‘Andor’ Season 1, Episode 4, Recap & Review: “Aldhani

Creator Tony Gilroy has pulled together a Star Wars series that is one of the most mature yet but has the most nostalgic tones in the franchise since the original trilogy. If by the fourth episode, “Aldhani,“ you haven’t decided Andor is the right way to portray Star Wars on the small screen (treating it as if it was meant for the large screen), you may be on the other side of a crevasse that’s about to separate the fandom even further.

It’s no judgment toward fans of the animated series’ often tonally light adventures or any recent Disney+ takes on Star Wars. We can enjoy both, but Andor is too good not to see a new branch forming.

Outside of Rogue One and The Empire Strikes Back, we haven’t seen a gritty look at the galaxy where hope is not something guaranteed. Andor takes it a step further and deals with the bureaucracy the prequels glossed over while forcing us to see the struggle of the individual lives affected by it. We see everything from the struggling rebels camped in the woods for months outside their target while they wait for their cover in the form of a celestial event that comes every three years to the white-walled room meetings of Imperial Security. Major Partagaz (Anton Lesser) is especially notable in his role. He fits the Tarkin mold quite nicely but with his own conventionalist reason.

Little time has passed since Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) whisked Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) away with the uncertain motive of recruiting him to the rebel cause. Rael exploits Cassian’s desperation by turning him into a mercenary first. The stolen NS9 Starpath Unit is now in the hands of the Empire. A security agent with a keen eye looks to connect the stolen equipment to a pattern of incidents that point to a galactic insurgency.

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Meanwhile, Dedra Meero’s (Denise Gough) peers and superiors see her comprehension of the security force’s objective and larger picture as unwelcome ambition and professional ladder climbing. The aforementioned bureaucracy paints a picture of the modern struggle for equal footing in the workplace here. Note: Palpatine’s Empire has little room or tolerance for non-humans and women in high positions. This new character won’t be Grand Admiral Thrawn anytime soon, but she will shake this series. The Imperial officers and Corporate Sector officers of Andor are some of the most believable characters we’ve seen in Star Wars because they aren’t cookie-cutter Stormtroopers with cardboard personalities. They are complex individuals with motivations that drive them outside their allegiance to the Empire.

After a swig of “Med Nog” and a continued conscription discussion with Luthen Rael, Cassian Andor is introduced to the leader of a band plotting to rob the Empire of a large portion of its payroll. The proceeds are presumably to fund the newfound rebellion. These are details Luke Skywalker never had to deal with. These aren’t glamorous characters. These are the dirty dozen, the Ocean’s Eleven if they were cleaned up a bit. Someone will walk away with the prize, but you get the impression these characters are expendable in a way you may have hoped most of the characters from Rogue One were not. We already know Cassian survives through the acquisition of the Death Star plans, but he’s in the mountains of a remote ‘but not too remote’ planet plotting a heist with a team that has no guarantee to survive the series. These characters have true consequences looming behind them.

As suggested by Rael, Cassian is working with this team under the assumed name Clem. It isn’t clear why he has to give a false name to a trepidatious group about his sudden appearance. His arrival three days before a job they’ve been training months for is a wrench in the works. Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) is a strong leader whose hand is forced by something Rael seems to have over her. She reluctantly accepts Cassian into the revolutionary squad, fooling her trusted crew into believing he was a planned floater all along. Cassian, or rather Clem, is meant to be redundancy insurance in case a team member goes down in the mission, and more than one certainly will. Foreshadowing gives us a napping sentry in their group, who will likely be to blame when the bantha fodder hits the pod racer turbine.

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The Corpos responsible for allowing Cassian to get away is reprimanded as the Empire furthers its control over the corporate sectors. Meanwhile, Mon Mothma of the Imperial Senate is covertly communicating with Luthen Rael. He’s assuming his own secret identity (the rhyming within the episodes continues)… as an art dealer. He’s still Luthen, but he’s prepared himself with a wig and new threads. He’s hiding something from the audience, and we’re not sure which persona is the authentic one.

Under the guise of needing a gift for her husband, Mon Mothma has a clandestine exchange with Luthen. During the brief conversation, she mentions that spies have infiltrated the Senate. Her red herring “new driver” is too apparent. A later tense scene with her husband gives an impression of a tremulous relationship. Having not been mentioned in any previous canon, look for her husband, Perrin (Alastair Mackenzie), to be one of those spies.

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