Why Andor Works and Rogue One Doesn’t
- john raymond
- Jul 18
- 5 min read
Andor, the two-season streaming series on Disney+, is not a masterclass in television—despite the chorus of online praise that might suggest otherwise. It is, however, a well-produced and mostly well-paced narrative with high production value, excellent performances, and a surprisingly nuanced grasp of political and emotional storytelling for a major franchise property. What makes Andor worth watching is not that it redefines the medium or the franchise, but that it adheres to the most important principle of storytelling: it begins with Wound.
Wound is not just a character beat—it is the reason story exists. It is the rupture that makes transformation possible. And in Andor, this rupture is revealed early: the destruction of Cassian’s homeworld and culture. That loss is not just backstory—it’s gravity. It pulls Cassian through indecision, through denial, and ultimately toward radicalization. It gives the show weight. And while the “Ghost” element—his lost sister—is introduced and then largely abandoned, that failure does not collapse the structure. The Wound remains active. The emotional arc has a spine.
This, more than any other reason, is why Andor stands out. Most modern prestige television and blockbuster films get lost trying to emphasize "flaws" as personality quirks or points of relatability, when in fact what truly matters—what drives the story—is the pain that defines the protagonist’s worldview.
Flaw is seasoning. Wound is the fire.
Andor remembers that.
Still, the show is not perfect. There is arguably an episode’s worth of filler. It occasionally drags before arriving at its thematic or narrative payoffs. The Ghost—again, presumably his sister—is left inert. Flaw as a device is inconsistently leveraged. All of this keeps Andor from rising to true narrative greatness. Its resonance is blunted, not because it fails outright, but because it abandons opportunities to deepen its central story. Thus, it lands as a solid B-: grounded in strong fundamentals, elevated by its acting and direction, but lacking the full architecture of a classic.
That said, it is still far and away the most competent thing produced by Lucasfilm since the Disney acquisition. Everything else ranges from a C+ at best to an outright D-. This brings us to Rogue One, which, despite its aesthetic competence and popular acclaim, is structurally and emotionally incoherent.
Rogue One and the Failure to Earn Meaning
Rogue One has the pieces of a character-driven tragedy but does not know how to assemble them. Its protagonist, Jyn Erso, is given a wound—being ripped from her family and left to survive in a galaxy that betrayed her. But this wound is inert. She speaks of her father as if he’s already dead. There is no longing, no ache, no unraveling of identity. She floats.
Instead of mining that rupture for character development, the film dilutes it by dividing attention across an ensemble. Cassian Andor vies for screen time and moral weight. K2-SO delivers comedic and emotional beats that often eclipse Jyn. And while this could have been handled in an ensemble drama, Rogue One still wants to treat Jyn as its emotional center—without doing the work to give her narrative command.
Because the story does not foreground her Wound, and because it does not explore her Ghost—no haunting, no refusal to confront the past—her Flaws become irrelevant. The structure collapses. She has no catharsis, no revelation, no transformation that ties her to the mission’s emotional stakes. Her rousing speech to the council feels hollow because she hasn’t earned the right to speak for the rebellion. She exhorts, but she does not embody.
And this failure bleeds into the symbolic language of the film. Consider the core catchphrases of Star Wars spiritual culture: “May the Force be with you” or even “I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me.” In Rogue One, neither belongs to Jyn. The former is said by her, but not felt through her. The latter belongs to Chirrut, a side character. In stories that understand transformation, the resolution of the Wound is often echoed in such symbols—a final gesture or phrase that demonstrates internal healing or self-acceptance. In Rogue One, that moment never arrives for Jyn.
By contrast, Andor introduces a phrase with weight and earns its repetition: “I have friends everywhere.” It’s not mystical. It’s not abstract. It’s deeply human. It shows solidarity, trust, resistance, and it evolves. Cassian says it. others say it. And finally, when Cassian says it to Mon Mothma in Welcome to the Rebellion, it catalyzes something deep in the viewer’s mind: this is the Rebellion. The phrase lives. It carries meaning because it is tied to transformation.
Rogue One: The Genre Confusion
At the structural level, Rogue One fails for another reason—it doesn’t know what it is. Is it a war tragedy, a heist ensemble, or a coming-of-age story? Tragedy requires a hero's fall or sacrifice to mean something. But in Rogue One, the death of every main character feels less like catharsis and more like an obligatory conclusion. It believes killing its cast will create gravitas, but without properly structured narrative arcs, death is just punctuation. It ends in silence, not resonance.
If it were a true tragedy, Jyn would have resolved her wound, confronted her ghost, accepted or been destroyed by her flaws, and returned nothing to the world—or perhaps something so costly it feels worth it. If it were a comedy, she would have triumphed through personal growth, repaired something broken in herself. If it were a tragicomedy, it would have played with irony and uncertainty. But Rogue One doesn’t make a choice. It borrows tropes from each genre but doesn’t commit to the rules of any.
This doesn’t mean that rigid formulas are mandatory. But form exists for a reason. You can’t call a painting a song. You can’t make a movie work if you don’t know what it’s trying to be.
Final Judgment
Andor may not be a masterwork, but it is sound. It understands where stories begin—in Wound. And even when its Ghost is underused, and its Flaws underdeveloped, the bones of its story are strong enough to carry the weight.
Rogue One, by contrast, has the materials but no blueprint. It cannot decide what kind of story it’s telling or who is truly at the center of it. Its catchphrases do not land because they are unearned. Its deaths do not matter because the people were never truly alive on the page.
This is the difference between television and cinema, yes—but more importantly, it is the difference between a story that knows what it is and one that doesn’t. Andor wins, not by spectacle, but by starting with the only thing that matters: the pain that creates change.
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