Four years ago, a unique three-part Star Warsstory arc changed the franchise forever. Star Wars has been influenced by different genres for years, from fantasy, hard science fiction, Westerns, war epics, romance, and everything in between. However, it’s only recently that it has begun to explore the possibility of positioning Star Wars projects as genuine thrillers, with Rogue One: A Star Wars Story paving the way for a more intense, heightened, and suspenseful narrative experience.
Of the (now) many live-action Star Wars stories told on the small screen since the creation of Disney+, one stands out the most, not only for its stellar production value and scripts but for the way it pushed the limits of what the franchise could be. Tony Gilroy’s Andor is not only an incredible Star Wars show, but it’s an incredible show, period, a true testament to Star Wars’ worldbuilding and the power of political storytelling, as it chronicles the evolution of the all-important Rebel Alliance and the sacrifices necessary to defeat the tyrannical might of the Empire.
Though both seasons of Andor feature incredible storylines, from the tragically beautiful heist on Aldhani in Andor season 1 to the harrowing Ghorman massacre in season 2, the arc that first changed what Star Wars could be was season 1’s three-episode Narkina 5 story. In episode 8, “Narkina 5,” after being (wrongfully) arrested by the Empire, Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor is transported to an Imperial prison. What unfolds in that stark white complex is a tale about the cruelty of fascism and its weakness in the face of humanity’s never-ending resilience, as Cassian and his fellow inmates hatch the ultimate escape plan.
Andor Season 1’s Narkina 5 Arc Is One Of Star Wars’ Best Stories
Characters with their hands behind their heads in Andor’s Narkina 5 prison
The beauty of Andor’s Narkina 5 arc is in its build-up. Because it unfolds over three episodes, the show takes its time to let the story develop naturally. Each scene, each piece of dialogue, each character introduction is an important part of the larger whole. Audiences need to see Andy Serkis’ Kino Loy as the floor leader because it speaks to his reluctance to leave and his devastation when he finally realizes that they’ll never let him go. The episodes need to show the dullness of Cassian’s daily routine to understand the Empire’s physical and psychological abuse.
The final episode is a masterclass in building tension. Cassian and his allies have one shot at their escape plan, and every second, every move, every decision counts. Cassian’s sawing away at a refresher pipe with a tiny piece of salvaged metal to neutralize the prison’s weaponized floor is nerve-wracking. Stopping the Imperial officers’ lift transport in time is torturous, and hearing Kino Loy’s rallying cry as they take over the control room is euphoric. These episodes play with the viewers’ emotions like nothing else Star Wars has ever produced, moving from dread to glee to stress to heartbreak, and all those feelings are undeniably earned.
Andor’s Unusual Structure Allowed Stories Like Narkina 5 To Thrive
Andy Serkis and Diego Luna holding guns in front of a white wall in Andor
Andor is an unusual cross between episodic and serialized storytelling. Both seasons are made up of multiple story arcs; while most last three episodes, the writers weren’t afraid to use the show’s 12-episode season lengths to their advantage. Season 1 is set in 5BBY (five years “Before the Battle of Yavin” as seen in A New Hope), while each three-episode chapter in season 2 is set in 4BBY, 3BBY, 2BBY, and 1BBY, respectively.
Not only is this a clever way to showcase the growth of the Rebel Alliance over time, but it also allows smaller stories to become part of the galaxy’s wider history without making them feel rushed or easily dismissed. Andor depicts the breadth of the Empire’s cruelty and the depth of people’s everyday bravery, even those who aren’t part of the Rebellion. What the prisoners go through on Narkina 5 is part of that. It proves that Star Wars storytelling can thrive even without connections to legacy characters and major factions.
A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away · Eight Questions How Well Do You Know Star Wars? “The Force will be with you. Always.”
🗡️Jedi OrderLight-side guardians
⚡The SithRule of two
⚙️The RebellionA new hope
🪓Bounty HuntersThis is the way
👑The EmpireOrder 66
01
The original Star Wars film — later retitled Episode IV: A New Hope — opened in just 32 American theatres and proceeded to become the highest-grossing film of its era, redefining what summer blockbusters could be. In which year did it premiere?
✓ Correct! 1977 — specifically May 25. 20th Century Fox had so little faith in the project they only opened it in 32 theatres at first; queues quickly stretched around the block, and the film expanded to over 1,000 screens within months. It earned $307 million in its initial domestic run, won six Academy Awards (with another four nominations) and inverted Hollywood’s economics for the next 50 years.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 1977. 1975 is when the script was being shopped around. 1979 is when Star Trek: The Motion Picture released as a Star Wars-shaped countermove. 1980 is The Empire Strikes Back. The original Star Wars is May 25, 1977.
02
A New Hope’s writer-director was a then-32-year-old American Graffiti veteran who’d struggled to get the project greenlit and famously took back-end profit and merchandising rights in lieu of a higher salary — the deal that would build a billion-dollar company. He returned to direct the prequels but stepped away from the original-trilogy sequels. Name him.
✓ Correct! George Lucas. The merchandising rights he kept (because Fox didn’t value them) became the financial bedrock of Lucasfilm and the basis of the modern toys-and-licensing megabusiness. After A New Hope, Lucas produced but didn’t direct Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner) or Return of the Jedi (Richard Marquand), then directed all three prequels (1999–2005). He sold Lucasfilm to Disney in 2012 and stepped away from creative control of the sequels.
✗ Wrong. The answer is George Lucas. Steven Spielberg was Lucas’s close friend (and the godfather of his post-A-New-Hope career) but never directed a Star Wars film. Coppola was Lucas’s mentor at USC and at American Zoetrope. Irvin Kershner directed Empire Strikes Back. The original is Lucas’s.
03
In 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back, Darth Vader delivers cinema’s most-misquoted line at the climax of his Cloud City duel with Luke Skywalker. Vader severs Luke’s hand and reveals their relationship. The exact line is — for the record — “No, I am your father.” What relationship does it confirm?
✓ Correct! Vader is Anakin Skywalker, Luke’s father. The reveal was so jealously guarded that Mark Hamill was only told the real line on set the day they shot it (the script said “Obi-Wan killed your father”), and even James Earl Jones recorded the dub without knowing the full plot context. The line — commonly misquoted as “Luke, I am your father” — rewrote what trilogies could pull off and is broadly considered cinema’s most famous twist.
✗ Wrong. The answer is that Vader is Luke’s father, Anakin Skywalker. The whole foundation of the Skywalker saga collapses to this single twist: Anakin (the Jedi prodigy of the prequels) becomes Vader after his fall. Luke and Leia are revealed in Return of the Jedi to be his twin children, separated at birth.
04
Yoda — the green, ear-twitching Jedi Master — was puppeted and voiced from his Empire Strikes Back debut through the prequels and the sequels by a single Muppet-show-veteran performer who also voices Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear. Name him.
✓ Correct! Frank Oz — longtime Jim Henson collaborator and voice/puppet work on Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal, Sam Eagle and Grover. Oz puppeted Yoda directly through The Phantom Menace before CGI took over for Attack of the Clones onward, but he’s continued to voice the character through the sequels and animated series. Yoda’s syntax was developed jointly by Lucas and Oz to feel old, foreign and hard-won.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Frank Oz. Jim Henson was Oz’s mentor and collaborator (he created the Muppets) but didn’t voice Yoda. Steve Whitmire took over Kermit after Henson’s 1990 death. Brian Henson is Jim’s son and runs the Henson company today. Yoda is Frank Oz’s.
05
In a deal that reshaped Hollywood, Disney acquired Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion in cash and stock — bringing Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ILM and Skywalker Sound under the Disney umbrella. The deal also kicked off the sequel trilogy production. In what year did Disney close the acquisition?
✓ Correct! 2012 — specifically October 30. The deal was announced with simultaneous reveal that a Star Wars Episode VII was being developed for a 2015 release. Lucas had been quietly preparing his exit from Lucasfilm for years; Kathleen Kennedy had been brought in as co-chair months earlier specifically to take over. The Force Awakens came out three years later, in December 2015, kicking off the modern era.
✗ Wrong. The answer is 2012. 2009 is when Disney acquired Marvel ($4 billion). 2010 is the year before Lucas began signalling exit plans. 2014 is when production proper began on The Force Awakens. Lucasfilm joined Disney on October 30, 2012.
06
The Mandalorian launched as Disney+’s flagship original on November 12, 2019 — the day the streaming service itself launched. Created by Jon Favreau and run by Dave Filoni, the show centres on a helmeted bounty hunter who reluctantly becomes a foster father to “The Child” (Grogu). What is the Mandalorian’s real name?
✓ Correct! Din Djarin — played by Pedro Pascal under the helmet (with body double Brendan Wayne handling much of the physical work). The Mandalorian is widely credited with reviving Star Wars on TV, popularising the StageCraft LED-volume virtual production technology now used across Hollywood, and turning baby Yoda — Grogu — into the meme-economy phenomenon of late 2019. Three seasons have aired with a feature film, The Mandalorian & Grogu, set for May 2026.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Din Djarin. Boba Fett is the famous bounty hunter from the original trilogy, with his own Disney+ spinoff (The Book of Boba Fett, 2021). Cobb Vanth is the Tatooine marshal played by Timothy Olyphant. Bo-Katan Kryze is the Mandalorian princess played by Katee Sackhoff. The Mandalorian himself is Din Djarin.
07
Order 66 — the secret directive that turns the Republic’s clone troopers against their Jedi commanders and effectively ends the Jedi Order — is dramatised in the climactic third act of which prequel film?
✓ Correct! Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (2005). Palpatine’s “Execute Order 66” comm to the clone armies leads to the methodical, planet-by-planet liquidation of the Jedi Order — one of the saga’s most operatic sequences, scored to John Williams’ “Anakin’s Betrayal” cue. The same film features Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side, the Mustafar duel with Obi-Wan, and his rebirth as Darth Vader in the suit. Widely re-evaluated as the best of the prequels.
✗ Wrong. The answer is Revenge of the Sith. Phantom Menace ends with Qui-Gon’s death and the unveiling of Darth Maul. Attack of the Clones ends with the Clone Wars beginning. Rogue One is set just before A New Hope, after Order 66 has long since happened. The Order 66 sequence is the climax of Episode III.
08
Andor (2022–25) is widely regarded as the most adult, politically literate Star Wars project ever made — a slow-burn prequel to Rogue One charting Cassian Andor’s radicalisation against the Empire. The series was created and showrun by a writer/director best known for the original Bourne trilogy and Michael Clayton. Name him.
✓ Correct! Tony Gilroy. He’d previously been brought in for extensive Rogue One reshoots in 2016, and Lucasfilm gave him near-total creative independence on Andor. Season 1 (12 episodes, 2022) is widely regarded as Star Wars’ finest dramatic writing ever; Season 2 (also 12 episodes, in four three-episode jumps across 2025) closes the gap to Rogue One’s opening scene. Gilroy’s prior credits: Bourne Identity / Supremacy / Ultimatum / Legacy, plus directing Michael Clayton (2007).
✗ Wrong. The answer is Tony Gilroy. Rian Johnson directed The Last Jedi (2017). Jon Favreau created The Mandalorian and is Lucasfilm’s Disney+-era animation/live-action lieutenant. Dave Filoni runs the Filoniverse (Clone Wars, Rebels, Ahsoka, the upcoming Heir to the Empire film). Andor is Tony Gilroy’s.
The Force Has Spoken · Final Tally Your Galactic Standing
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Jedi Master — or moisture farmer on Tatooine?
Andor‘s Narkina 5 storyline wouldn’t have been enough for a show or even a miniseries on its own. Aside from Cassian and Rogue One‘s Melshi, the characters introduced in the episodes aren’t meant to have a historical impact on the galaxy. Not everyone has a destiny to fulfill. And yet, the prisoners’ story undoubtedly enriches Star Wars as a whole, giving audiences a chance to learn more about the galaxy, the Empire’s far-reaching power, and the consequences of fighting for freedom, no matter the cost.
All episodes of Andor are streaming now, exclusively on Disney+.
