Andy Serkis lastly has made his triumphant return to the Star Wars universe due to the most recent episode of Andor. The famed mo-cap actor reveals up with no CGI adornment in episode 8, “Narkina 5,” as the ground supervisor at Cassian’s factory-prison, the place he will get to play a much more attention-grabbing and menacing character than his sequel trilogy character, Supreme Leader Snoke, ever was.

Serkis’ character in Andor episode 8 is known as Kino Loy. Despite being a prisoner of the Empire himself, Kino makes it clear which aspect he’s on. The Imperial guards have given him authority over the prisoners on his manufacturing unit ground, and he runs that ground with ironclad effectivity and seemingly real ardour for the merciless work of overseeing the varied manufacturing meeting traces and ensuring that nobody is slacking off for even a second — lest he have to make use of the ability’s electrical torture flooring.

Kino’s one more clear-eyed instance of one in all Andor’s driving concepts: The method the Empire wins is by turning its enemies in opposition to one another. In one other life, Kino might have been one of many Rebellion’s most ardent defenders and generals. He’s sensible, environment friendly, calculating, and clearly prepared to perform his objectives despite any value — plus, due to Serkis, he’s completely jacked. All of those are traits that the Rebels prize and we all know their effort desperately wants. But as an alternative, Kino works just a few dozen prisoners to the bone on one in all Narkina 5’s hundred flooring of anonymous factories that produce the tiny cogs that make the Empire’s galaxy-crushing regime operate. It’s all simply one other lever of management for the Empire.

But as a lot as Kino’s character is a microcosm of a few of Andor’s greatest and smartest concepts, it’s additionally an ideal distinction to its high quality versus Disney’s sequel trilogy, the place Serkis ostensibly performed the primary villain.

Almost three years after the discharge of Rise of Skywalker and practically seven after the discharge of The Force Awakens, we’re far sufficient away to confess that the sequel trilogy was a little bit of a catastrophe. Without relitigating all of the specifics of what labored and what didn’t — a dialog that deserved to die after Skywalker’s launch — it appears truthful to say that Supreme Leader Snoke was unhealthy throughout.

Despite Serkis’ greatest efforts in efficiency seize and voice for the character, Snoke nonetheless appears to be like and appears like an addition to the Star Wars expanded universe instantly out of a mid-2000s novel of middle-grade fiction. He’s a bland, overly humanoid alien with no menacing setup in any respect, apart from a really tall hologram, and a boring motivationless puppet, even earlier than he’s revealed as an precise motivationless puppet.

But for all the issues Snoke delivered to the sequel trilogy’s plot, it’s sort of Andor to level out that the character was additionally a disservice to the sort of seething menace that Serkis can ship all on his personal. Thankfully, Star Wars’ greatest entry in years is right here to offer Serkis the second probability he deserves.