Andor Season Two Review – Hope Above All Else For An All-Time Best Season Of TV

Hope. That’s what rebellions are built on. Or so Andor season two says. The second season of the most monumental Star Wars show so far is equally as monumental in varying ways. Whereas the first season of Andor showed off a side of the Galaxy Far, Far Away that we’ve never really seen before, this new season shows off the grim underbelly of the galaxy. You get to see that Rebels and the Empire aren’t too different in some ways. You also see how dictatorial rule and oppression shape people. Andor comes from showrunner and writer Tony Gilroy, who wrote the first season of the show and what follows the show, Rogue One.

Gone is the massive multiseason plan for the series when it was first pitched; instead is a tight second season that takes you right up to the events of Rogue One. It follows plenty of characters from the first season like Cassian Andor, Syril Karn, Dedra Meero, Luthen Rael, Mon Mothma, Bix Caleen, and more. New characters also come with the territory of a rebellion built up from the ground and ashes of other places. There are familiar faces from Rogue One that also come up in this second season that aren’t there in the first.

The most important thing that comes out of Andor is a sense of hope, though. Even in the darkest days, the most bleak episodes, and let me tell you, this show gets BLEAK at points. There’s always a sense of hope. You know where the story is going, you know how the life of Cassian Andor ends up, and yet, it’s still just as thrilling to see how it twists and weaves through the shadow of the Empire.

Starting with the various performances in Andor season two, it begins and ends with Diego Luna as Cassian Andor. He drives the entire thing, providing someone to root for, someone to believe, and someone for others to believe. If you liked the sort of grey-ish morals that Andor brought in Rogue One and the first season, you get that and then some here. He’s not some brutal, ruthless killing machine, but there are points where a blaster is the way out of a situation, and he takes it.

Outside of Luna, though, the highlight performances in season two come from Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, Stellan Skarsgard as Luthen Rael, Denise Gough as Dedra Meero, Kyle Soller as Syril Karn, and Ben Mendelsohn as Director Krennic. You don’t get a whole lot of Krennic in the series, but when he shows up, it’s usually not good for anyone involved. His interactions with Meero are just skin-crawling. The guy is a monster, and rules with an iron fist, which makes Darth Vader making him into his b*tch in Rogue One, that much more satisfying.

Meero and Soller as Syril and Dedra, a new couple, are also fantastic. It even feels like Syril is shaping up to be more than the pitiful worm that he was in season one. His arc is fascinating across all the episodes he’s in. There’s also an interaction between Dedra and Luthen that’s one of the best scenes in the entire series. They’re talking about something entirely off topic, but it ends up being incredibly on topic. Like two master tennis players, they hit the ball back and forth, dueling one another until someone loses.

O’Reilly as the idyllic Mon Mothma and her journey to the rebellion is another big part of the second season. The way she transforms across the twelve episodes makes it such captivating television. This second season makes the Empire/Imperial characters more front and center, and how they twist and turn throughout, some turning more towards the light, and some showing the absolute monsters they are, hungry for power, is part of what makes the second season so real.

The first seven episodes of the season are good enough, excellent television. Where Andor takes a turn toward some of the best television in recent memory is from episode eight onward though.

I have described the second season as “too real at points”. I feel like that’s an apt description for what we’re dealing with in our own lives in the United States and around the world. There are human monsters around every corner that work to take away rights and freedoms from others to further their own power. That’s really the message that Andor is putting out. And sometimes, to get past those people, it takes tremendous effort from heroes and morally grey people alike. It takes working with unsavory types to get the job done at times, and the line between hero and villain blurs. The eighth episode of the season is one of the most shocking and all too real that I’ve seen in recent memory. It was enough that I had to stop binge-watching the screeners I was sent for this review to decompress.

After that, it was non-stop movement, hurling towards the point where we leave the series off and head to Rogue One. In the same fashion as that movie and the first season, it never stops to wink toward the audience and say, “You’re watching a Star Wars show, here’s someone you know!”. The writing is absolutely smashing, providing more than enough for you to chew on while you’re watching, and then some to think about while the credits roll. The story unfolds over a couple of years, starting four years before the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope. Every three episodes tell a new arc, a year in time. That format makes for a frenetic pace, but lets you stew with everything that’s unfolding.

There’s a lot of darkness and despair in Andor. It’s everywhere. For those wishing they could see the true dark side of the Star Wars universe, it doesn’t hold the most weight with Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, no. It’s held up by the evil that the common person does. Those who look away from atrocities, those who aid and abet the people in power to commit those atrocities, and those who actively use that evil to further their own personal gains. Overlayed with all that darkness and cold calculating evil, though, is a sheer feeling of hope.

Through all of it, there’s a ray of hope. It’s a stunning feeling watching the entire series and getting through all the action, the drama, and that’s what you feel at the end of it. It makes for a must-watch series for anyone. Star Wars fans will love it, but people who have checked out, who’ve sworn off the franchise, will get something out of this.

Andor is quite frankly, one of the best and most important television shows of the 21st century. It is a triumph of the medium and this second season cements that status as one of the best ever.

Andor Season Two premieres on Disney+ with three new episodes on April 21st, 2025. From there, three new episodes come out until the finale.

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