Warning! This review contains spoilers for Andor episode 8.
Don’t mess with the Empire. The latest installment of Andor, “Narkina 5,” now streaming on Disney+, picks up where last week’s cliffhanger left off as a wrongfully convicted Cassian is shipped off to begin serving his unjust prison sentence. Deemed fit for a life of labor, he’s sent to an Imperial factory in the middle of an ocean to work off his time. Well into the second half of its first season, Andor is starting to pull the story threads together as Cassian has finally caught the ISB’s attention and Dedra Meero has brought Syril Karn aboard the investigation.
Toby Haynes returns to the director’s chair for the first time since the triple premiere, bringing back a lot of the characters and locations he introduced in the first three episodes. Back on Ferrix, Bix Caleen is looking after Cassian’s adoptive mother, Maarva, and her droid B2EMO, as they try to keep a low profile. In the episode’s shocking final moments, Caleen is captured by Meero to be tortured for information.
The episode offers a return to the more familiar cartoonish evil of the Empire as the wardens and factory managers lord their oppressive authority over Cassian and his fellow jailbirds. But it’s not the kind of fun, mustache-twirling villainy seen in characters like Grand Moff Tarkin and the Emperor; it’s a more unsettling brutality befitting of the show’s study of life under a dictatorship. The cruelty of Cassian’s Imperial watchdogs evokes the haunting stories of Nazi prison guards who let the power over their prisoners go to their heads.
It’s a testament to the power of Diego Luna’s performance that he has almost no lines of dialogue in the entire episode and still manages to convey a full emotional arc for Cassian. With a stern look and reserved body language alone, Cassian tells the audience everything they need to know about the character’s imprisoned mindset. In a Star Wars series less driven by realism, Cassian would’ve beaten up a room full of prison guards and escaped before he even got a look at his cell. But in “Narkina 5,” Cassian sees that escape is impossible and any attempts to do so are futile, and just accepts his grim fate and goes through the motions.
Andy Serkis makes a surprising return to the Star Wars universe, not as the knock-off Palpatine seen in the sequel trilogy, but in a new role that makes better use of his talents. Kino Loy is the prisoner in charge of keeping the other prisoners in line. Serkis brings the same grizzled gruffness to Kino that he brought to Supreme Leader Snoke, but whereas Snoke was a one-note archetype relegated to delivering exposition, Kino is a well-rounded character with flaws, goals, and a distinctive personality. He expresses the frustration of imprisonment by exercising his power over his fellow inmates. And Serkis isn’t the only returning Star Wars actor in this week’s episode. Forest Whitaker makes his long-awaited return as Clone Wars veteran Saw Gerrera, sharing terrific on-screen chemistry with Stellan Skarsgård as fellow Rebel Luthen Rael as they each try to figure out which one of them is responsible for the Aldhani heist.
As the former showrunner of Netflix’s House of Cards, writer Beau Willimon is no stranger to exploring shady behind-the-curtain politics. Mon Mothma’s conversations at yet another political meet-and-greet offer a glimpse of the Emperor’s rule through the eyes of the Senators who serve him. Some politicians decry Palpatine’s leadership as “frustrating,” “overreactive,” and “too easily provoked,” while others praise him for “saying what he means.” As this discussion highlights, Palpatine may be an exaggerated space fantasy villain, but he’s not so different from some real-world political figures.
Nicholas Britell’s musical score shines this week. In previous episodes, Britell’s subtle melodies complemented the on-screen action without drawing too much attention to themselves. But in “Narkina 5,” the music is one of the stars. His mesmerizing synthesizer sounds capture the dystopian nightmare of Cassian’s life behind bars, one face in a crowd of hundreds, with seemingly no hope of escape, working endless hours on a factory line in the cold, sterile environment of an underwater prison.
As Cassian bonds with yet another ragtag group of reluctant allies – the other prisoners on his line in the Imperial factory – the stage is set for these guys to pull together and plot a daring jailbreak within the next couple of episodes. “Narkina 5” is primarily dedicated to setting up the prison and establishing all the obstacles that stand in the way of escaping, so that when Cassian does eventually break out, the audience is fully aware of the stakes. But the episode doesn’t just exist as a precursor to future action; it’s a crucial juncture in the plot in its own right. Luthen is worried about having Cassian out there somewhere with information about him, Caleen is being interrogated by the Empire for whatever information she has about Cassian, and the show’s main Imperial characters have started working together as an unlikely “buddy cop” duo.
As Cassian gets up every day, showers with dozens of other men, goes to work mindlessly assembling Imperial tech, and returns to his cell every night, the episode starts to get a little repetitive – such is the nature of life in prison – but the more action-packed storylines involving the other characters who aren’t in jail help to break up that repetitiveness. In its eighth episode, Andor still hasn’t run out of steam and continues to be the strongest and most consistent Star Wars series since The Mandalorian.