Wars lore that has gone through various permutations as it’s shifted from pseudo-canon to legends to canon. Presumably, Andor is setting itself up for the definitive version of events, and it will be interesting to see how it gels with what’s already been established in the (equally canonical) Rebels, given the key role played by Mon Mothma there and here.
6. Kleya
All throughout this three-episode premiere, Kleya, Luthen’s righthand woman, is an unstoppable Terminator of Not Giving A Shit About Your Concerns, remaining laser-focused and steely-eyed throughout all the Chandrilan wedding shenanigans and Cassian’s panicked check-in. Hers is an energy to which we should all aspire.
7. Yavin 4
It doesn’t get explicitly called out by name, but the jungle planet on which Cassian lands and gets captured by the Maya Pei brigade is Yavin 4, future home of the Rebel base circa A New Hope. There’s a neat symmetry to the setting being the same for this sequence — that is all about how slapdash and divided the current Rebel “Alliance” is — and for the Rebels’ greatest victory later.
8. Space Rock-Paper-Scissors
Speaking of Yavin 4, the fact that the divided Maya Pei brigade ultimately tries to settle their differences via a game of Space Rock-Paper-Scissors (Roski Rules, of course) is a delightful bit of worldbuilding.
9. Bee going to live on a farm upstate
We know that poor, sweet Bee isn’t the droid at Cassian’s side in Rogue One, and given the take-no-prisoners approach of the show, that may well have meant a bad end for Bee. Thankfully, “Harvest” seems to offer a better alternative, as Bee is left with Talia, Brasso’s paramour, to frolic in the fields with other droids and remain fully charged. It’s a bummer he doesn’t get a reunion with Cassian, but it’s a much better fate than most of the other characters are likely to get.
10. Mon Mothma’s Dance
Who amongst us hasn’t been at a wedding, discovered our childhood friend is over-leveraged and threatening to pull down the entire house of cards we’ve built to support our morally righteous but technically illegal rebel activity that the very wedding was orchestrated to help facilitate, leading to our co-conspirator getting pissy and making it clear said childhood friend is not long for the world, all while our spouse bums around giving speeches about the importance of hedonism as a distraction from his shitty marriage, and responded by pounding shots and dancing to the hottest beats this side of Morlana One as our world burns around us?
Austin Gorton also reviews older issues of X-Men at the Real Gentlemen of Leisure website, co-hosts the A Very Special episode podcast, and likes Star Wars. He lives outside Minneapolis, where sometimes, it is not cold. Follow him @austingorton.bsky.social.
