With two months to go, the marketing machine for Andor season 2 has begun right on time. Less expected however is the content of the first teaser trailer itself. It’s the most different Star Wars trailer for a long, long time. It begins reminiscent of the season 1 trailers, with shots of characters walking from behind, but then the footage is interrupted by quotes from critics, praising the first season. Lucasfilm knows that we (me writing such an article and you reading it, if indeed anyone is) are sold on the show, counting down the days to the premiere. But this trailer is clearly designed to attract newcomers, people who have otherwise rejected modern Star Wars, and need to hear that it’s good and maybe lied to a little about it being action-packed, because the show is much slower-paced than the trailer lets on. And what better way to attract the masses than with a song by everybody’s favourite alt-country artist Steve Earle.
Yet it wasn’t the trailer that grabbed my attention but rather the news released alongside it. Not only will the show premiere with three episodes like the first season, which was to be expected, but three episodes will release each week. An arc released at a time, with the 12-episode season being released over the course of just four weeks, beginning April 22nd and ending on May 13th. I had a strong initial reaction to hearing this news and I thought I’d go away and contemplate it for a week, but my thoughts haven’t changed: I don’t like it. At all. In fact, I think I kinda hate it.
Television and streaming is in a weird place at the moment. Studios don’t want movies so they make movies into TV shows, then the episodes don’t truly feel like episodes but a sliced up movie, and then they’re released pretty much as movies with multiple episodes dropping at once. And now we’re being told the streaming model is broken/not profitable enough so they’re going back to making Star Wars movies, with Andor season 2 being the final season, condensing the original planned seasons 2 through 5 into just one.
Many are going to feel differently to me and that’s fine. I’ve seen people overjoyed by this news. A season in four mini-binge sessions. Essentially, Andor season 2, a prequel to Rogue One, will be four movies released over four weeks. That’s a wonderful quantity of content. But I don’t like the delivery method. I don’t want a movie. I want a TV show. The show is divided into arcs, three episodes to tell a story, now set one year apart in the second season, but each episode is still its own piece. Some episodes of the first season ended abruptly, like Cassian being tasked with some homework being the big dramatic dénouement of episode 5, but I still felt fulfilled by all of them individually.
The Narkina 5 prison arc was a highlight of the first season and I found it as powerful as I did because I watched it unfold weekly. We had to sit with Cassian in that hell for weeks and the final escape was as thrilling as it was because of that time spent dreaming of a breakout and cursing the wardens. Then Kino Loy’s reveal he couldn’t swim was heartbreaking, his release stopped dramatically after having a week to imagine it between the escape and his agreeing to help Cassian. That arc worked as well as it did to me because I experienced it over three weeks. It wouldn’t have been half as good if I could blow through the whole thing in one sitting.
I guess Disney think more people will be interested in the series this way and given the first season’s low viewership relative to other live action Star Wars shows, they need to try something. Although surely people are now only going to subscribe to Disney+ for a single month to watch everything rather than three. For those many who only resub when a new show releases, the revenue is cut by two thirds with this release schedule.
I guess I’m a tantric TV viewer. The more I like a show, the more I want to spread it out. I want to savour Andor season 2 because the show’s so great. It deserves it. I want a week between episodes to sit with the themes and ideas, to think and theorise over every episode. Andor is the deepest of the live action Star Wars shows, a prestige drama, rich in its storytelling, and rushing through it does the series a disservice. I’m currently enjoying Severance season 2 and am eager to know what happens next but I’m so glad it’s released weekly, that it’s making me wait, because it makes the drama and the reveals so much sweeter when they happen. My favourite TV show is Twin Peaks and watching the modern season unfold weekly in 2017 was remarkable. I got to live in that world for 16 weeks. It wouldn’t have been the same if it was there to binge.
Bingeable series leave a much smaller footprint than those that air weekly. They are the height of discussion for a weekend and then the conversation immediately moves on, making shows now seem more disposable. Andor season 2 will only be in the zeitgeist for 4 weeks, forgotten before May ends. With the arcs airing as one chunk of story, the only episodes people will be talking about are those epic end-of-arc episodes: episodes 3, 6, 9 and 12. All the fantastic smaller moments, the scenes that make Andor the great show it is, will be overlooked and so much hard work ignored. And while I may try and spread the 3 weekly episode out over the course of a week, the risk of spoilers is heightened. We’ll all have to be fully caught up on three hours of the show before daring to venture online.
The one saving grace is that showrunner Tony Gilroy made the announcement of the release schedule. Hopefully that means it’s at least partly a creative decision, that the writers and producers think the show will benefit this season by releasing an arc at a time, but at the moment I can’t agree or accept that. Maybe the truth behind my stance is that I can’t bear the idea that after waiting so long for season 2, the final season, it’ll be over so quickly.
