Disney+ has released the first three episodes of the second season of Andor. If you’re a Star Wars fan — or just someone who can enjoy a good story in a sci-fi setting — I have good news: it picks up where the fantastic first season left off.

For the uninitiated, Andor is a prequel to Rogue One, the 2016 film about how Rebel spies obtained the plans to the Death Star; its main character, Cassian Andor, was a principal character in Rogue One. The first season traced how Andor came to join the Rebellion, and gradually introduced two other tracks of characters, following the leadership of the Rebellion (operating secretly from the Empire’s capital on Coruscant right under its noses) as well as the various Imperial counterintelligence and law enforcement figures who pursued Andor and the Rebels while engaged in bitter bureaucratic intrigues within the Empire’s deep state.

Now, as I’ve previously confessed, I’m a confirmed lifelong Star Wars fanboy: I was five years old when the first film came out, and it captured my imagination in ways that never let go. I have pretty low standards for what I need in order to enjoy a Star Wars film, book, or TV show. I even enjoyed the Kenobi TV series, despite some of the violence it did to the canonical story (because it at least had another fine Ewan McGregor performance as Obi-Wan), and I enjoyed Skeleton Crew, which was aimed at kids but was a fun romp with some good work by Jude Law.

Andor, however, is not just adequate Star Wars; it’s actually good. If Skeleton Crew was Star Wars toned down for kids, and The Mandalorian has aimed to recapture the spirit of the original trilogy, Andor is Star Wars dialed up for grown-ups. It has deftly avoided the twin hazards of a prequel by introducing enough new characters that we can forgive knowing how the two main characters (Andor and the Rebellion’s suave, wealthy leader Mon M0thma) end up, and by avoiding thus far doing anything with the characters or the plot that does harm to the stories we already know. That’s a model that worked well for possibly the best prequel TV series of all, the masterful Breaking Bad spinoff Better Call Saul. Avoiding those pitfalls is why Star Wars has had more success in recent years with television shows that kept more distance from the Skywalkers and other main characters of the original trilogy than the films have. A conspicuous exception was The Book of Boba Fett, which turned the legendary bounty hunter into a local mayor.

Judging by the first three episodes of the second season, the showrunners haven’t forgotten those lessons. The show opens with a caper that turns swiftly into a high-octane action sequence, and we’re soon reminded once again of the twin dangers of the galaxy: the places where the Empire’s eyes are everywhere, and the places that remain in Hobbesian anarchy. Viewers hypersensitive to political valences may gag a bit at a plotline that feels very much like an Imperial ICE raid of ‘undocumented’ farm laborers, but it was doubtless written and shot before the election. By the third episode, the stakes of betrayals, remembered traumas, and extortion have risen in some very dark ways. (I won’t spoil one scene that has been touted in the press, but it doesn’t go quite as hyped.) The dark side is still strong with Andor, and that’s a good thing in bringing balance to the Star Wars universe.