from Chris Snelgrove
| Published
For Star Wars fans, it was almost impossible not to compare the failure of The Acolyte to the huge success of Andoralthough many believe the two shows have almost nothing in common. Now, however, they will have at least one shocking similarity: Andor season 2 will use time jumps to tell its story, something that The Acolyte attempted to do in its first and only season. Fortunately for fans, Andor only jumps forward in time, meaning its second season will avoid the time jumps back and forth of The Acolyte it just left everyone confused.
Andor Season 2 Time Jumps
What a time jump Andor Are we still talking about season 2? Showrunner Tony Gilroy previously confirmed that the show’s second and final season will have 12 episodes, and that after every four episodes the story will jump forward in time. In doing so, the show will explore its titular character’s service to the Rebellion over the four years leading up to the events of Rogue One.
now The Acolyte also had time jumps, but this show approached them in a very different way, which left too many fans unsatisfied. While Andor season 2 will regularly jump forward in time, The Acolyte uses multiple time jumps back in time to explain things like the origins of the mysterious Force-sensitive twins Osha and Mei, and Sol’s guilt in killing the Force Witches who raised them. The apparent intent was to The Acolyte to throw us into history in the media res and leave us with many initial questions that later flashback episodes answered.
Why I’m convinced time jumps Andor season 2 will do more effective storytelling than c The Acolyte? Personally, my main problem with The AcolyteThe flashbacks of is that they killed the momentum of the show.
The helper time jump problem
The series already had pacing issues, but the time jumps made that problem infinitely worse: just when the audience was starting to wonder why Jedi Master Torbin voluntarily killed himself, for example, we got an episode set 16 years in the past that didn’t answer to the question. It would be answered four episodes later by another flashback episode, the timing of which killed any interest in the growing relationship between Qmir and Osha.
basically, The Acolyte did it all backwards, using flashback time jumps to provide answers to mysteries that weren’t all that compelling in the first place. Getting those answers meant destroying all storytelling momentum and destroying any interest the audience might have had in the current plot. Fortunately for Star Wars fans everywhere, Andor season 2 is about to be picked up The Acolyteerror and fix it.
This is because the show will jump forward in time, allowing us to see Andor’s character development after the main arcs are completed. We won’t lose any momentum because every arc will be wrapped up by the time we jump ahead, meaning we won’t be, say, suddenly ripped out of Mon Mothma’s subplot to spend an episode devoted to Andor’s tragic childhood . And there won’t be a frustrating mystery to solve… unless, of course, you count the mystery of how Andor ended up jaded but with a heart of gold Rogue One.
It’s that simple, but Tony Gilroy’s plans for Andor season 2 reveals an obvious truth: time jumps aren’t inherently a bad idea as long as they help the shows tell a story without breaking the narrative’s momentum. Jumps that don’t actually help the story, meanwhile, are nothing more than gimmicks… in the case of The Acolytedisappointing gimmicks had a habit of killing the pace just when things were picking up. Fortunately, Gilroy has discovered that there is “one way” to make these leaps work: simply by telling a great story and letting everything else take care of itself.
