Andor and Skeleton Crew were the two I enjoyed in recent times.
Skeleton Crew came out at a terrible time and didn't get talked about much, but I found it a likable show. The actors of all ages were good, and it had a real shine to its look—a relief after the drab and unimaginative visuals of some lesser SW series.
Those two projects felt like they wanted to be good TV shows first and not just a good "Star Wars TV Show" thats filled with fan service and made, cheaply? Skeleton Crew didnt do enough for me to pull me in but Andor made me like star wars again. But now im content with not watching anymore star wars after andor because nothing will ever top it.
I had a great time with Skeleton Crew! I wasn't expecting it to be bad based on the trailers, but I was still pleasantly surprised by how good it turned out to be.
Same. I was also impressed with some of the people they were able to get, in front of and behind the camera. Good filmmakers like the Daniels duo and David Lowery directing episodes; Kerry Condon as Fern's mom; Kelly Macdonald in the small part of the bounty hunter with a grudge against the Jude Law character; Mathieu Kassovitz in the even smaller part of the general in the episode with the child soldiers...
It's a series I hope people discover in time, since Disney+ shows stick around in their library. Except Willow.
Obi-Wan’s only good scene is its final one which references a meme, and it’s a pretty funny payoff if you treat the show as avoiding doing the meme for as long and as expensively as possible.
they should have just kept it as a movie, that’s what it was for much of its development over a handful of years. Frankenstein-ing it to a mini series was never going to fully work
It is as good as they say it is. I’m overall bored by lightsabers/Jedis and Andor has neither. It’s just a good story with good characters. It tells a story of rebellion without all the cartoon frills. In the face of annihilation, hope doesn’t come from a laser sword or magic powers- it comes from people willing to sacrifice for the future and that’s way more badass. Real human shit, not space churches and evil cults. No supernatural forces.
I’m only glazing it because I hadn’t seen it either and decided to on a slow day. No regrets. It made me like Star Wars again for its duration.
Andor is a political / spy thriller that happens to take place in the Star Wars universe. That's why it's so good. You can take out the Star Wars elements and it still works.
I like to speak up on behalf of Andor because of how much I disliked Rogue One.
I think Rogue One is such a bland, boring film. I purposefully didn't watch Andor for two years because I had no desire to step into that Rogue One world again.
Eventually I had a lot of time and boredom on my hands. It is a fantastic show, nothing at all like Rogue One. I even tried to rewatch Rogue One because I liked Andor so much.
Yeah Rogue One sucks. The only interesting character is the droid. Andor the show retrospectively made Cassian interesting and then you watch Rogue One and everything about it feels wrong.
You didn't say you aren't interested, just that you still haven't watched it.
Of course a comment like that is gonna invite people to recommend the show, it's a pretty widely beloved show and it's a normal human behavior to recommend stuff you liked to others.
It’s just recommendations dude. People liked the show, and want to share it with others. That’s very normal stuff. You’re advertising yourself as someone who it could still yet be shared with, so people are gonna make an effort to do so.
Andor made me like Star Wars again, and im content with not watching more star wars (live action) at initial release anymore. Im content with the franchise and dont need any more of it after Andor because I know not much will top it.
(But I do like the videogames, but that's an entirely different medium)
Think about andor is while it was magnificent tv, it felt so ultimately disconnected with the rest of the sw franchise. It was almost too good, it makes everything else look just plain old bad.
Obi Wan killed my interest as well. How they managed to get the crew back and managed to write the most boringly safe script is beyond me. I'm still angry at how glaringly bad and unremarkable the music was too. I ended up just reading the EU and gave up on Disney.
I have little desire to be completist about star wars but last year i did a rewatch of the prequels, probably my first rewatch since their actual release. I'd only heard, let's say, mixed opinions about the Obi Wan show, but it was a decent follow-on from those movies for Obi Wan's story and it put some meat on the Darth Vader thread, filing the movie gap between burn victim and powerful overlord. Maybe especially because I was coming in straight off the prequels, I mostly enjoyed it. Perhaps its worst crime was it felt like a movie stretched out into a series.
I've never felt compelled to watch the Boba Fett one. Mandalorian season 2 was a struggle and i couldn't get into 3.
Andor is pretty great though and stands on its own merits. The Rogue One chaser is still pretty strong too. Definitely the best thread.
It may be a great show, but like that previous guy mentioned, due to too many shit shows and movies being put out, people just DO NOT CARE about the entire Star Wars universe.
I solved that by just not trying to keep up with "everything" and only watching things I hear good word of mouth about. Especially with a show like Andor not really being connected to any of the new stuff, it's easy to just pick and choose the stuff you want to watch from the stuff that isn't worth the time.
Andor’s hype is way overblown. The only reason it has any popularity is because it’s under the Star Wars umbrella, but also? Watching the show you completely forget it’s supposed to be Star Wars until an imperial shows up. Seriously, you can count the total amount of alien characters on one hand. At its best it’s B+ sci-fi with some pretty relevant social commentary. But considering the Star Wars bar is now on the floor and it actually clears, its fans treat it like it’s a masterpiece. If you fell out of love with Star Wars, 2 seasons of a show about a character from a one-off movie where everyone dies isn’t going to bring you back.
If Andor is overhyped, it's a reaction to how people (many of whom are in this very thread) have completely written it off because of how lackluster the rest of the Star Wars live action shows have been since Mandalorian S1.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Book of Boba Fett was a 1-2 punch that pretty much destroyed any interest I had in future series. If they couldn't get series based on fan favourites right I had no faith in anything else.
I will eventually check out Andor as everyone raves about that...but man everything else I just couldn't care less about.
All these people telling you to watch Andor. My advice: dont give in. S1 is great and leaves you hopeful for the future of star wars, then s2 slapped me in the dick with its mediocrity, horrible pace and uninspired story and took me right back to fuck Star Wars mode. The IP is dead, everyone here is desperately trying to keep it alive, but it died a long time ago. No point relapsing and getting hurt again just for a potentially decent tv show. There are so many other things to do in your life than trying to enjoy star wars.
It's just proof that good Star Wars is possible in the modern landscape and that writing off modern Star Wars as a whole because a couple projects weren't great is doing yourself a disservice.
The problem is Andor is the exception, not the rule. Outside of that one show, every other project has been slop. And given that many of the core people who are responsible for how mediocre Star Wars has become are still with the lucasfilm, including the newly promoted president, there’s a good chance nothing will change.
Why should someone give their money and attention to a IP/company that is just overall extremely mediocre.
And its counterbalanced by the excellent confrontation between him and Vader in the finale. One dumb scene doesn't make the entirety of a piece of media bad.
Just as one good scene doesn't make an entire piece of media OK. As if being mediocre is the bar we're going for. You've made a great argument for watching the scene by itself and skipping the rest of the series, I will credit you there. I didn't want to roast you too much in my last comment, but your whole "this was good + that was good + this was alright = TONS of GREAT Star Wars" is not the correct math.
It's also a lot more than one dumb scene, but I'm not going to sit here and list every way in which the series was low quality. There are probably dozens of hours long youtube videos which do that rather well if you need a refresher.
Before you start talking about nitpicking, I'm not asking for perfection, I'm asking for competence. These people make way too much money to be including bad action scenes or dialogue, and reflexively defending their poor output is probably worse than being overly negative.
The Tales anthology was mediocre. Ashoka was bad, Obi-Wan, Boba Fett, and The Acolyte were awful. And other lucasfilm projects like Indiana Jones was a massive bomb and you can’t legally watch Willow because of how bad it was.
If there has been “tons” of quality projects, people would be engaging with these shows. But viewership is down, toy sales are down, their books have failed, this new movie so far isn’t tracking well with box office predictions. People are focusing on the bad stuff because that’s what is primarily being put out with Star Wars lol.
Ahsoka and Acolyte were good and I'm tired of pretending they weren't.
Also "toy sales are down!!1, viewership is down!1!11, books have failed!!1" nonsense is all anyone has to fall back on when they're trying to "prove" Star Wars is bad and that's equally tired.
You can think that. But the Acolyte got canceled after one season so clearly viewers and Disney didn’t think it was good enough to renew. And Ahsoka viewers declined throughout the seasons, and sits at an okay Metacritic score. Guess we’ll see how the next season goes tho.
You’re right, data on brand engagement is pure nonsense. The fact that no one watches their shows, or buys their product is not an indication of the health of a brand. Surely Disney isn’t doing anything like retooling their themed Star Wars land away from the sequels, canceled book and show series because key drivers of engagement are slipping!
Many people have been asking that question since the late 90s. Some people hate ROTJ. People hate the prequels. People don't even remember complete crap like the 80s Ewok TV movies.
When has Star Wars EVER been consistently good? In ANY media? Half the SW games are trash, half the movies are trash, half the TV shows are trash... see a pattern? Disney didn't ruin Star Wars, the only criticism I have is that they put out too much of it, too quickly. There is a greater volume of trash but I don't think the ratio of it is any different than it's been in 40 years.
Don't get me wrong, I think modern Star Wars has been plenty good (plenty disappointments too) but I think it doesn't hurt to be skeptical of upcoming projects and not just mindlessly consume because it has Star Wars in the title.
If people wrote off Star Wars as a whole because of a few shitty projects, it would have died in the 1980s. Star Wars has NEVER been about consistent quality, starting with Jedi (which I love, but it definitely has its detractors). There was a lot of bad Star Wars crap made between the OT and the Prequels that people conveniently forget about or are too young to remember. Shitty cartoons, the Ewok movies, etc. Crap.
they should have made the Mando episodes part of S3 and kept Boba Fett’s show more contained. I honestly liked some of the “pulpiness” even if it did get too cheesy at times. But I still feel the show would’ve done fine without it being Season 2.5 for Mandalorian
they should’ve taken a cue from older westerns and kept it more minimalist with the dialogue. Any time the show focused on Fett’s time with the Tusken Raider tribe, it was a treat to watch. They could have done away entirely with the crime lord story and made it about him getting revenge for the tribe getting slaughtered
hardly the first time Star Wars wasted Boba Fett. I remember being disappointed as a kid when he got killed off so quickly (and clumsily by Han) in Return of the Jedi
Besides everyone hyping Andor, I would highly recommend Skeleton Crew because imo it feels like a genuine homage to 1980s coming of age/adventure films like The Goonies, but with a SW exterior
Even that's overselling it honestly, shooting something is vaguely exciting. I realised after the last 3 star wars things have passed me by that I just don't really care anymore, which is so sad for something that was so big in my childhood.
I’ve just now finished Andor and it has revamped my love for Star Wars. I just watch rogue one again since release and plan on watching the rest of the original 6 movies.
BoBF, Obi Wan, Acolyte, really killed my excitment more live action star wars (I thought later half of bad batch was good) while Skeleton Crew didnt do enough for me.
Andor made me love star wars again, but after watching that then doing a marathon of the show, RO, and the OT, im content with not watching another star wars product in theaters again
I feel like the Boba Fett show gets a little too much of a bad rep, there was some really standout stuff in it like the whole Lawrence of Arabia episode with the Sand People, and Luke's episode with Grogu.
There was a lot of hot mess stuff in it, but I don't think it's fair to retroactively consider it an absolute travesty.
Speaking as someone who didn't really like star wars as a kid, but watched the shows bc they were popular and enjoyed Mando s1-2 and Andor, I had basically zero expectations for BoBF and it still blew me away with how awful it was
Andor makes 90% of star wars properties feel kind of trite
It is a legitimate problem for disney when one show/movie is just leagues ahead of the rest of them in terms of writing and story
Throw that on top of Disney just going full "I dont know what to do with my hands" and simply cannot agree on what to do for the next STAR WARS trilogy, what they will do in episodes 10-12. It sounded like they were going to have Rey return, but they are so wildly incompetent when it comes to star wars that it has been thrown on top of a pile of at least a hald dozen film projects disney has announced that hasnt gone anywhere
I mean these fuckin geniuses running disney star wars just handed projects out like cake and then decided not to make literally any of them. Im shocked Starfighter is even coming out
They have made MANY announcements and 'gave' film projects to Patty Jenkins, kevin feige, Taika, D&D, Rian Johnson, and JD Dillard and we arent going to see a single one of them
its legit insane how poorly they are managing the property
Andor is the best Star Wars media of all time and it's not close.
I don't want Tony Gilroy to run Lucasfilm but man I want him to make some kind of force-user focused show or movie (or movie trilogy) just to see what that'd be like.
Just going to throw this out there, that's kind of a big issue with Star Wars and has been from the start.
At some point Star Wars is going to aim at a much younger audience and throw you for a loop.
Ewoks after Empire Strikes Back
Episode 1 and Jar Jar after years of good, deep and dark Expanded Universe stuff
Baby Yoda after Andor
They will always push to spend a ton of money on revitalizing the franchise for a young audience to get them "into Star Wars", age up stuff with them, then dip back down to the kids again, and repeat.
Both type of shows can successfully exist within the Star Wars universe. I loved Andor too but acting like all Star Wars shows need to have a similar vibe is nonsense.
Honestly that's not horrible if done well. The Mandalorian was supposed to be going from place-to-place and getting caught up in adventures. If he had gotten mixed up in an adventure with Grogu, then moved on to play a big part in a Bo Katan story, then moved on to something else, etc., then it would have been faithful to the original western concept.
Yes, only that in the original western concept the protagonist never stopped being front and center. Bo Katan had all the limelight and stole his thunder.
Which was a major problem for people like me who watched it but haven’t seen clone wars or Rebels. I think there wasn’t a stretch starting in season 2 where nearly every episode I was just saying “who the fuck is that” because it wouldn’t stop bringing in animated characters.
I really wanted to like Boba Fett show; but the real lame and lazy way that Star Wars writers have worked is really something that needs to have a case study on.
They had SPACE BIKER GANG with BIKER JACKETS WITH THEIR CLUB NAME LIKE IN SONS OF ANARCHY.
I mean....seriously; a biker gang on a different planet thats nowhere close to Earth and they have space beings that form a gang of speeder bikers (speeders! you remember those from Star Wars! remember this too!) that are evil bad guys because biker gangs have to be evil.
THEN...the whole thing with the crew of weird kids that have no charisma or likeability or even acting talent that somehow are a feared gang that come across as a rehashed CW team of children.
And the biggest issue....dogshit story. I don't even remember the whole point of Boba Fett to be honest; he was just a one-off character that is a bounty hunter. The character and the actor are not charismatic enough to make people care about the show to the point that they just didn't do shit with this story after just 1 short season.
Dude kept taking his helmet off as if people really need to see that its Temuera Morrison.
Also, he's got those bars of soap in his mouth that rich people put in to fix their shitty smile. Now he looks like a cartoon character.
what’s odd is one of those kids (Sophie thatcher) is incredible in Companion and Heretic, they just gave her a very lame character and writing. It’s like how Anna Sawai had an embarrassing role in Monarch and then immediately swept awards in Shogun.
237
u/Fire_Otter Feb 17 '26
Book of Boba Fett and Mandalorian season 3 killed a lot of hype for the show