JoelF847's page

Overall, does look pretty good, but still don't like how they handle him disguised at the little girl.

I'm not really concerned with what someone said in an interview out of context. When the movie is out, watch it, and then decide if they did a good job or not. Could have nailed the movie and fumbled the interview question, or there's simply misinterpretation of what was said.

Oh, and I forgot, the first season spent a lot of time with Andor as a kid flashbacks in some lord of the flies like planet where the kids survived on their own, but he was rescued, and how as an adult he was always looking for his sister, to the point where he didn't even want to be a spy since it would detract from the hunt for long lost sister. Season 2 never once addressed this. At best there was 2 lines of dialogue that Deidre was an orphan recruited from the Imperial Orphanage or something, so maybe if fans squint really hard and hope that Tinkerbell is in fact alive, then Deidre may have been Andor's sister.

Finally had time to write up my thoughts on season 2, it's super long and tedious, but that fits the show perfectly, so here it is!

When I started watching Andor season 2, my reaction was “Andor, now 20% less boring” and think that’s still a good quick summary of it. So my thoughts, not surprisingly, on season 2 are mostly negative. Having watched the entire season and had a few weeks to reflect on it, in general, I come away from the show with similar feelings to season 1, which at a high level, are that the worst part about the show is it’s horribly mis-titled. It’s not really about Andor, he’s at best one of 4 characters the show is focused on, and arguably the least significant of them. This show should really have been called “Birth of the Rebellion” or something, and even that is not super accurate, but at least wouldn’t be as horribly misleading.
When Andor first came out, it was described as showing the backstory of the Andor character from Rogue One, which sounded great. I was expecting a mix of Batman: Year One and James Bond, with Andor learning to be a spy, messing up, recovering from those mistakes, and growing into a super cool badass Star Wars version of James Bond. Unfortunately, season 1 didn’t deliver on that. Without re-hashing it too much, it had tons of boring things with very occasional bits that were good, even if they didn’t make a lot of sense. Season 2 was described by the show runner and Disney/Star Wars as being much more focused on Andor being a spy, coming into his own, and not having all that boring stuff. Well, it partially succeeded (by my estimate 20%). It was less boring, it had a lot less content where nothing happened, and even had a few cool action scenes.
Supposedly, Andor was originally going to be 5 seasons, but it only got picked up for a 2nd season and Tony Gilroy was told to wrap his plans for seasons 2-5 up in a single season. He chose to do this by taking his plot for each of the 4 seasons he had planned, and condensing them into 3 episodes each. Overall, this is likely the reason season 2 failed to live up to my expectations, since it showed. Tony was completely unable to let go of things to have a better narrative, and instead kept a lot from his original plans which simply didn’t work in the compressed episode count. I don’t know how true that narrative is, but having watched the show, it fits. If Let’s dive in:
Episodes 1-3 5 BBY (Before battle of Yavin) - We start off with Andor in the middle of a covert op to steal an advanced TIE fighter prototype. Cool, this is exactly the kind of thing I expected to be what the show was about, and they said season 2 would, so promise kept! Nice action/heist set up, some good humor of Andor not being able to figure out how to fly it since the prototype doesn’t fly the way most ships do, and then he escapes. He brings the TIE to some remote planet to drop it off with his contact, only to find out that his contact isn’t there, and he’s ambushed by a group of want to be rebels who think he’s an Imperial since he’s in one of their test pilot uniforms, and flying their ship. Then begins a super slow burn plot of him unable to convince them he’s also a rebel, and having to turn them into factions to fight each other. This part of the plot is cut up over 3 episodes, and drags on and on. It seems like these are the dumbest rebels of all time, since while their first impression of him is reasonable, the fact that he’s flown some new kind of ship to the middle of nowhere where some other ship was landed doesn’t seem very likely for a real Imperial, and it seems they’re stranded there and want to use the ship to escape. Why they’re on the planet in the first place, how they got there, and were expecting to leave, never mentioned. Why they shot up his contact’s ship so it won’t fly, also not really relevant. No one has anyone they can call to verify things. This group seemingly just appeared out of the jungle as rebels with no contacts, fighting the good rebel fight against the Empire which isn’t there. Also, the very fact that Andor is stealing a TIE prototype doesn’t make a lot of sense. At this time, the Rebellion is a bunch of scattered groups that aren’t coordinated, and don’t have facilities to reverse engineer a prototype ship and do anything with it really. Furthermore, the TIE Advanced isn’t even realistic to have a prototype yet, since it certainly doesn’t appear before or during the Battle of Yavin, 5 years in the future, and really only appears off camera in the X-wing and TIE fighter games in the 1990s, which are set during the height of the rebellion between the Battle of Yavin and Return of the Jedi. At that time, they’re brand new and in limited quantities, so seems off that there is a prototype to steal even. Finally, speaking of Yavin, when Andor finally does leave this planet, we get a panoramic view and see it has the stone ziggurat temples and that this rando meeting spot is in fact Yavin we all know from A New Hope. It also seems to be a planet inhabited by deadly forest predators who can pick off multiple armed rebels without a problem, but 5 years later they seem not a threat (even just a year or two later in future episodes of Andor S2.)
Meanwhile, there’s all sorts of other things going on too! Senator Mon Mothma has to pay the price from season 1 and marry her daughter off to the son of the criminal who helped her bankroll the rebellion. Oh No! We get to see just how wonderful this kid treats her daughter, and how much her daughter loves the idea. All season 1, her daughter spent doing nothing but rolling her eyes at her mom, like teenagers do, so now she’s developed as a character and seems calm, level headed, and in love, and happy to get married. When Mothma has a serious mom and daughter talk with her, and says, “you know, you still can call this off” her daughter naturally replies “Mom, WTF, why would I call this off. He’s dreamy, nice, treats me well, and you seem to not like his dad for reasons that you won’t tell me, and if you did in fact tell me, would make no sense, since he helped you actually start the Rebellion, which is good right? Or is the rebellion too hoity toity to work with say, a smuggler or something? But, this is a wedding in a tense spy drama, so if we spend roughly an episode of time seeing it, I’m sure there will be some kick ass payoff of cool stuff, like the Red Wedding from Game of Thrones, or the climactic wedding scene in the final season of Handmaid’s tale, right? Nope! Instead, we get a lot of Mothma being pissy that her daughter is happy, a lot of some wedding ceremony performed by a tree, and a lot of Mothma being so inconsolable over it all that she drinks. Not to celebrate, but to drown her sorrows. And then drinks some more, and drinks, and drinks and drinks. And THEN…..wait for it….she dances like she’s alone at some Star Wars rave or something. Oh, and Luthen is there instead of back on Coruscant in his antique shop, so you know some big spy stuff is going to go down too! Instead, he talks to Mothma some, and says her actual benefactor is in money trouble with the criminal she worked with, and therefore is a liability now. So, let’s have him killed, even though he hasn’t done anything but help us and make some bad investments. End wedding sequence with a shot of his driver/pilot being someone else who’s going to kill him in some cool dramatic and gruesome way to show that proto-rebel spies are serious….except, nope! Instead they just fly off, and we never see him get killed, or find out he was about to betray everyone or do something bad. He’s just offed off screen never to be seen again.
Also, we have a return to Dierdra and mopey accountant guy who’s too boring to look up his name. It seems they’re now a couple for….reasons. Sure, he saved her life at the end of Season 1, but he’s still a complete dweeb, but I guess she likes him because she’s clearly only able to be with someone when she’s completely in charge and he’s been walked over his whole life starting with his mom, so he’s the perfect doormat for her. But, we do get another scene with him in Imperial cube farm, and now, he’s an assistant manager (or assistant to the manager), and giving a rousing speech to the new cube dwellers about how if you diligently do your mind numbingly boring job that a droid could completely do in 10 seconds, one day, if you’re lucky, then just maybe you’ll discover some nefarious rebel thefts in the least exciting audits ever shown on camera. And then he finds out that someone has put his favorite stapler into a jello mold, and he can’t staple without first reaching his hand into the jello. Except that last part didn’t actually happen, since a Star Wars version of the Office would actually be a lot of fun, and fun isn’t allowed in Andor, so unfortunately, no Star Wars Jim pulling pranks. Instead though, he brings his mom over to see his new digs in the capital, and how awesome his life is in a stark white apartment, and they have fondue, and his mom hasn’t changed and berates him more for being a failure, so we get to see more of the most compelling mother son scenes ever to be filmed since Psycho, and he cries on his bed while his girlfriend tells his mom off and says “he’s mine to beat down on emotionally now, hands off!”
Also, since this 3 episode arc doesn’t have enough going on, we get to spend a bunch of time on some farm planet, with Andor’s friends from their home world being illegal immigrants without paperwork. Things are boring and slow, and one of them has a girlfriend, oh, and Andor’s love interest is there too, but having PTSD from being tortured and brainwashed by evil bad scientist back in season 1. But then, the Empire does an Imperial audit of the planet, since we don’t have enough audit stuff in this show. They send one tiny little ship and a handful of storm troopers there, plus a few officers, and the refugees have to move around to avoid the farms being audited. Riveting! But, one tiny ship of people can seemingly lock down the entire planet so our heroes are in trouble, they couldn’t possibly hide anywhere else on the ENTIRE planet. So slimey imperial officer says, he Andor’s girlfriend, you’re hot, to which she replies, I’m actually married, but my husband isn’t here. So he leaves. Only to later come back and say, I don’t see your husband, so I bet that was just you being hard to get, and now, to show just how evil the Empire is, I’m going to try to rape you. She naturally fights him off, cause even Star Wars trying to be edgy and adult isn’t going to take things too far, and then the refugees have to run but the guy who has a local gf goes to see her, even though he knows it’s only 4 people’s lives on the line, but whatevs. Then tense chase and fights through the cornfields, until they’re surrounded by storm troopers, so clearly they’re going to all die (crack shots that the storm troopers are known for being). However……just before this, Andor finally leaves the planet he was stuck on in his stolen Advanced TIE fighter, gets a message that no one has heard from them in a few days, and that there’s an Imperial audit going on there, so Andor flies off there, and miraculously arrives just in the nick of time from across the galaxy. Then we get to see another “stellar” action scene where he plays shooting gallery with all the troopers and officers on the ground, never being in any danger, and lands and rescues his friends. By the way, the 2 of them who I haven’t mentioned much never show up again in the show, so clearly are as important as they seemed these episodes. Same thing with Andor’s depressed BB droid - he’s there on farm world too, but hope you didn’t like him much, cause he’s gone from this point on also.

Finally after what seemed like a full season of boringness, we get to episodes 4-6, and a whole year has passed. You know this because it tells you in the beginning, and Andor is coming back from some mission which must have been really cool and exciting, since we never hear a word about it or see any of it, since exciting missions don’t belong in this show. Instead, he gets assigned the least exciting mission ever to be filmed, to go to the planet Gorman and do an assessment on their fledgling rebel group to see if they’re worthy enough to get help. Because the rebellion at this point is clearly so successful that they have to pick and choose which rebel groups to help since they’re so many of them. Gorman turns out to be a planet of high quality weavers, and their rebel group is just as tough and useful as you’d expect a bunch of weavers to be. We do get to see Andor go there in disguise as a fashion designer, which admittedly is vaguely amusing. Then he’s invited to meet the rebels, and we know they’re seriously not friends with the Empire because they have a monument to a massacre there from the name drop of Grand Moff Tarkin landing his ship on a bunch of peaceful protestors. So now that the Empire has set up some administrative office there, the Gormans are PISSED. Having a bunch of them killed years ago wasn’t too bad, but an office building, no way! It’s in danger of making their planet as boring as Imperial Cube Farm (....just wait, huge connection incoming). We also know they don’t like the Empire, because they’re the only humans in Star Wars that speak a different language, and they yell and shout at each other in it multiple times, with subtitles. It sounds vaguely Italian like, since Gorman spider silk merchants seem like they fit in the Renaissance. So Andor checks them out and decides they’re not good enough, and leaves. Most exciting Andor spy mission EVER!
Meanwhile, we find out there’s more going on at Gorman, since the Death Star can’t be built by wrongly convicted criminals on exotic island spires on some ocean planet alone. It actually needs the Macguffin Kalkite, a rare mineral that only exists on Gorman for some reason, but they seem to know is still the vitally needed component for the Death Star. Unfortunately, it’s buried so deep, that the only way to get it is to set up some giant mining facilities which will almost certainly cause the planet to implode and get destroyed. You know when they talk about that in fancy spy circle room that it’s going to happen, and when it does, watch out, super cool special effects showing the planet imploding, so just wait for it, it will be so super cool. But, the Empire, despite being shown all the way back in Revenge of the Sith murdering Jedi kids and babies, and in the Bad Batch show immediately following taking over planets and having an iron fist of control, they can’t go in and just mine Gorman for some reason. Because the Senate hasn’t yet been disbanded, so they could complain and form a committee maybe. Especially as we get to see just how effective the Senate is when Mon Mothma is around and stops all sorts of the Emperor’s plans (note, this does not in fact happen at all, not even remotely). So instead, they have to come up with an insidious plan. “How about we just control the media with propaganda and say those Gormans are really, really bad, so we’re taking over?” That idea is shot down, since it clearly would never work, no real society would believe blatant media lies about people who didn’t ever do anything wrong other than get massacred by a spaceship landing on them and making some amazing high quality silk just because the media repeated it over and over. That’s the realm of fantasy, and wouldn’t be believable in Star Wars. So instead, Diedra “I never smile” ISB lady says “What we really need to do, is have a super convoluted plan to make Gorman have a credible threat of rebels to give us an excuse to crush them”. They clearly don’t have any reason to rebel on their own, because the Empire is nice and sweet, and gives everyone puppies, and the Gorman’s haven’t been massacred or anything before. So, instead, lets send my boyfriend there to run the administrative office, since he’s good at that stuff, but we won’t tell him we plan to take over the planet and suck it dry of Kalkite. While he’s there, we’ll get to see him have weekly calls with his mom, and send her lifelike spider toys that everyone wants, but only Gorman has, collect all 323 varieties of them!) So we’ll send him there, and the rebels there will clearly spy on him a lot, cause they already hate the empire, but we still need to manipulate them for reasons. So then he’ll secretly pretend to be a double agent and feed them information on what we’re REALLY doing, shipping weapons in secret there, because the Empire couldn’t just you know, ship weapons there anyway, and he’ll tell them this, since we know they’re actually a bunch of wanna be chumps even though Andor hasn’t evaluated them yet, then my boyfriend will somehow get them to attack the weapons, become armed and be a REAL threat, so THEN we can go in and take over with a really good excuse.
Also, there’s a subplot where Andor’s younger friend is no longer pining for his farm planet girlfriend, but still is a really good mechanic, so he’s sent to Saw Guerra’s rebel group to help them set up some machine that only he is good enough to work. Saw is a rebel so bad the rest of the rebels thinks he goes to far, which we know mostly from other star wars shows and movies and stuff, but he’s played by a great actor, so we want him in Andor. He threatens this mechanic kid to helping him, even though he’s there to help him already, and teach his own mechanic to do the job. But, ha-ha, it’s all a ploy to expose Saw’s mechanic as an Imperial spy, so Saw shoots him dead and says “even though I knew he was a spy, cause reasons, I needed you to teach him mechanic stuff he didn’t learn well first, THEN I could shoot him. So thanks. Oh, and since you’re the only mechanic here now, and you actually can run that machine, you’re stuck here for a while cause I need to you be my rebel mechanic.” We have to wait until later episodes for that excitement though.
While Andor is away, his wife is living in a run down apartment safehouse and is still dealing poorly with her PTSD from being tortured and almost raped, so now she’s taking drugs. Yes, drugs…in Star Wars! Oh no! But they’re in eye drop form, so don’t worry, no snorting or shooting up with needles. Luthen visits her and finds out she’s not doing well, so isn’t going to use her on missions. Luthen also has his own subplot where some hidden listening device he didn’t even want to plant on some guy, possibly the criminal Mon Mothma is mixed up with and who’s daughter married, is now about to be found, since one of his antiques was a fake and he wants to check the rest out. So, even though Luthen never really wanted to spy on him (because, just trust us, Luthen actually doesn’t want to spy on EVERYONE, just everyone except this one shady guy), he now needs to get rid of the bug before it’s found. So he and his radio operator assistant get into the party, and have to get it out during a big party the night before it’s found. When there, we get to see she is way more capable than just being a radio specialist, since she pretends to seduce the Imperial IBS agent working for them, as cover to get to the right antique, and then she turns some knob on the bottom to get the bug out, but it’s STUCK. Then we have some gripping (see what I did there) moments where she turns the knob underneath REALLY REALLY hard, and it makes her hand bleed. When the host comes by, we don’t know if she got the bug out or not, but we do know she’s bad ass enough to twist a knob hard enough to make her hand bleed without shouting in pain. But, yay, the got the bug out. To wrap things up, Andor comes back and gets really mad Luthen talked to his wife, and learned she’s struggling. So he and Luthen have a big shouting fight, right there in the antique store. Then, facing the reality of her struggles, he decided to help her deal with it by killing the evil imperial doctor who tortured her last season, together, as a couple. Luckly for Andor, the doctor recently came to Coruscant, and Andor just knows where he is. We, the audience know cause we got a scene with him, but how Andor knows, completely never said, but we get a scene of him and his wife killing him to make her overcome her demons. Maybe he was listed in the yellow pages. End of episodes 4-6, phew. Who can handle all that excitement?
Finally, after what seems like an actual year, we get to episodes 7-9, and things are about to get real! Andor will have some real kick ass stuff to do this time around. Gorman is heating up, the rebels there show that they can do stuff after all, and steal guns, get one of their own helpers from Luthen’s spy group killed (who has a whole side story and romance with Mon Mothma’s cousin, but really this whole Gorman rebel stuff was too boring in the last 3 episodes for me to care much about this bit basically going as we were told it was going to.) But now that they have guns, which apparently is a rare thing in Star Wars, the Empire is going to get really mean and set up some blockages around their massacre memorial statue and not let them go to the central square! How dare they! That’s really going to tick the Gorman rebels off, now they’ll certainly do something so bad, the Empire can squash them and steal their Kalcite they don’t know about and make their planet go boom. Sad imperial boyfriend starts to see just how mean the Empire is when this happens and starts calling his girlfriend and says, how could you have used me like this to do your dirty work and turn some completely not likely to rebel for massacring them civilians into gun thieves so you then can blocade their town square where I buy spider figurines for my mom. I feel like an accomplice to something so bad it would make every Alderanian cry out in pain and fear and then abruptly stop or something. So she comes to Gorman to take control of the final steps of the plan. And then ANDOR (remember, it’s actually his show) finds out she’s there, and decides, hmm, now that I’m on Yavin again, and it’s now a working rebel base (presumably without any of the super lame rebels from the first few episodes who there rebelling against the empty jungle) and us rebels are doing stuff (but mostly on the completely different show the animated, and much more aptly named Rebels), I’m going to go run off to assassinate Dierdra, cause she’s clearly the biggest threat out there, forget Vader, or Tarkin, or anything. She’s so evil she just looks joyless. So he disobeys orders, heads to Gorman to sniper rifle her. The Gormans are really pissed, but before they actually do anything about this, the Imperials remove their barricades, and open up the town square. So naturally, the Gormans calmly walk to the square to have a peaceful standing around their memorial event, and that makes Andor not have a good shot at Diedra, so he goes into the square too to find a better angle. Finally, something happens, and the Empire has their hidden, completely not obviously surrounding the square soldiers open fire on the crowd for doing nothing. All chaos breaks out, and also, for extra weirdness, the soldiers are all not storm troopers, except for the ones who are, but bizarrely don’t wear helmets, just like all those other times we see storm troopers fighting without helmets. So, Gormans are getting shot like fish in a barrel for a really long time, and Imperial boyfriend decides that’s bad, even though he’s been bad and okay with it all along, these spider loving silk weavers have won him over somehow, so he runs out unarmed to the square to I guess try to save them? This whole thing also really messes up Andor’s aim, so he aborts the assassination attempt and tries to get the hell out of town, occasionally shooting an Imperial, but only if they’re in the way, not to really try to save anyone. Oh, and Andor’s young friend the mechanic is there with the Gorman rebels now for some reason, and has a new girlfriend, so you know he’s staying. Then, sad boyfriend sees Andor, and gets all mad since he HATES Andor (see season 1 if you forgot), and abandons his plans to try to stop the Gorman massacre v2.0, to tackle Andor and rage at him. They have a big old fist fight while things get blown up around them. Andor rightfully says the best line of the series “Who the hell are you?”, and then kills him, vaguely wondering why some guy he never met had more screen time in the series named after Andor himself. But now, because a bunch of soldiers shooting unarmed civilians isn’t enough, the Empire lets loose their super strong killer droids, who start throwing unarmed civilians around like it’s a super hero movie, and ignore being shot by those who do have guns. Clearly an inferior Imperial weapon that would make no sense to use throughout the rest of the Star Wars series of movies, so we’ll never see them in any of the Episodes IV - VI. Andor finally gets away, but one of those droids is coming at him, and shooting it won’t stop it, it’s going to squish him like a Terminator, right? But since Andor IS the titular hero, and we know has a moving coming up with rogue one, he gets saved through no action or effort of his own by his friend the ladies man driving a truck into the droid and smashing it. Rebel boyfriend then leaves to do more Gorman rebelling, and Andor gets going, but then says “wait, those super efficient killer droids were pretty bad ass, I’m going to lift it’s two ton body my myself, off camera of course, into the truck and drive it back to my ship, since I clearly have droid re-programming skills that have never been mentioned, and I’ll turn this into my sarcastic droid buddy in the upcoming movie. (where, by the way it will continue to be a nigh-invulnerable killing machine so amazingly effective, the empire will never ever ever EVER use them again).
In the aftermath, a lot of Gormans die in the massacre, and it’s makes the Imperial news, so now we’re finally setting up the entire reason Mon Mothma is in this show, to leave the senate after giving a fiery speech. So there’s a bit of political plotting to allow her to give the speech, since the senate is now functioning as just a group of Emperor sycophants, but Bail Organa (Leia’s dad and senator of Alderan, as well as much more active in the rebellion in both this show and Rebels than Mon Mothma ever was), digs up a point of order to give his time to Mon Mothma. Then, snap! We get a fiery political speech imploring people to stop the atrocities (even though they’ve been going around for years and years, including a prior one at Gorman), and names the person who’s really to blame….Donald Trump! (nope, it’s actually Emperor Palpatine, but the speech really feels like watching a Democrat on C-span nowadays, and it was about this time on Star Wars Day May 4th, that we got Trump wielding a red sith lightsaber, so it all tracks). But then Mon Mothma is on the run, but Andor is there to extract her, fresh from the Gorman massacre, and he actually does a bit of cool stuff, but it’s pretty abbreviated, and nowhere near as good as Chris Hemsworth in Extraction. So back to Yavin for both of them, where Andor gets yelled at and sent home because he disobeyed orders. Also, his wife leaves him, because he keeps saying lets just retire and not fight the empire together, and she knows he won’t keep being an effective superspy (but only off camera) with her around.
Which brings us to episodes 10-12, the finale. Naturally, being a show all about Andor, he’s not in episode 10 at all. Instead, Luthen gets some info from his contact in the ISB that all along, Emperor Palpatine was EVIL and not actually building an energy program, but it’s really a superweapon. Because clearly no one suspected he was evil yet. And by calling it a superweapon, Luthen knows just how bad it is, even though it’s not mentioned it can destroy planets like they’re pinatas. So naturally, he shoots his informant dead. But now the ISB is onto him so he and radio girl need to escape, but one of them has to destroy the evidence. So Luthen does, and radio girl escapes, and has a lot of flashbacks to how he found her as a kid, and trained her to be a spy, because Luthen, as a disgruntled soldier is a master spy. Luthen gets captured before he can leave from destroying the radio, and then stabs himself with a dagger in front of Diedra before he can be brought in. She manages to save him and get him to a hospital where maybe they’ll be able to revive him. Then Diedra gets arrested herself for botching things up and stealing the investigation on Luthen from some other ISB guy. Radio girl then decides that since her flashbacks are over, she better do a one person spy mission herself (cause remember, she’s badass enough to turn a knob so hard her hand bleeds!) and goes into the hospital to kill Luthen before he can be tortured for secrets. By the way, the hospital in the heart of the Empire uses a 1970s looking machine to keep Luthen alive, because Bacta tanks are for losers, and only people like Luke Skywalker or Boba Fett can use those to survive just about anything. So we do get a somewhat cool spy infiltration where radio girl kills her mentor and father figure, very sad, and then she escapes. She’s probably the most capable character in this show, a dark horse for sure, but hey, why not, the show’s only called Andor for some reason. Finally, off to the safehouse, to use an old radio to call for help.
Back on Yavin, Andor is back in his own show again, and gets the secret radio call for help, and assumes it’s Luthen needing him, so he blows out of there again, disobeying orders, but now with his fully reprogrammed killer attack droid and best bud. So they fly in, go to the safehouse, while there’s a giant hunt for radio girl going on, by another squad of storm troopers who don’t wear helmets for some reason, and they finally isolate her location because she and Andor use the radio some more. So he goes in to rescue her, and killer droid sees bad guys follow them in. Andor gets pinned down and is pretty useless, but that’s ok, it’s his show, so lets have him saved by indestructible (unless you have a truck) killer droid who effortlessly mops the floor with bad guys. Then they all escape, and go back to Yavin, even though radio girl Doesn’t Want to Go to Yavin, because for reasons never explained, the Yavin rebels don’t like Luthen, cause he started the rebellion and that’s a good reason. Also Mon Mothma is there now and she worked with him for years, so clearly, bad blood there. Anyway, Andor gets her back with the secret superweapon information, and it’s so big, they’re going to need a movie to deal with getting those plans, so don’t expect any of that in the show, it’s already been filmed years ago in Rogue One. So they get back, and Andor’s constant disobeying orders and saving important people gets him house arrest, and they also choose to ignore the threat of the secret superweapon info. Until they check in with Saw Guerra, who says, yeah, that’s legit, I just wasn’t going to tell you. Season and series end with them saying, “hey Andor, you know how we put you under house arrest? Well forget that, you’ve got to lead this mission now that we didn’t believe you when you told us about, but some other rebel leader said it’s true, so you’re our man. Now have a dramatic walk through the rebel base to your ship so you can take off and go on another one of your completely not on camera secret awesome missions to get the movie started, and we’ll start the movie with you ending the mission with the information, cause no cool solo Andor mission can ever be shown.”

The End (finally)

Despite all this, I really have no clue why so many people think Andor is so amazing. I don’t think it’s the worst Star Wars ever (that’s clearly the Acolyte, followed by Episode VIII, lets pretend spaceships are submarines and Luke Skywalker is completely different from everything we’ve ever seen of him).

UK has multiple major studios and lots of high budget movies and TV shows are filmed there. It's not that unusual at all.

Liked the new trailer, except for the main plot. It's a perfectly fine plot of turning people against Superman, especially the government when it realizes they can't control him. That being said, I don't like it as a plot for the first Superman movie in a relaunch. Can't we just have Superman being adored for fighting for Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow for a movie first, and then in a 2nd or later movie have someone weaponize sentiment against him? It would feel a lot more earned of a plot line at that point.

I've seen 4 and a half of the episodes so far, and by short review is that it's slightly better than the first season:

Andor Season 2, now 20% less boring! (but still very boring)

Longer review when I have a chance.

If there's ever an opportunity to backwards convert a PF2 adventure path, this is the one I'd want, since it would put the entire Runelord storyline in a single edition.

Smaller companies do it with 3P warehouse and distribution. While that may not have made sense in the past for Paizo, with >100% tariffs, it is a no brainer.

AJCarrington wrote:

I don't expect manufacturers/published to absorb these taxes...so, prices are going to go up (especially for those of us here in the US).

Actually even more for us abroad, since Paizo will need to raise their book prices for everybody and then our own customs will tax the more expensive books even more. On the more expensive months (i.e. the ones with two hardcovers), I usually already had to pay an extra 30 Euros in import taxes on the books, this will now go up even more, depending on how Paizo handles the whole thing.

Of course the situation is still in basically daily fluctuation, but at some point Paizo will need to ship their monthly stuff. I think they are holding off for the moment in hopes that the tariffs may be suspended for another few months, but we'll have to see.

Why would they need to raise the price for everyone? They can just ship from China to somewhere in EU for shipping and fulfilment. It's just the US which would suffer higher prices once they adjust their operations.

This is a movie I don't think anyone was looking for, and quite honestly, they have such a high bar to meet, it feels like a poor idea to try. Would have been better to make their own police parody movie and not try to make it "Naked Gun".

For me, the trailer shows they failed to meet the bar, the whole bit about him disguising himself as a little girl was silly rather than funny to me, and off brand. Again, had they just gone for their own thing, wouldn't have been nearly such a problem to me.

Get your copy of the GAP now, before tariffs drastically increase the price.

Amazing season finale and end to season 3. While it's sad it's over, sources say season 4 is going to happen in 2026, though no word yet officially until Amazon officially schedules it, but from a production point of view they'll be ready in ~12 months.

Took me 2 nights to watch the 2 episodes that dropped, but it definitely delivered on all fronts for what I was looking for. Can't wait for the rest of the ride. I do hope they'll have a little bit of the 6 year gap filled in by flashbacks though. Don't want a full flashback every episode, or a whole episode of it, but some bits filling in the gaps would be nice.

I had the exact same thought. Almost all of the characters should be played by people from the UK.

Actually, Peter Capaldi would probably make a great Dumbledore.

Finished last night, and agree with lots of the other comments. Wasn't a big fan of rage revenge Luthor, but thought Michael Cudlitz did a great job as an actor with him. I really liked how the season focused on Superman dealing with mortality, I don't think I've seen that take before, and thought it was a good spin on things to stay true to the essential nature of the character, while giving it a fresh angle as well.

I was amazed at how good the season was though considering that new-CW trimmed the episode count late in the game, and demoted a lot of the supporting cast to not be recurring characters. They still managed to have a coherent plot, and wrap up a lot of the side stories.

I'm guessing the ending with Superman and Lois growing old and having a good life together was in part due to the new James Gunn DCU, since it not only wrapped things up with closure, but it made it pretty clear this version of Superman was over, not to be confused with the new Gunn Superman, and not going to ever do a multiverse crossover. Would they have ended it that way without the new DCU? I'm guessing probably not.

I also loved the Tom Cavanaugh appearance as Godfrey, that was a lot of fun.

Also, with the live action Warhammer 40K TV series in development, it would be smart for them to plan their next game based on it to come our around the same time.

Extensively re-shot isn't really accurate. It was halfway done filming, and they scrapped it over not being good (including not having Karen Paige or Foggy Nelson). Got rid of the creative team, brought in a new one, wrote an entirely new season, and filmed that.

My reaction was mixed to the trailer, this in itself is not a good sign for the movie. For Gunn's Guardians of the Galaxy movies, the trailers immediately sucked me in and made them must see movies once they came out. The same is true for pretty much every MCU movie for that matter. The being said, I'm giving Gunn the benefit of the doubt, and will watch the movie when it's out, and hope it's good, not only for its own sake, but for the entire re-set DCU under Gunn.

As for the specifics of the trailer:

1 - opening with a bloody and battered Superman crashing to the ground sets the stage for a movie where there's a real threat to him, and it's not just a cake walk because he's unbeatable like most other Superman movies tend to be. Thumbs up to that!

2 - the trailer, like the movie cast, looks way too busy and full of characters. Not only do we have Superman/Clark, as well as Lois Lane and other Daily Planet folks, and Pa Kent (who seems to be a dairy farmer this time around, rather than corn), but we also have Lex Luthor (who is pretty much contractually required to be in any Superman movie no matter what, and no matter how over used he is), Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Mr. Terrific, some Godzilla like giant monster, some alien/android looking bad guy, Krypto the super dog, and I think at least one other super powered character. The trailer does nothing to alleviate the concern that this is simply too much for a single movie to handle well, especially when so many of the other characters have strong backgrounds and legacies in the comics.

3 - no clarity on who the main bad guy is. While this isn't a bad thing for a teaser trailer, I suspect it's actually some additional character who hasn't been shown or revealed yet, making point 2 even a bigger concern.

4 - The use of the classic John Williams superman theme music - this is mixed to me. On one hand, the fact that they're using it is a great nod to the past Christopher Reeves Superman movies, and it's fantastic music, so hopefully they're using it in the movie itself. However, the version of it they used, which is more of a rock and roll cover, is simply inferior than the orchestral original version, and also doesn't really fit the vibe. Superman is not a character you think of as a rock and roll guy, and his music should be more majestic IMO.

5 - finally, not a fan of his hair. Sure it's more aligned with the current hairstyles of tousled coifs from people like Timothy Chalamet, it doesn't fit the iconic Superman look established in my mind (or many other fans I'm guessing.)

If you're talking about the video games made by Owlcat, I agree with you, they're fantastic games. It does seem like they don't want to do PF2 rules for their games and Paizo doesn't want more PF1 games made though. Owlcat has made their most recent game based on Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader instead. No news on what Owlcat's next game will be though.

I'd be surprised if they don't have a new Fallout game in rapid development (not saying it will be shorter development, but that it was greenlit and bumped up in priority) from someone, whether Bethesda, Obsidian, or someone else. The TV show was a huge success and getting Fallout V out before it's off the air, after 5+ seasons, is likely a priority.

Cool, hadn't seen that new trailer yet. Still looks great, but the best part was the partial voice cast they revealed! Arnold, Keanu, and more!

Trailer out today, and it looks fantastic and fun. I can't wait.

The whole series was really good, but the back half of it was phenomenal. I especially liked ep 8, and actually wished episode 9 was next week. The ending of 8 was the perfect gotcha moment to be a 1 week break cliffhanger. I didn't watch 9 until the next day so it was at least a mini one for me.

I also liked how episode 9 was a full length epilogue essentially, whereas most shows use like 10 minutes for stuff like that at the end of the season. It makes you re-assess the entire season in a different light. I really liked the emotional arc of the characters overall, and the show as a whole, and how many were both relatable, and even the "bad" ones had a good mix of villainous and not, and weren't moustache twirling bad guys.

I didn't mind that there was no actual Mephisto, etc. since they ended on a note that still allows for that angle in the future.

Great bonus surprise before last night's Agatha All Along finale, Marvel/Disney+ dropped a combined sizzle reel/trailer for all their content through the end of 2025.

First look (outside of cons) of Daredevil Born Again, Ironheart, Wonderman, What If? season 3, Marvel Zombies, and Eyes of Wakanda, as well as some new stuff from the Spiderman animated show coming.

Everything also got a release date, which is fantastic. Tail end of 2024 and 2025 looks great for MCU.

I did read something that MCU is going to bring back Thanos for something - so could have Rio/death be the way that happens.

Definitely one of my favorite episodes. Now that's how you have a character die also. I thought the costumes were great - all as common perceptions of witches, which they spent a lot of time griping about earlier in the season, so was a fun way the trial was messing with them.

Season 3 announcement teaser Less than 4 months away, and no mid-season break!

Can you say "ad blocker"?

:D

Sure, but the VAST majority of people aren't going to use them for streaming TV. Most do that on their smart TV, or set top box, not on a computer where it's a lot easier to ad block. And sooner or later that will get blocked, then ad blockers will find a way around it, then it will get blocked again, etc. So, for some small percent of people, sure, they'll ad block, but more will simply pay $3 a month for the ad free option. It's a lot easier.

Still think that the math they do on this show is completely different from any other show, since they paid the sunk cost licensing for 5 years, so as long as each season makes at least a little incremental revenue for them, they'll keep going far longer than most shows which didn't have such expensive licensing.

Could it dip below even that point and get cancelled, sure, but it would have to drop a lot lower. If this were any other show without that licensing already paid for, it would likely get cancelled now, but since it's so front loaded in the costs, it has to only do okay. It would also be a huge prestige hit for them to cancel it before 5 seasons, so they'll likely even keep it going if it makes slightly less than break even.

Every character in the show (unless they had a profound pervasive developmental disability and I missed that) was evil.

I almost agree with you on this point, but there were 2 exceptions. 1) The Yoda post credits cameo, he didn't say or do anything, but wasn't evil at least. And 2) the senator investigating the Jedi (not to mention a good actor) was the true hero of the show.

EDIT: Oh, and 3) the not on screen technician who created the Jedi metal detectors which could sense disturbances in the force, since none of the Jedi themselves in the show seemed to be able to. He was a pure hearted hero who clearly didn't get the credit he deserved.

What I really want most is new characters, set after Return of the Jedi, in the Mandalorian/Ashoka era. I don't want more prequels, return to existing characters earlier in their lives, etc.

Ideally, time travel will happen and negate the entire Episode 7-9, and then they can keep advancing the timeline from a Mando/Ashoka era set of events. I don't expect the later to happen, especially not with a new movie planned with Daisy Ridley, but that's still what I want.

He could be the manager in Star Wars: The Office

The Last Jedi being an actually excellent movie that gets a lot of undeserved hate is a perfect parallel for The Acolyte.

But I don't believe catering to an increasingly insular and hateful fan base is a particularly good or healthy goal for any artistic franchise.

It's a perfect parallel for the Acolyte yes, but while it did get some undeserved hate for stupid bigoted reasons, the majority of the hate it got was well deserved. From the opening scene having a space battle that relied on gravity bombs (i.e. bomb propelled by gravity, not bombs that used some cool sci-fi graviton energy) to Luke's motivations and arc being weirdly distorted from everything we know about him, and never given a good reason, to plots that didn't make sense like a long non-hyperspace fleet chase, yet having an entire side mission to another planet which added nothing to the plot, to breaking the physics of hyperspace lances that don't fit into the established Star Wars canon/physics etc. There's lots of legitimate hate for that movie, just like there's lots of legitimate hate for the Acolyte for similar reasons.

The problem with the Acolyte was "it's horrificaly bad throughout, almost every single scene. The one thing it was good at was fight choreography."

Compared to say, Kenobi, which was well done, and a lot of fun, though I'd critique it as being relatively unnecessary. A good example of a decent 3 out of 4 star show.

And the pain is officially over. The Acolyte has been cancelled and won't be returning for season 2.

Discord invites only are good for about a month. Here's a new one.

Look how flat the "you're not twins you're the same person" revelation falls.

It failed so bad I didn't even catch it was a fact. It came across to me as simply Sol being crazy and out of touch with reality. There's nothing in the show indicating they are the same person and not twins aside from his one line of dialog, after its been made pretty clear that's he's out of touch. I still don't consider it to be a fact, even if the show creator comes out and says it. Nothing in the show indicates that's the case.

There's actually strong evidence in the show they are not the same person. They have different personalities, even as kids, different force strengths, different memories once they get split up, and different skill sets. All of those are 100% opposite of what "you're the same person" would mean. If the whole series we see Osha suddenly knowing things only Mae would know, then maybe I'd believe that theory, but instead it just is Sols crazy theory explaining why he went to such great lengths to break Jedi rules and cover it up.

I still think Kripke needs to bring in a Doctor Doom type figure to help fight the Supes.

Maybe Ashley?

Wow, the finale didn't pull any punches. It was a great mix of highs and lows and was really good to see certain characters resolve some things and work through to a better place. But man did it end on a dark note, or dark symphony to extend the metaphor. I'm glad they left a few things up in the air, as cliffhangers, plot points which simply didn't reach an ending yet, or just the entirety of how season 5 shapes up.

I am expecting that Gen V S2 will once again set a few things up for The Boys S5 based on a few of the similarities of their finales, as well as the crossovers which happened.

As for the rest of the episode, I can't say I'm shocked at anything - since nothing about this show was really ever shocking except the bad writing and plot details. It was just as good or bad as the rest of the season.

Fight scenes were great once again, have to give credit where it's due. As for everything else...not so good. The biggest WTF moment for me was towards the end when Osha is going to go back to train with the Jason from the Good Place, and then it seems the only possible option was to leave Mae behind, since his ship is clearly so tiny it couldn't possibly hold one more person. And since Mae had to stay behind, of course, lets mind wipe her so we can do the whole dumb (wait, I have a twin, that's who's behind everything song and dance next season, but reversed). The concept of taking her with them, or dropping her off at some other planet must not have crossed their mind. Much less dropping her off on the far side of the planet they were on, or letting her run off into the woods to fend for herself. It's not like she's some crafty assassin who could elude pursuers.

I guess the other surprise was that bad green Jedi never joined the battle. It seemed like they were building her up to do that, but I guess that's for next season, since clearly Yoda and the high council can't read that she's a sadistic political liar. Young 750 year old Yoda is such a gullible chump.

Also, the entire thing about Sol saying, oh, but if I could only have gotten both twins back, I could have PROVEN that they were creations of the force, since....reasons? That made no sense. Maybe if he had stolen some underpants he could really have convinced people of it.

Again, hearkening back to the "you must kill a Jedi without a weapon" thing, I guess all that training wasn't even needed, it seems any force wielder can force choke someone to death without knowing how if they just get angry enough and hulk out at them. That's what Luke did with the Emperor if I recall, spontaneously learned new powers without training cause he got angry.

The bit with Osha wearing the helmet and having a vision was also super lame. Since a) that was also apparently enough to learn new force powers, this time from her force witch heritage, and start to mentally control Good Place Jason Sith and make his eyes turn black, and b) why couldn't they have shown us the vision? We saw her other visions earlier in the season of Mae, and when Luke went into Dagobah dark side cave we saw his visions. Seeing it could have even been the correct amount of misleading, since she would have thought it was Mae she was seeing, but....wait for it....it was really a vision of herself! Cause they now have the same hair length.

I'm sure there were other bad parts which I've either thankfully already removed from memory, or will unfortunately remember again. At least The Season 4 finale of The Boys tomorrow will be a billion times better and I can look forward to that.

Well, another episode and another disappointment. First, it's 100% flashback again, and even worse, it's a flashback of most of the same events, just from a different point of view, which means while there's some new stuff here, a lot is recycled, and therefore not too exciting.

As for the specifics, it continues the trend of this High Republic era Jedi being practically force blind and unable to sense anything useful with the force. Instead they're using metal detectors and collecting samples to find some Mcguffin as for why they're on the planet, that it may be super high concentrated force planet that can create life and whole ecosystems from scratch. If that were the case, you'd think they'd just sense that and home in on it. Or decide that biology is actually good enough to re-seed life on a planet that was devastated by a disaster. Maybe the "lifeless" state a hundred years before was an exaggeration. It seems lots stays alive on devastated planets in Star Wars, see S3 of the Mandolorian for another example.

Then, they're absolutely shocked to find a group of people living here, in a big fricking fortress of stone, because when you go to survey a planet and you're a Jedi, you apparently don't look from orbit for signs of life and civilization like a big fortress, much less one that presumably has energy signatures, since it's got power.

We then learn that the High Republic era Jedi also super suck at not letting their emotions get the better of them, even when they are raised by the Jedi from the age of 4 or whatever, since half the survey team goes off half assed to kidnap the twins, even after being explicitly told not to. So the whole running thing about 8 (Anakin, Mae, Osha) year old kids much less 18 (Luke) year olds being too old to learn to use the force was simply always just BS.

Also, the Jedi "infiltrating" the stone fortress by first trying the doorbell, then scaling the walls just doesn't get noticed. The force witches aren't very good setting a guard on the walls, nor monitoring their super advanced Ring Doorbell on the fortress entrance to know anyone was there.

As for the big reveal, shocking, the Jedi screwed things up, didn't see that coming at all. What a mystery we've been following the whole season. Oh, and then they lied about it to the council, who ALSO don't seem able to sense much with the force.

I do wonder how in a 100 years, the Jedi learn to be sensing all sorts of things with the force? Maybe the Acolyte showed them that was a skill worth developing?

Keeps getting better each episode, which is unexpected considering how high the bar is. I cracked up in the farm scene when Frenchie "I can't believe this is F-ing happening to me again", referencing the scene a few episodes back when he was super high and Keiko was fighting people, and he thought it was more hallucinations. Or alternatively that he had previously experienced a farm full of V-ed up animals. Either way I couldn't stop laughing.

It definitely should have been 10 minutes longer and shown the fight. As it was, it felt like I know I watched the episode, but I can't figure out if anything actually happened.

There were also two scenes which seemed to have elements which abruptly stopped and went nowhere. (not spoilering these since they're so pointless and nothing happens with them, it isn't really spoilering anything)

1) When annoying smug Jedi guy tells good twin main character - you're going to have to give me that blaster (for unclear reasons), and when she questions why, he says "cause technically it was given to you by the Jedi, so it's not yours" and somehow implies that despite the Jedi as an organization giving it to her, he somehow overrides that and should confiscate it. Then she says "nope" and the matter never comes up again. Not only that, but later in the episode, she doesn't as much as draw the blaster, much less use it, so the entire scene was pointless.
2) walking through the forest, the tracker indicates that the area is somehow corrupted. There's clearly giant alien tree snails covering all the nearby trees, and no one comments on them in any way in connection to the corruption, or seems to care that there's corruption in the first place. It's as meaningful as saying that sky is blue. Finally, as everyone else walks away, good twin reaches out to one of them, senses it with the force, and it wakes up and flies off (because weird tree snails should be able to fly, checks out). Somehow this doesn't wake any of the dozens of others, but it's a big problem enough when it starts to fly back that one of the Jedi goes and chops it in two for inexplicable reasons when it wasn't clearly attacking, nor was there any attempt to use the force to calm it down, despite respecting the sanctity of life and the force that flows through all things.

Maybe next episode will feature the tree snails again, but they seemed to be far enough away from the location of the end of the episode when the fight starts that I'd not expect it.

I've highly enjoyed the 3 opening episodes of the season. Lots of fun, horror that you can't take your eyes from, and seems like every character has some great narrative arcs planned for the season. I especially love the Homelander homelife scenes, with and without Ryan.

Also, if anyone hasn't seen it yet, check out the latest commercial for X Liquid Death featuring the Deep.

I don't have a horse in this race, but I'm pretty surprised they're doing PF2e mythic and only using part of a hardcover to do it. Considering that they had the entire book for PF1E and it didn't work out, I'd be concerned that there isn't enough page count to fully flesh out PF2E mythic. 8 monsters definitely doesn't seem like enough.

It was officially renewed for season 2 on Monday or Tuesday, a few days before it released.

Katina Davis wrote:

PDF version should be ready!

The PDF's page count seems a little short compared to the back cover's stated 160-pages. Is there a gap in THE GAP? Are there SECRETS hidden in these missing pages? A mystery for the ages!

This is so silly and I love it.

The other 30 pages with the real secrets are hidden in specific white pixels in the 130 pages in the PDF. THOSE are the ones you need to crack, just find the correct pixels and start hacking the deeper secrets and mysteries.

Note: Don't use this file to train your AI models. Results could be unpredictable and catastrophic.

Time to bust out all your invisible ink revealing methods and techniques and find out what's REALLY printed there.