Main cast: Diego Luna (Cassian Andor), Stellan Skarsgård (Luthen Rael), Genevieve O’Reilly (Mon Mothma), Denise Gough (Dedra Meero), Kyle Soller (Syril Karn), Adria Arjona (Bix Caleen), Fiona Shaw (Maarva Andor), Faye Marsay (Vel Sartha), Varada Sethu (Cinta Kaz), Elizabeth Dulau (Kleya Marki), Kathryn Hunter (Eedy Karn), Alastair Mackenzie (Perrin Fertha), Anton Lesser (Major Lio Partagaz), Ben Miles (Tay Kolma), and Gary Beadle (Clem Andor)
Director: Benjamin Caron

Well, now that the Aldhani heist is over and done with, and a bulk of the useless filler characters have been trimmed, it’s actually remarkable how bloated the remaining cast still is. Andor is definitely a space opera, with emphasis on the word “opera”, because my god, this show is starting to resemble a soap opera more and more.

You know how in soap operas, characters will take forever to go from one point to another, and plot points take their own sweet time to go anywhere, if at all? Also, the main characters are all as dumb as dirt, and they are alive thus far mostly because of plot armor rather than their own ingenuity and cunning.

Well, that’s this show.

It hits me, as I watch Announcement, that this is the freaking seventh episode in the season and I don’t know who Andor is still.

Oh, I know he had a sad The Jungle Book-ian past, and he had some run-ins with the law, and he loves his momma, but… who is he? I know of some things that happened in his past, but these are events, not aspects of a personality.

No wonder I don’t care about this bloke at all. He’s just a blank slate, and I’m also increasingly annoyed by Diego Luna’s perpetual “I’m a befuddled baby-faced round-headed moon” facial expression. Maybe the character is as confused as I am as to what he is doing in this episode.

It’s not like he’s smart. He’s part of a criminal enterprise that is now wanted by the Imperial Security Bureau, so he just waltzes back to Coruscant, where he’s already on the crap list of the folks there. That’s a reasonable thing to do. What can go wrong?

Sure, you can he just wants to say goodbye to his mother, but for the sake of Palpatine’s pimpled rump, can’t he send an encrypted email or something?

This episode sees him taking forever to say goodbye to his mom and his ex-girlfriend, and when he does finally end up on some other planet, he spends one scene apparently making his way around by being a gigolo before he gets arrested and is sentenced to six years of jail.

The lead character’s intelligence is a marvel to behold. How is he alive again? Oh right, plot armor.

The rest of the episode is filled with scenes of the obvious: the Imperial folks mull over the heist. Most of them decide it’s just a daring robbery, a few believe that this is the Announcement in the title, from those pesky rebels that they have only just begun so ooh, Imperial bastards better be afraid. Mothma meets Rael and basically goes, “You serious?” and he goes, “Yeah, deadly serious.”

So, in other words, Andor has been a useful idiot of a pawn, he’s outlived his usefulness, and he can’t even pull off his debut as a gigolo for more than one scene before tripping up and getting arrested.

Really, I don’t need an episode of slightly over 50 minutes to know that.

This show is officially a well-produced meh. How many episodes are left? Five? Oh god.