When we last saw Cassian Andor during the season finale of the “Star Wars” series “Andor,” he offered anti-Imperial leader Luthen Rael his life or the chance to involve him fully in rebel activities. It was an apt ending, coming as it did after a major skirmish between ordinary citizens and forces of the Empire during a memorial service for Cassian’s adopted mother. Over the course of the show’s first season, we watched as he began to develop a political consciousness, transforming into a victim of injustice and evolving insurrectionist from a thief and jaded opportunist. 

The opening scene of the second and final season of “Andor” finds Cassian (Diego Luna) one year later, undercover at an Imperial base and about to steal a TIE fighter, the distinct “Star Wars” attack spaceship of the evil Galactic Empire. Before we get to the daring robbery, Cassian converses with a scared young woman, a rebellion newbie who is risking her life to help our hero. It’s a tense, sensitively written, inspiring scene, the kind the Emmy-nominated first season had plenty of and that distinguished the series from other “Star Wars” entertainments. Soon, though, we’re shown Cassian within the complicated aircraft as he attempts to fly it out of the hangar and into space. 

The TIE fighter sequence is big, brash, and loud, announcing how this season, having its premiere this week on Disney+, will involve not only much more action but added humor and nods to classic “Star Wars” iconography. The rest of the episode provides further evidence of how season two will ratchet up the combat, the “fan”-fare, and the tone of the drama, with a more bombastic musical score an example of this change.

One might be tempted to ask why the creative team, including showrunner Tony Gilroy (“Michael Clayton,” “The Bourne Legacy”), decided to “fix” or “upgrade” a show already pretty fantastic. Yet as the season progresses, with this critic having viewed the first three episodes, it becomes clear that the rising rebellion narrative they’re working with — one that will lead to the desperate activities featured in 2016’s “Rogue One” and onto the first “Star Wars” movie — demands a greater urgency and even frenzy.

Diego Luna in Season 2 of ‘Andor.’ ©2025 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved

One element still prevalent is the plot’s topicality, with last season’s themes of omnipresent surveillance, corporate militarization, and prison labor segueing into fresh dialogue on visas, the “undocumented,” and an allusion to fracking. “Employees” of the Empire, such as the ambitious security officer Dedra Meero (a riveting Denise Gough), continue to exhibit fascistic traits. 

One of the show’s genius moves, though, is its humanizing of mid-tier Imperial management, with Dedra’s relationship with Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), a supervisor at the “Bureau of Standards,” offering a potent and suggestive exploration of two exacting, control-oriented souls finding each other. Possibly the best scene of the initial episodes occurs in the third when Syril’s overbearing mother Eedy (Kathryn Hunter) comes to visit the couple and the two women engage in a power play.  

A large part of the three episodes is taken up with the multi-day wedding of the young daughter of senator and covert Rebel Alliance financier Mon Mothma to unscrupulous businessman Davo Sculdun’s young son, with genuinely curious rituals being performed. The celebration also introduces a new intrigue as banker Tay Kolma (Ben Miles), an ancillary supporter of the rebellion, complains to Mon (Genevieve O’Reilly) that he’s in financial trouble because of rebel activities, with this development a dig at liberal elite hypocrisy. 

Another social critique arrives during the third episode’s climax as it cuts between wedding revelers, a fated murder, and armed conflict involving farmers/migrants/rebels against Imperial forces, with the editing implying that a well-to-do society would rather dance and drink the time away as others struggle and die for a cause. 

As for our titular hero, he spends most of the early episodes a prisoner of a ragtag group of rebels and/or anarchists, with what they’re fighting for and against, other than themselves, remaining unclear. The troop’s banter and antics quickly prove boring, and thankfully Mr. Gilroy has Cassian extricate himself from them by the end of the second episode. 

Will we see these hapless guerillas again later in the season, and, if so, will they have learned how to work together? Will future episodes feature appearances of iconic characters like Darth Vader or the Emperor? Will Dedra ever identify Luthen (Stellan Skarsgård) as Axis, the mastermind behind many of the rebels’ activities? Will Cassian ever find his long-lost sister? 

These and other compelling questions will continue to drive “Star Wars” fans, series devotees, and casual viewers to watch the brilliant “Andor,” despite most of us already knowing where the story is headed — to the Death Star and beyond.