Star Wars has plenty of endings to choose from. It first ended in 1983, with Return of the Jedi and the redemption of Darth Vader; again in 2005, when Revenge of the Sith circled back to finish the prequel trilogy with the delivery of baby Luke Skywalker to his aunt and uncle and Tatooine; and once more in 2019, when The Rise of Skywalker brought a nine-movie saga to a somewhat haphazard close. At the same time, Star Wars was not purchased by Disney in 2012 with the intent of ending, or even producing a single event movie every three to five years. Star Wars is a franchise, and these days, franchises run forever, in multiple directions.
This made the recent series finale of Andor feel like an uncommon event in this ever-expanding universe. A run of two seasons and 24 episodes is not exactly epic, even by streaming-TV standards. Yet since Star Wars made the jump to big-budget live-action television over five years ago, it has yet to produce a live-action show with more episodes than Andor (The Mandalorian currently has 24, the same number), nor one with a definitive, designed-as-such series finale. The upcoming film The Mandalorian & Grogu may serve as that for the franchise’s biggest TV hit. Otherwise, there have been multiple miniseries of nebulous second-season prospects; The Acolyte, which was genuinely canceled in the midst of a multi-season plan; and Ahsoka, whose second season will air next year. It’s the only live-action Star Wars show currently in production. So now that the two-season run of Andor is complete, closing a loop by tying straight into the beginning of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, has Star Wars on TV closed the loop as well? Perhaps, as with the newly announced plans to scale back MCU shows, the Disney+ arm of this universe will be more tertiary going forward.
Andor would certainly make for a stirring unofficial finale. By all accounts, this is an unusual project: A human-driven, adult-targeted show that helps bridge the operatic tragedy of Revenge of the Sith and the downbeat-yet-hopeful story of Rogue One, made with the style of showrunner Tony Gilroy. Though Leslye Headland brought her sensibilities to The Acolyte, most Star Wars TV has followed the lead of Mandalorian masterminds Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni: variations on familiar themes, continuations of actual animated series in live-action form, lots of fan service. Andor feels like a genuine re-envisioning of what Star Wars could look like. Occasionally, this reimagining would dip into self-seriousness and the show would go 30 minutes or more without any sci-fi flourishes (at which point it’s just a show about nazi-occupied France or the fascist-threatened United States without saying so). But that’s also part of what made it so distinctive, so vastly unlike its TV cousins – and a dicey proposition for Disney, which quickly converted a potential five-season show into a two-season show.
Supposedly this was also due to practical concerns related to such a massive, immersive production, and the logistical/physical difficulty of Diego Luna playing a character in an ongoing set before Rogue One but shot what would have been a decade-plus later. But if Andor had been a massive hit, Disney would have made five seasons happen in an instant. Instead, those arcs were condensed into three-episode de facto movies, linked into a 12-episode season. The point is, Disney does not seem particularly eager to revisit the Andor model of making Star Wars on TV. The real question is, what does Lucasfilm do instead, when they’ve sent their best soldier out to the big screen?
The Mandalorian & Grogu is just the most extreme example of the increased symbiosis between Star Wars movies and TV ever since the franchise was revived in 2015, even before Disney+ was really in the picture. The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams had established himself in features, of course, but the majority of his big-screen projects were based on old TV properties – and at their best, held the promise and energy of a super-sized TV pilot. When Rian Johnson took things in a bolder, more cinematic, more thought-provoking direction with The Last Jedi, some portion of the fanbase freaked out, which in turn spooked the executives; meanwhile, The Mandalorian became the de facto home for Star Wars traditionalism. This would have made plenty of sense had the films continued in the vein of The Last Jedi and Rogue One (both huge hits, for that matter); instead, there was panicking and pausing.
Now with Mando coming to the movies, and another feature in the works from Shawn Levy (not exactly Tony Gilroy in the visionary department), it feels a little like the TV and movies have swapped places. After a couple of series that moved further away from familiar characters to good effect, the second season of Andor finished up the boldest and thorniest Star Wars narrative in years. The big screen, on the other hand, is being primed for more nostalgia, fan-service, and crowd-pleasing. The Force Awakens proved that stuff could be done in a lively and fresh way; it’s harder to picture the director of Night at the Museum coming up with something similar. (Abrams may be a TV guy at heart, but he’s made a lot of good TV. It’s the co-creator of Lost versus a producer of Stranger Things.)
Moreover, it’s hard to know what to expect from live-action Star Wars TV in the wake of Andor. That show, with its dense plotting, big canvas, and sophisticated dialogue, seems irreplaceable at the moment, and it’s easy to imagine a potential replacement clumsily mixing prestige-TV cliches with sci-fi tropes. (Or just hiring the nearest Skarsgård to make Luthen Rael: Origins.) Maybe a Star Wars show that finds a way to actually air a healthy number of episodes every year could embrace the format’s experimentation and serve as test kitchen of sorts for different ways of looking at this world. Then again, maybe a test is less necessary than Disney might assume. The Last Jedi had an artistic sensibility and made a bunch of money. Andor had an artistic sensibility and won a bunch of acclaim. It seems like the main thing Disney needs to keep Star Wars interesting, in film or on TV, is to simply avoid second-guessing the good stuff.
Jesse Hassenger (@rockmarooned) is a writer living in Brooklyn podcasting at www.sportsalcohol.com. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others.