You know I said a few months ago that Andor was so good it made me re-evaluate my opinion on the Mandalorian. I guess the showrunners felt the same way because that last episode reeks hard of them trying and FAILING to do political intrigue.
Just putting aside the fact that every single person in the "Amnesty Program" should have faced a firing squad: whose bright fucking idea was it to house them all together???? "Oh golly gee wiz, let's just stuck a whole bunch of space fascists and collaborators in a tiny little neighborhood. Surely nothing will go wrong!!!" I suppose its technically canonical that the new republic is incompetent as shit given how things play out with the first order but sheesh guys.
Just stick to what you know guys. More pew pew and vroom vroom. Leave the political drama to the adult writers in the room. You will never ever be as good as Andor....and that is OK.
Given that he was on the screen for all of three seconds, I wasn't even mad. They set up a third season into Jedi Academy which could have been fun. But then they got cold feet and did whatever the hell happened in Book of Boba to retcon Yoda back into being a comedy-relief set piece.
Had they been set up as nascent rebels coming to terms with Empire, instead of ultra-loyalist Super Troopers who just do A-Team reruns, it could have been good. It just had that spin-off of a spin-off energy, where the writers were afraid to do anything too adventurous or tell any kind of story that wasn't just "Hey, y'all remember the movies?"
I enjoyed Star Wars: Visions, because they had a number of shorts that would twist traditional Good/Evil narratives and subvert expectations. "Akakiri" does such a great job of articulating how a love can become this selfish corrupting influence that leads to the Dark Side. "Lop and Ochō" is this incredible story of divided loyalties and personal codes of honor that force two old friends apart.
One of the cooler things about the Star Wars mythos is in how - in the hands of a good writer - the Dark or Light side isn't an origin but a destination. You only realize your allegiance after you've faced adversity.
Shit writing like this is so annoying because it forgoes the idea of character growth that the setting practically hands you on a silver platter. You don't have to be Sith, you just have to realize being Sith is what you wanted all along. And that internal revelation is so much more fun than the "Oh, turns out he was just a secret evil guy" bad spy-movie twist ending.
yeah you're right, I was mostly lopping S2 Luke with BoBF Luke but the former wasn't entirely tasteless
and yeah, for Bad Batch I think I like the Crosshair episodes the best despite how hilariously edgy the character is, because it almost feels like a more layered concept coming through, like he's a tool of the state and does bad shit and is slowly coming to terms with how much of a monster he is without doing "lol brain chip not work"
Star Wars Legends is among Andor and TLJ for being in the few SW media I actually enjoyed in the last decade, so many great concepts both narratively and visually in there
and while TLJ didn't really touch on the Sith/dark side, I really liked how it made a specific point of decoupling the force and the Jedi to give a critical take on them and their role in the rise of fascism, and go "we don't have to completely abandon the Jedi, there were good aspects and we can leave behind the baggage that led to fuckin bad shit happening and go back to lifting rocks to help people"