One of my favorite parts of Andor, besides being able to watch it all in one sitting so that the only anxiety I had to deal with involved the actual episodes unfolding on my TV, is the range of emotion shown by all the characters. We get people who are angry, sad, happy, and so on. We get the whole range of human emotion. Which is remarkable because Star Wars typically isn’t interesting in the emotional lives of its characters beyond the broad arcs that’re involved in the stories being told and the few emotions allowed to them by their dark/light alignment. Anger for the dark side, giving way to fear on occasion with a few other moments mixed in throughout the whole series, and hope for the light side, occasionally giving way to sadness and a few other spikes that are quickly tamped down or moved past in the series at large. Sure, some of this can be chalked up to the time limit set by big films and the heroic or villainous depictions of the characters in the movies, but these limits extend to the shows as well. Even when we do see an unaligned emotion in most of the shows, it is usually something a character must overcome or some foreshadowing that a character is destined for the light or the dark. So, when we got to see all of the characters in Andor in their feelings, acting out because of their feelings, and existing outside of the usual dark/light feelings assignments, I couldn’t help but get caught up in them as well.

I’m not talking about only the actor’s performances. A lot of great actors performed in many Star Wars movies and TV shows over the years, each of them bringing something interesting to their roles. I’m more talking about the way their characters are depicted by the media itself. Luke is either sad or hopeful. He never gets angry. Darth Vader is angry. The Emperor is angry. Anakin is fearful and then various forms of angry (and sometimes both). Obi-Wan is either hopeful or sad, with a special exception for angrily fighting Darth Maul after Qui-Gon was killed. Leia is mostly hopeful but also a little angry, though that never really rises to the point of rage or acting out of anger. Han is fearful and eventually hopeful. Rey is hopeful or sad. Kylo Ren is angry, fearful, sad, and then a little hopeful. Finn is fearful, gets over it and becomes hopeful, is unconscious and still hopeful, and then is conscious and hopeful again (I will forever hold him being sidelined for an entire movie against J.J. Abrams). Sure, all the characters I’ve mentioned have a bit more nuance to them than that, but they can all be slotted pretty neatly into these categories because that’s how Star Wars works. Everything has to boil down to these broad categories because the whole series is about the war between the light and the dark. Between the good guys–with their noble heroes, soldiers with faces, and individuality–and the bad guys–with their vile villains, faceless mooks, and utter replaceability. Between those who lash out in anger and those who act with hope in their hearts.

Andor throws a wrench into all this. Sure, there are some idealists who are a part of the burgeoning rebellion we see start to take shape over the twelve episodes of the first season, but most people wind up fighting back not because they’re hoping for a better future but because they’re pissed as hell about what the Empire has done to them or their loved ones. Sure, there’s some hope for the future that gets brought along for the ride, but it’s not the driving force behind their actions. The final fight of the twelfth episode starts with an exhortation to fight the bastards, not because the future will be better if they were gone, but because of the harm they’ve done and will continue to do. One of our heroes is as ruthless as a Sith lord. One of them is a scheming sleezeball who happens to know how to stick it to the empire because he fundamentally understands them in a way most people don’t. One of them is a sitting senator willing to sell her soul (and a lot more besides) to throw off the yoke the Empire has placed around its people. Gone are the uncomplicated and ideologically simple heroes of past shows and movies. We are in the mud and the dirt and the grime and Andor says that good can come from a fist raised in anger. That there is a time and a place to feel fear, to feel anger, to feel hope, and to feel sad, but that they’re all a part the experience of life. Gone is the Star Wars universe’s adherence to the idea that the Jedi and Sith philosophies are fundamental to goodness or evilness. No one chides anyone for showing, experiencing, or acting as a result of an emotional reaction to something and no one tries to pull someone out of a negative spiral by speaking of lofty ideals and high-minded goals (not that this ever really worked, but the track record of such attempts never stopped anyone from trying).

In Andor, we get enemies with faces. We see the antagonists living their lives, dealing with their own problems, and trying to build the lives they want to live while dealing with ripples started by our heroes in the main plot. We see the empire not as a faceless machine, but a machine build of countless individuals, all working in tandem (like the Weights and Measure Bureau or whatever its called where our petty villain gets a job after he gets fired from his corporate cop gig). We see some storm troopers, sure, but most of the authority and oppression of the Empire is wielding via private security, riot cops, and the petty officers with more ambition than sense. All of these are people with their faces exposed. Even the time we pass through an imperial base, we find it full of soldiers in uniforms, not the armor and helmets of storm troopers. And, acting against them in every fight, is our cadre of angry heroes who just wanted to live peacefully, who wanted a chance at something better, who had something taken from them by the Empire’s callous overreach. The patterns of the series have been overturned and the story of Andor is so much richer for it. We actually get characters with deep internal lives, with actual character development and complex motivations, who act for reasons that are reflective not just the world they live in, but the world we live in as well. These characters are the first ones I thought I might see myself in. They are the first ones who feel truly reflective of more than just the general arcs of the Star Wars series.

It is interesting to see this show made in the time it is. There’s plenty of commentary in Star Wars, if you know where to look for it (and if you don’t know where to look for it, the podcast A More Civilized Age will point it out to you), but little has felt so timely as this. Sure, that might be because the movies actually offering incisive commentary all came out before I was born or when I was too young to think this analytically about a fun space wizard movie (and the last trilogy was a mess that seems to say little other than “Hey, look! More Star Wars!”), but even in retrospect those movies don’t feel as pointed as Andor does. Now, this show had to make it through all the Disney filters in order to be made, so I can’t help but wonder what else it might have said without a bunch of Disney executives trimming away the more radical parts. Still! It feels topical in a way that almost nothing else does, in this age of cop militarization, rising authoritarianism, growing hate for minorities, and–last but not least–the rising tide of the evil Empire (which is a stand in for a lot of countries, the US chief among them). I know I’m coming to this pretty late, given that its been a year and a half since the show ended, but it still hits pretty hard even a couple years later. It has genuinely given me stuff to think about after the fact, which is more than I can say about most Star Wars media (other than, you know, “I wish I had force powers”).