Andy Serkis has finally made a triumphant return to the Star Wars universe thanks to the latest installment of Andor. The famous mo-cap actor reappears in Episode 8, “Narkina 5”, with no CGI flourishes, as a floor manager in Cassian’s factory prison, where he gets to play a far more interesting and menacing character than his trilogy sequel, Supreme Leader Snoke, that was he always has.
Serkis’ character in Andor Episode 8 is called Kino Loy. Despite being a prisoner of the Empire himself, Kino makes it clear which side he is on. The Imperial Guards have given him authority over the prisoners in his factory, and he runs this floor with iron efficiency and a seemingly genuine passion for the gruesome work of overseeing the various production lines and making sure no one slacks off a day on second—with it he doesn’t have to use the facility’s electric torture floors.
Kino is yet another clear example of one of Andor‘s driving ideas: The Empire wins by turning its enemies against each other. In another life, Kino could have been one of the Rebellion’s most ardent defenders and generals. He’s smart, efficient, calculating and clearly willing to achieve his goals no matter the cost – and he’s absolutely jacked thanks to Serkis. All of these are qualities the rebels value, and we know their efforts are much needed. But instead, Kino works a few dozen prisoners to the bone on one of Narkina 5’s hundred floors of nameless factories, producing the tiny cogs that make the Empire’s galaxy-destroying regime work. It’s all just another control lever for the Empire.
But as much as Kino’s character is a microcosm of some Andor‘s best and brightest ideas, it’s also a perfect contrast for its quality compared to Disney’s sequel trilogy, in which Serkis reportedly played the main villain.
Almost three years after the release of Rise of Skywalker and almost seven after the release of The Force Awakens, we’re far enough away to admit that the sequel to the trilogy was a bit of a disaster. Without going back into all the details of what worked and what didn’t, a conversation worth dying for Skywalker
Despite Serkis’ best efforts in capturing the performance and voice for the character, Snoke still looks and feels like an addition to the expanded Star Wars universe straight out of a mid-range mid-2000s novel. He’s a boring, overly humanoid alien with no threatening build aside from a very large hologram, and a boring, unmotivated puppet before he emerges as an actual unmotivated puppet.
But for all the troubles that Snoke threw into the plot of the sequel trilogy, it kind of is Andor to point out that the character has also done a disservice to the kind of simmering threat that Serkis can deliver all by himself. Thankfully, the best Star Wars entry in years is here to give Serkis the second chance he deserves.
