Andor: Season 1: Episode 3: Reckoning
What is it ? : In the past, young Andor explores the crashed ship, and encounters some scavengers who have arrived to loot the ship. He cannot speak basic so cannot communicate with them, but when they sense a Republic Cruiser arriving, they knock him out so he will not be killed by the Republic when they come to secure the wreck. The woman leader of the scavengers is the same older woman that shares an apartment with Andor on Ferrix.
In the now, the security team turns up at Andor's apartment, and treat the woman badly while they turn the place over looking for where he might be. However, as he waits for the contact, he communicates with their droid and the team locates his signal and sets of to capture him.
Andor meets with the contact, Luthen Rael, who is interested in the tech he has, a device which will show the location of all Imperial vessels in a sector, but is more interested in how Andor got it. He reveals that the Empire is complacent, and as long as you look right they rarely check if you are allowed to be there. Luthen comments that they'll soon learn to regret their complacency, but is interrupted when the security team arrives to capture Andor.
The two escape from the building under cover of explosives and traps that Luthen rigged up previously, and lead a firefight through the streets. The security team loses one of their ships due to locals resisting them, and Andor and Luthen steal speeders, rigging one as a distraction with explosives, and once the security team is in disarray they speed off on a Speeder bike to Luthens ship.
The episode ends with young Andor leaving Kenari aboard a starship, while older Andor leaves Ferric aboard a different ship, both to start new parts of their lives. . . .
High Points : My summary of this episode misses a few things, as this one is actually action packed, and really shows why the first three were released together, because this is really where the story is beginning. This really is brought to focus as the episode ends with young and old Andor beginning their stories, although this really does bring into focus how drawn out the first two episodes were.
The action is terrific, and Luthen is a stand out character in the short time he is on screen, Stellan Skarsgård is an outstanding actor, but beyond that Luthen is shown to be an extremely capable individual. The way their meeting place is rigged up to allow him to escape, work he did long before the meeting, the fact he lets Andor point a blaster straight at his face without flinching, but when he needs a gun it almost magically appears in his hand. He valued the tech Andor was selling, but the item of real value he was visiting for was Andor himself, someone who he could train and use.
Low Points : We've spent two episodes with the Security team, with Andors friends and contacts on Ferrix, and now they are left behind. And while it will truly be a waste of two episodes of world building to not bring at least some of them back, I really hope they don't, as I just can't bring myself to care about these characters. But it's not even the characters faults, it's just that there's so many of them, the older woman who took Andor from Kenari, his droid, his drinking buddy, his contact who also deals with tech (and her now dead boyfriend who betrayed Andor), the shuttle pilot who Andor asked to be ready to leave, the dude who Andor owes money to, and his big alien thug friend, and the security team officer who has been hunting for Andor, and his boss, and the grizzled officer who actually led the capture team . . . while some had more screen time than others, I really don't want to see any of them again as I really don't know what motivates any of them, and they all just feel so unimportant to the story being told.
So what do you really think ? : Okay, this is more what I was expecting from the series, and hopefully the rest is more like this than the first two episodes. There was loads of really good action, and it didn't forget about the characters, with both Andor and Luthen being similar characters, but both slightly different, with Andor still being a bit more merciful than the older character. The head of the security team as well has an interesting storyline, as he's always been less competent than he believes, and runs straight into the consequences of his actions during this episode. If he does return it'll be interesting to see where that character goes from here, but he does seem inconsequential to the larger galaxy as Andor seems to be moving onto working for the Rebellion on a galaxy wide basis, rather than remaining within the influence sphere of this fairly low level official.
Final Words : A far better episode, and makes me look forwards to the next, whereas I was really beginning to think this series was going to be a bit of a slog.
Score : 8.5/10
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