Andor “The Axe Forgets” Review

Season 1 Episode 5 – “Cassian must carefully navigate the distrust inherent in being the new member of a secret operation”

Please note, our reviews are based on likes and dislikes. These contain major spoilers. If you haven’t already watched the episode we would recommend that you click off the article, and come back once you have watched the episode. Enjoy!

What I Liked

1. The more I’m seeing of this group that Cassian has been placed with the more I’m beginning to understand what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Cassian does have stuff in common with the members of the group, he just needs to open up to them.

2. I love the fact that over the course of many shows, we are slowly seeing more and more “normal” people speak about the Imperial oppression and explain why they need to stop it. I just find this fascinating that many people know about it but many others continue to allow it.

3. I know we’ve seen the Empire’s presence on different shows and on different worlds but on this planet, we see the group Cassian is with feels different. You truly get the feeling that the Empire is dominant in this world. The soldiers and the tie-fighter fly-by’s just enhance that feeling.

What I Disliked

1. Again, the lack of action has severely hurt the overall episode rating. I know the series is described as a “thriller-spy” “action-adventure” series, but it needs more action, I know it’ll pick up in later episodes but having back-to-back episodes of just pure dialogue is bad.

2. As my previous comment about the action, this is about the slow pace of the episode. While slow-paced episodes can work, they need to have at least an episode between them where it’s quite fast-paced. These were back-to-back slow-paced episodes.

Favorite Moment

My favorite moment would definitely be Cassian and the group coming clean with each other. Cassian tells them that he’s being paid to be there and the group tells Cassian stories of why they are there. One member tells Cassian about why he wants revenge, that the Imperial came to his farm and killed him.

Standout Character

I’ll give this to Lieutenant Gorn. I find that being a Rebel but also an Imperial Lieutenant has got to be an insanely stressful job. He did this really well in this episode.

Verdict

Another slow-paced, lack of action episode. While the episode was still overall a decent watch, both of these factors caused the overall rating of the episode to drop. I did enjoy the group finally “bonding” and coming together to get the job done for the Rebellion.

Rating: 7.8/10