Andor is one of the more thoughtful, thrilling, and beautiful television shows I’ve seen. That it takes place in the Disney’s Star Wars galaxy feels ancillary to — and at times even at odds with — the exceptional quality of the show.
Disney has not been the greatest steward of Star Wars. I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since I was five, long before the old “Expanded Universe” was wiped out by Disney to make way for their new canon. Andor is the first time I’ve been unabashedly proud to be a Star Wars fan since George Lucas sold the franchise. (The prequels, remember, were released in a more civilized age, before the dark times, before the Empires of Facebook and Google and Twitter became the main conduits of discourse in our culture. I felt little self-consciousness about my love of Star Wars then, as our fandoms were much less central to our identities as they've been engineered to be now.)
Andor is a masterpiece, and whether or not you are a Star Wars fan, you should consider watching it.