The second season of “Andor” is a ticking clock counting down to the Galactic Civil War that launched “Star Wars.” At 12 episodes, it leaves a person yearning for more time with Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor while appreciating that the best TV series are insistently finite. 

Besides, since the story leads directly into the events of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” it’s really a 13-episode season with a spectacularly tragic finish. Cassian, Jyn Erso (played in the movie by Felicity Jones) and their off-the-books rebel band succeed in the mission and lose everything in the same planet-vaporizing flash.

Mounting a rebellion means resigning oneself to accepting loss after loss after loss until you finally pull out a victory.

This spirit of loss prevails throughout each of these tautly rendered final episodes in which Cassian becomes the unsung hub around which the revolution spins. Luna’s hero endures many along the way, as do Galactic Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) and Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Cassian’s handler now that he’s a spy for the rebellion. The emotional scale of these losses varies, at first. 

But as the season cruises into its final hours, everyone’s stakes narrow to the same conclusion of either taking moral comfort in serving the rebellion or dying under Imperial fascism. As one of the good guys grimly puts it, mounting a rebellion means resigning oneself to accepting loss after loss after loss until you finally pull out a victory.

That “Andor” mirrors our current political state is old news, although if the accuracy with which it chronicles fascism’s rise in a galaxy far, far away felt closer in 2022, it now mirrors our present. 

"Andor" (Lucasfilm/Disney )Details of the title character’s biography reflect prominent symptoms foretelling our full-blown case of autocracy. His early years are spent in places ravaged by the Empire’s environmental degradation, first on Cassian’s destroyed planet of origin, then on his adoptive home world of Ferrix, a rocky salvaging base. 

Later, he’s disappeared to an Imperial prison work colony where he and other inmates are forced into industrial slavery while his friend Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) is captured and tortured. 

Season 2 picks up four years before the Battle of Yavin, or BBY 4, and we can already see that Cassian’s........

© Salon