It's hard for me to articulate just how much I love "Andor", the best Star Wars entertainment of at least this century, and maybe ever. Tony Gilroy's long been a favorite of mine (friends will know that I need very little prompting to wax rhapsodic about Michael Clayton, his greatest film) so it was no surprise that I would be inclined to like the show. But when it turned out to be a deeply ruminative, unabashedly anti-fascist show with lavish production design and a recurring fixation on supply chains, it's like it was crafted specifically to appeal to me personally.

There are lots of analyses of the show online, some fairly sophisticated, but too many suffer from being fairly facile as online fandoms have been trained to pursue "find the reference to the wiki lore!" rituals, and so they struggle to deal with a thematically rich work that is plainly indifferent to fan service. It also emphasizes just how unlikely it is that this series exists at all, striking such a different tone from anything else in the franchise, being given such an extravagant budget, and being allowed to challenge its audience in a way that no major studio has ever allowed a top-tier blockbuster cinematic universe to do.

If there's one thing Star Wars fans love, it's hating Star Wars, and so the only way we can ever truly praise a Star Wars work is by implicitly insulting all of them, usually in one of these two ways: This is Star Wars for adults! This is Star Wars for people who don't like Star Wars! Sure, it's those things, and it's genuinely good prestige TV (I say that as someone who generally despises prestige TV), but it's also good Star Wars) and I am not a person prone to "guilty pleasures"; I find no shame in enjoying a franchise that is enormously popular and that's been a fun form of entertainment in movies and shows and video games and toys since I was a kid.

Wither DVD Extras

But what has been a wonderful surprise is discovering that so many of the brilliantly talented artists behind "Andor" have participated in deep, thoughtful conversations about their work on the show. They've gone into deep detail about their artistic choices, and even discussed the directions that they weren't able to explore. On these kinds of streaming shows, there are always plenty of interviews with the cast that take the form of a typical press junket, and "Andor" has those, but they take the typical conventional form, and are not particularly interesting even though the actors are brilliant.

Fortunately, though, there are also a rich set of interviews with the creators responsible for aspects of production like the sound design, stunt choreography, set decoration, and writing — even Tony Gilroy himself talking about the combinations of writing and showrunning of the series. It is just an extraordinary glimpse at what it took to make the work. I grew up watching the "behind the scenes" documentaries that a generation of us pored over in the 80s and 90s as Star Wars fans before the DVD era. We felt like we'd won the lottery when DVDs arrived and suddenly studios felt like they had to expand their releases with an accompaniment of bonus material to entice fans to buy a copy of their favorite films. In the era before fan wikis and online fan culture in general, this was the only peek at how people made the creative work we were inspired by, in the same way that we would obsess over the liner notes on a favorite album.

Now it's as easy as a few clicks, and it is no surprise that the people who made "Andor" are also wonderfully articulate about how and why they made their choices while creating the series. If you enjoyed the show as much as I did, set aside some time and listen to how people who are operating at the very top of their game can make something amazing that reinvents a familiar universe after almost half a century.

(Spoilers) Creator Interview Videos

Tony Gilroy recaps the writing and structure of season two (and the overall story) of Andor.

The stunt coordinator and stunt doubles of Andor walk through the brutal climactic fistfight from the end of season two.

The cinematographer, production designer, and costume designer of Andor discuss season one of the show. (It's a long interview, here's a brief excerpt about the minimalist design in the show.) This is another good audio-only interview with Luke Hull and Michael Wilkinson, the production designer and costume designer.

The sound designer/sound editor and dialogue/ADR supervisor of Andor explain the sound design of season two.

The set decorator of Andor discusses the set decor of season one.