Diego Luna as Cassian Andor and new character Luthen Rael.
Lucasfilm / Disney+
“Andor” debuted its first three episodes last week.
It reflects how the show’s narrative will be broken up in blocks of episodes.
It’s tempting to wait to watch each block instead of watching one episode every week.
Disney+’s new “Star Wars” series, “Andor,” debuted its first three episodes last week, and there was something noticeably seamless about watching all three back-to-back.
I don’t particularly like when TV creators compare their shows to “one long movie,” but in the case of “Andor,” the first three episodes felt like a single, two-hour episode.
Sure, each episode had an “ending.” But those endings felt more like conveniently timed breaks than conclusions. And that’s by design.
The show’s creator, Tony Gilroy — who was brought in for rewrites and reshoots on the 2016 movie “Rogue One,” which this show is a prequel to — has said that he knew how he wanted to begin and end the series, and that the beginning takes place over the first three episodes.
“I knew where it was going to end up,” Gilroy said during an interview last week on The Watch podcast. “I knew what the last two episodes were going to be about when we came into the [writers] room and I knew what the first three were about.”
He then suggested that the next three have a similar structure, as a batch of episodes that deal with one main “event.”
“Four, five, and six will be that event and seven will be the ramifications of that event,” Gilroy said. “Then we’ll have a whole new block of things to happen.”
Based on Gilroy’s comments, it seems that “Andor” can be broken down by the first three episodes; episodes four, five, and six; episode seven as its own thing; eight, nine, and 10 as potentially its own block; and then eleven and twelve as the final batch.
I’m glad I watched the first three in one sitting, and considering the rest of the series will have a similar structure, I’m tempted to wait to watch the show based on the aforementioned episode blocks.
From here on, “Andor” will be released on Disney+ on an episode-a-week basis, meaning I’d have to wait a few weeks to watch it again if I were to decide to do that.
It’s tempting to watch it weekly, too, since it’s actually a good show. It’s definitely the best “Star Wars” series since “The Mandalorian,” as I was disappointed by “The Book of Boba Fett” and “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” But I also appreciate the episode format “Andor” is striving for, and watching every week might ruin the experience.
At any rate, a second season is already guaranteed for “Andor.” Gilroy has said that the entire series will take place over two seasons with 24 total episodes.
Season one takes place five years before the events of “Rogue One,” and the first season covers the first year. Season two will cover the next four. Gilroy has already hinted that season two will be broken down by a similar narrative structure, with each batch of three episodes covering one year.
“We’re going to take our four blocks of three [episodes] in the second half of the show and each block is going to represent another year closer,” Gilroy said during a Television Critics Association panel last month. “We really get to take the formative forging of Cassian Andor in the first 12 episodes and then we get to take that organism that we’ve built up and run it through the next four years in a really exciting narrative fashion.”