Andor Named Best TV Series of 2025 by Empire Magazine

Awards don’t always capture the moment. This one does.

Empire Magazine has named Andor the Best Television Series of 2025, and the reasoning behind that choice reads less like a blurb and more like a reckoning — not just with Star Wars, but with what prestige television can be inside a blockbuster franchise.

This matters now because Andor didn’t just end. It landed.

What Empire just said — and why it carries weight

In naming Andor its top series of the year, Empire didn’t hedge or qualify. It called Tony Gilroy’s second season “astonishing” and described it as “the most accomplished piece of storytelling Star Wars has ever produced.”

That’s not nostalgia talking. That’s a major genre publication placing Andor above every other TV achievement of the year — across genres, platforms, and budgets.

The citation singled out moments like Mon Mothma’s Senate speech, the fallout of Palmo Plaza, and the quiet devastation written into characters like Syril, Dedra, Lonny, and Kleya. Not spectacle. Consequence.

Context: how Andor got here

Andor began life as a risk.

A prequel to a prequel, centered on a character who died at the end of Rogue One, with no Jedi, no Sith, and very little interest in mythic destiny. Instead, Gilroy leaned into bureaucracy, fear, compromise, and the slow grind of authoritarianism.

Season two doubled down.

Rather than widening the scope into traditional Star Wars bombast, it tightened the screws. The show became more political, more intimate, and more unsettling — drawing explicit parallels between the Empire and real-world systems of control without ever breaking immersion.

Empire’s write-up acknowledges that directly, noting how thin the line has become between Star Wars fiction and lived reality.

Why this matters to Star Wars fans

This isn’t just another trophy for the shelf.

Andor reframed what Star Wars stories are allowed to be. It proved that the galaxy far, far away can sustain adult political drama without losing its identity. That rebellion isn’t just blasters and starfighters, but fear, sacrifice, and moral corrosion.

Moments like Mon Mothma’s speech don’t work because they’re rousing. They work because they hurt.

For fans who’ve grown up with Star Wars, Andor didn’t replace the saga’s mythic core — it gave it context. It showed what living under tyranny actually looks like, and what resistance really costs.

The cultural impact goes beyond awards

Empire’s praise reads like a summation of a turning point.

Calling Andor a “political manifesto” and a “masterclass in subtle character work” is a recognition that the series operated on a level Star Wars rarely attempts — and almost never sustains.

Characters weren’t redeemed through heroics. They were broken by choices.

That kind of storytelling lingers. It changes how earlier stories feel in retrospect, and it raises expectations for everything that follows.

The big-picture takeaway

Andor didn’t win because it felt like Star Wars.

It won because it trusted the audience enough to challenge them.

By turning a “forgettable cypher” into one of the franchise’s most compelling figures, and by centering its drama on people crushed, compromised, or radicalized by power, the series expanded the emotional vocabulary of Star Wars.

Empire’s recognition doesn’t crown Andor as an outlier. It cements it as a benchmark.

What this means going forward

Not every Star Wars project should try to be Andor. That would miss the point.

But nothing in the franchise can fully ignore it now.

The bar has been raised — for writing, for political awareness, and for how seriously these stories can take the world they reflect. Andor showed that Star Wars can speak quietly, and still hit hardest.

Being named the best TV series of 2025 isn’t the end of that conversation.

It’s the proof that it mattered.

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