Andor S1E3-4: The Tempo Picks Up but Loose Threads Remain
Recently I watched episodes 3-4 of the newest Star Wars spinoff, Andor. After the very slow start in eps. 1-2 the tempo really picked up in the next two episodes.
Ep. 3 is an action-thriller style story with a run-and-gun battle between Cass, the protagonist, and the security forces he ran afoul of in earlier episodes. Ep. 3 also brings to a reasonable conclusion to the confusing "Lord of the Flies" flashback sequence in an alien language with no subtitles. We at least come to understand who Cass is, who Maarva as his mother is, and why he's still looking for his sister.
Ep. 3 also connects Cass's personal storyline to the story of the resistance. This is more fully fleshed out in ep. 4, where the story turns from action-thriller to action-adventure. Cass meets new allies and struggles with accepting a purpose larger than himself.
There are still dangling plot elements at the end of ep. 4. Parts of Cass's background have been hinted at as being crucially important... but it's been left unclear what they are. In particular, where did he develop the Jason Bourne-like skills he occasionally remembers to use? Did he spend a few years in a juvenile prison? Toughen up from a few years of forced labor? Was he a black-ops soldier of some kind? Those are a lot of disparate possibilities to leave dangling. What happened to his mother, his friends, and his long-lost sister after the brute squad in ep. 3? Plus, there's the completed subplot with the corporate security team members. Was that just a lot of time spent on characters we'll never see again, or will they come back around into the story again? Overall this story is nowhere near as tightly written as The Mandalorian but at least it's better than The Book of Boba Fett- and yes, that's damning it with faint praise.
Ep. 3 is an action-thriller style story with a run-and-gun battle between Cass, the protagonist, and the security forces he ran afoul of in earlier episodes. Ep. 3 also brings to a reasonable conclusion to the confusing "Lord of the Flies" flashback sequence in an alien language with no subtitles. We at least come to understand who Cass is, who Maarva as his mother is, and why he's still looking for his sister.
Ep. 3 also connects Cass's personal storyline to the story of the resistance. This is more fully fleshed out in ep. 4, where the story turns from action-thriller to action-adventure. Cass meets new allies and struggles with accepting a purpose larger than himself.
There are still dangling plot elements at the end of ep. 4. Parts of Cass's background have been hinted at as being crucially important... but it's been left unclear what they are. In particular, where did he develop the Jason Bourne-like skills he occasionally remembers to use? Did he spend a few years in a juvenile prison? Toughen up from a few years of forced labor? Was he a black-ops soldier of some kind? Those are a lot of disparate possibilities to leave dangling. What happened to his mother, his friends, and his long-lost sister after the brute squad in ep. 3? Plus, there's the completed subplot with the corporate security team members. Was that just a lot of time spent on characters we'll never see again, or will they come back around into the story again? Overall this story is nowhere near as tightly written as The Mandalorian but at least it's better than The Book of Boba Fett- and yes, that's damning it with faint praise.