Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars streaming series, Andor, is arguably the darkest Star Wars show to premiere on Disney+ to date. The gritty Imperial-era spy thriller depicts a more nuanced view of the battle between the Rebellion and the Empire than Star Wars fans have seen before. The series has no archetypal heroes or villains; it features flawed human beings who all believe they’re on the right side of the conflict.
Some of Disney’s Star Wars content has matched Andor’s dark and gritty tone, like Visions and Obi-Wan Kenobi, while others have been more lighthearted, like The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.
The Mandalorian (2019-)
Disney’s first live-action Star Wars streaming series, Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian, is a classical adventure-of-the-week space western harking back to George Lucas’ original pulpy inspirations. Its serialized, cliffhanger-driven storytelling is closer to space operas like Flash Gordon, which inspired Lucas to create the Star Wars universe in the first place.
The pilot episode introduces Din Djarin as a morally gray antihero who coldly brings in bounties. But the show’s gritty, revisionist tone didn’t last long. Mando starts to warm up as soon as he saves one of his bounties, the adorable “Baby Yoda,” from his nefarious client and commits his life to protecting The Child from the Imperial Remnants.
The Book Of Boba Fett (2021-2022)
The Mandalorian’s first of several planned spin-offs, The Book of Boba Fett is slightly darker than the flagship series. But it’s nowhere near as dark and gritty and violent as the morally gray gangster series promised by The Mandalorian’s post-credits tease. Boba’s standalone series softened his edges and turned the coldest killer in the galaxy into a pushover. This series has such goofy moments as Boba riding a rancor and outlaw bikers riding slow-moving, color-coded Vespas.
There are some dark moments befitting of a Boba Fett series, like any time Boba or Fennec beat up a room full of goons, but on the whole, this is one of the lightest, most family-friendly Star Wars stories to date. The tone arguably didn’t suit Boba as a character.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars – The Final Season (2020)
A few years after Netflix premiered “The Lost Missions,” Disney+ brought back Dave Filoni’s Clone Wars animated series for a proper final season building to a proper series finale. Fans and critics alike considered season 7 to be a satisfying conclusion to the series as it kept its focus on the main emotional driving force: Ahsoka Tano’s relationship with her master, Anakin Skywalker, who was destined to turn to the dark side and become a Sith Lord.
The final run of The Clone Wars maintained the cartoon thrills of the early seasons, but also nailed the inevitable tragedy of connecting the ongoing story arcs with the end of the prequel trilogy. Star Wars fans were deeply moved by the finale episode, “Victory and Death.”
Star Wars: The Bad Batch (2021-)
A year after The Clone Wars ended, Lucasfilm followed it up with a sequel spin-off of sorts, Star Wars: The Bad Batch, about a band of defective, genetically mutated clones carrying out dangerous missions during the reign of the Empire. The adventures of Hunter, Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, and Echo have taken these antiheroes to some of the seediest parts of the galaxy.
While The Bad Batch is far from the darkest Star Wars show streaming on Disney+, it is a lot grittier and more morbid than the original Clone Wars series it’s spun off from.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (2022)
Deborah Chow’s Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries picked up the titular Jedi’s story in between losing Anakin to the dark side and taking Luke on an intergalactic adventure. It depicts the eponymous Star Wars icon at his lowest point, blaming himself for Anakin’s downfall and refusing to help people in need. Obi-Wan Kenobi has some of The Mandalorian’s Lone Wolf and Cub cuteness with Vivien Lyra Blair’s feisty turn as young Leia Organa. But, for the most part, the series takes Kenobi’s journey seriously.
The show’s Darth Vader scenes are some of the scariest ever put on-screen. Vader casually murders villagers to goad Kenobi into fighting him, literally wipes the floor with his former master, and finally gets to air some ominous grievances: “I am not your failure, Obi-Wan. You didn’t kill Anakin Skywalker; I did.”
Star Wars: Visions (2021-)
The anime anthology series Star Wars: Visions radically challenged the conventions of Star Wars media. Lucasfilm gave full creative freedom to seven Japanese animation studios to produce nine animated shorts presenting their own unique vision of a galaxy far, far away.
Some studios used this freedom to tell a traditional action-packed space opera narrative, but others used it to explore darker corners of the Star Wars universe with less ethical, more violent characters.
Andor (2022-)
Pitched somewhere between a gritty spy thriller and a sobering political drama, Andor has been widely praised as a Star Wars show for grown-ups. It’s easily the darkest Star Wars series that Disney has streamed to date, depicting the crooked rule of the Empire with as much ominous realism as possible. Andor is less focused on space adventures and more focused on the politics of extremist resistance fighters taking on an oppressive dictatorship.
With creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy at the helm, Andor has no traditional heroes and villains. Clear-cut archetypal protagonists and antagonists have held back previous Star Wars stories. Andor has both corrupt Rebels and sympathetic Imperials. The series opens with its central protagonist committing a double homicide.