first 15 minutes remain all over-the-place but as soon as our crew gets to jedha i lock the fuck in and never look back for the next two hours. lacks the richness of andor’s character writing (would’ve loved to see a version of this with edwards and gilroy working in tandem from the start, because the former’s epic sense of scale paired with the latter’s sophisticated storytelling is a match made in star wars heaven for me) but the cast is so damn charming that i mostly don’t care by the end. i even like jyn! sue me!

any nitpicks i have with the pacing of the first two acts (the urgency works to emphasize the stakes of the story but leaves little time for us to get to know each character intimately, as already said) fade away by the third because the battle of scarif is simply one of the most impressive feats of filmmaking in the entire damn franchise and its already brutal emotional beats have been made all the more moving by all the sacrifices explored in andor that pushed the rebels closer and closer to this triumph. feels like the weight of the world is crushing me watching jyn and cassian’s final embrace. a truly spiritually transcendent scene.

funny how this sorta acts like one of those movie-length series finales for andor now. the flow from s2 e12 into this into a new hope is so fucking smooth that it’s near impossible to believe it wasn’t planned in advance. of course, nothing can hold a candle to the singular artistic achievement that is andor, but while gilroy’s masterful writing is strong enough to stand on its own, it’s simultaneously enriched both what came before and what’s to come in the grander star wars mythology, and that might just be the series’ greatest success of all. it set out to simply justify its own existence and show us why this specific story demanded to be told, and it ended up far exceeding those meager aims and strengthening the star wars saga as a whole from top to bottom.

who would’ve thought a kid from kenari would grow up to be the greatest hero in the galaxy?