What I’m Watching: Andor

Andor: Season 1, Episode 7 “Announcement” (B+)

This episode wasn’t quite as engaging as the previous one but did at least follow it up well, with the Empire ramping up its operations and mobilizing in response to the successful heist. We only saw Andor from the team that pulled it all off, and at first he was just told not to be too visible by a frazzled Maarva, and then by the end he was headed to prison for six years for doing nothing, a jarring development considering how he was complicit in a completely different crime. It’s intriguing to see the relationship between Mon and Luthen, particularly how thrown off Mon was about action being taken without her knowledge. She did make her own pitch to Tay Kolma, played by Ben Miles from “The Capture” and “The Crown,” warning him that her own husband couldn’t be trusted and trying to indicate to him that his liberal politics were not going to be an issue at all. As Syril toils away in obscurity thanks to his new demotion, the big winner of the episode was Dedra, who got reported to Major Partagaz by her petty rival only to see him recognize her initiative. It makes sense that artificially-drawn borders wouldn’t matter to rebels, but she also now needs to watch her back. I’m wondering if the many mentions of Palpatine mean that we’ll see him in this show, which wouldn’t be such a shock given that the now seventy-eight-year-old Ian McDiarmid has appeared numerous times in the role, starting in “Return of the Jedi” and most recently in “The Rise of Skywalker.”