You Can Know Next to Nothing About Star Wars and Still Enjoy Andor
Andor is a great series – even though apparently audiences do not appreciate it all that much.
Casting is good, cinematography is good, plot follows the time-honored tradition of "X but IN SPACE", where X so far were criminal dramas, heist movies and prison escape movies. And as it seems the showrunners were aware that their show is somewhat of a break from the typical Star Wars fare. So, they believe it can be watched and enjoyed without knowing much of anything about Star Wars.
In an interview, writer Beau Willimon (who scripted the Narkina 5 prison arc) said (via):
"My first fear was like, "Tony, I can't name every ship. I don't know every type of blaster. I don't know every mid-rim planet." He [Tony Gilroy] was like, "You don't need that, we've got Lucasfilm for that. We've got a whole team that will make sure that we're staying true to the canon, and that's available to us if we need to come up with very specific and obscure ideas about this stuff. I want to tell a human story. I want to tell a story of regular people who are trying to pull a rebellion together."
Sure, Andor is full of Star Wars Easter eggs and lore – but if a writer does not need to remember all of them then surely viewers don't too. Disney 's Star Wars offerings were – and are – routinely accused of relying on nothing but nostalgia baiting, so it is refreshing to see a show that is trying to stand on its own.
"Trying", of course, does not mean "succeeding", but as we've said before, Andor is a genuinely good show.
As the producer Sanne Wohlenberg said, it really has "…enough time to really dig into the humanity and the character-driven storylines of who is at these formative years of the Rebellion—who becomes the [inspiration] for people to make inroads to fighting the Empire."
Whether it is truly accessible to someone absolutely uninterested in Star Wars is hard to say. But people interested in the sort of films which Andor recreates in the Galaxy far, far away should give it a chance.