That's what I felt towards the end of Rogue One. Seeing Vader's shadow standing in that airlock switching his light saber on brought me right back to 6 years old. One of the best movie endings ever. The alarm going off, the rebels trapped in there begging to open the door, force choking the guy and slamming him into the wall, standing at the dock watching the ship get away...chills. It caught me 100% off guard in the theater.
So all through Andor....knowing that feeling is coming. You can literally feel it start. It's the size of a pea. And buy the end, it's a massive knot....ready for Vader to walk in at the end of Rogue One. In a little over two hours, Rogue One basically fleshes out everything that happened that New Hope pumped jamcram into that opening scroll...
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal
secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the
Death Star, an armored space station with enough
power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess
Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of
the stolen plans that can save her people and
restore freedom to the galaxy...
Obviously, that's a great story just ripe to be told.
We kinda know how the Emperor did his thing in laying the foundation of the the Empire...."So this is how democracy dies, with thunderous applause."
Andor fleshes out some of the mechanics of how that looks in the practical world in the microcosm of a several different planets. The bureaucracy. The oppression. Pettiness. Jealousies. Pride. Gamesmanship. Currying of favor.
But what Andor really does is lay the groundwork for the actual Rebellion. It's actual mechanics. The hierarchy. It's funding. It's acquisition of people and materials. And how it was not excluded from battling it's own pettiness, egos, and jealousies and differing ideas. It's two seasons of the literal handful of people that made it possible for all the heroes we know to do what they did in the films and culminates in "It's just people" when Lando rallies the galaxy. (Lando, btw, the ultimate hero of Star Wars. He blew up one Death Star AND was the one who rallied the entire galaxy to spearhead the final dagger to the heart of the Emperor and the Empire). There was no Rebellion without the people of Andor. There's no stolen plans. There's no plans. And no-one to steal them. Just the oppression of the galaxy and some smugglers. They carry the story from simply disgruntled people, to a proto-rebellion, to what we know as The Rebellion.
So damn fulfilling. It makes all that is Star Wars and it's central story....BETTER.
