The best Star Wars TV show isn’t The Mandalorian — and George R.R. Martin agrees

In 2019, The Mandalorian debuted on Disney+. It was the first-ever live-action Star Wars TV show, and people loved it immediately. The action was good, Grogu (aka Baby Yoda) instantly became an adorable icon, and there was a lot of novelty in watching a Star Wars story on the small screen.

That novelty wore off pretty quickly over the next few years as Disney gave us more Star Wars spin-off shows like The Book of Boba Fett, Ahsoka, The Acolyte, and Skeleton Crew. The Mandalorian plugged on, but it felt less special now that Disney had flooded the zone.

Now that the studio has turned down the firehose of Star Wars content a bit, we can look back, reassess, and definitely conclude that one of these spin-off shows stood head and shoulders above the rest.

Andor is officially the best Star Wars TV show

It’s also the most different

Star Wars: Andor is about a malcontented thief and scavenger named Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) who is trying to make a living in the years following the rise of the tyrannical Empire. We never see Star Wars icons like Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine in this show, but they’re out there, lording over the galaxy and making life difficult for ordinary people. Cassian copes by just trying to do what’s best for him and his loved ones rather than getting mixed-up with high-minded rebels who want to fight back.

Broadly, Andor is the story of how Cassian goes from prioritizing his own comfort to dedicating himself wholeheartedly to the burgeoning Rebel Alliance. It happens with a subtlety not usually associated with Star Wars. One of the crucial turning points comes towards the end of season 1, when Cassian is flippantly arrested and thrown into an Imperial prison basically on a whim. Those episodes are very powerful, and make a better case for why prisons are inhumane than many documentaries you’ll see.

The supporting characters prove even more memorable than Cassian. There’s Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), who swallows his own humanity so he has the grit needed to build a resistance movement right under the Empire’s nose. Imperial senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) may be even bolder, since she aids that movement while hob-nobbing with the politicians who helped usher in the imperial government in the first place. We meet people working for the Empire as well, like the ruthless Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and the hilariously pathetic Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), who spends the whole series hoping that dedicating himself to the Empire will give his life some kind of meaning, only for it to end in obscurity.

One of the things that sticks out about Andor is how different it feels from pretty much any other Star Wars movie or TV show. There are no lightsabers, and very little talk of the Force. There are barely any space aliens and very few legacy characters. The tone is very self-serious, with none of the high-flying fun that defines stretches of the original trilogy, and when there is humor, it’s generally pitch black. Andor deals directly with topics like sexual assault, murder, and genocide. The result is a show that almost doesn’t feel like it’s set in the Star Wars universe at all, but would be a problem if the cast and crew didn’t nail everything they try.

Star Wars: Andor has fans in high places

Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin loves it

George R.R. Martin is the author of the Song of Ice and Fire book series, adapted by HBO as Game of Thrones. He’s never been shy about naming TV shows he likes (or disparaging those he doesn’t think are living up to their potential, even if they’re based on his own books). He’s a very public nerd for all things sci-fi and fantasy, and he’s on record as loving Star Wars: Andor.

“ANDOR was this year’s highlight, though,” Martin wrote on his blog in July of 2025. “Far and away the best of the Star Wars spinoffs. Looked gorgeous, Diego Luna was first rate, and there was a realism and tension to the story that was sadly lacking in most of the other spinoffs. It’s nice to see someone doing science fiction right.”

Many fans share Martin’s opinion that Andor is the best of what the Star Wars universe has had to offer lately; IMDb ratings for the series are sky-high, and the show consistently gained viewers as it went on, whereas enthusiasm for The Mandalorian dimmed over time.

The Mandalorian is a solid series, but Andor showed a willingness to push Star Wars into places it hadn’t been before, and fans rewarded that courage with their love. Credit also must go to creator Tony Gilroy, who not only had the courage to make a Star Wars show as different as Andor but also the skill to pull it off.

We shall never see Andor’s like again

Or at least, not anytime soon

When Disney first gave the green light to Andor, the studio was aggressively expanding its offerings on Disney+, hoping to win the streaming wars by any means necessary. Originally, the show was going to last for five seasons.

But by the time season 1 was over, Disney was rethinking its approach to Disney+, and it’s easy to see why; the two seasons of Andor cost around $645 million to make, an extraordinary amount. And while the show was popular, it wouldn’t been hard for anything to justify that price tag. So Disney pulled back and we got only two seasons. But that was still enough to establish the show as a certified sci-fi classic. Future Star Wars projects, or future sci-fi shows in general, would do well to look to Andor for inspiration.

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Star Wars trudges on

The next big Star Wars project coming our way is The Mandalorian & Grogu, a movie that’s expected to conclude the main storyline from that show. The Mandalorian & Grogu releases in theaters on May 22 and people are looking forward to it, but it comes after several missteps for the franchise. Whether it soars or sinks, at least we’ll always have Andor.