I was so blown away by Andor and the season finale that I decided to rewatch the season. I've never done that before, just go right back and watch it again, but there are so many characters and so many intersecting plot lines that I figured it would be good to go through it all again.
It holds up extremely well. In fact, it occurred to me that one criterion of how well-written something is would be how well it holds up upon repeat viewings. All those lines that characters had, which may have been throwaways at the time, or not, can turn out to have much greater meaning. Or the opposite; does something someone said hold up, now that we know how things really are? This series has put a lot of moving pieces out there and we don't see until later, sometimes much later, how they all fit together. A lot of times we get the payoff and I'll remember something from two or three episodes back and go "A-ha!" because I get it. And sometimes I don't, but upon rewatch, that seed was indeed planted.
Anyway, I've now rewatched the first six episodes, and I'm enjoying it as much as I did the first time through. Great stuff.
Rewatch observations:
The first three episodes seemed to deal a lot of with Cassian finding his little sister and flashbacks to his home planet of Kennari. I know there's a line later from Maarva that he should just let her go; there's no way she's still alive and/or that he'll ever find her. And that's the last time she's referred to in the entire series (so far), and they stopped with the flashbacks after Episode 3. Upon rewatch, it becomes more clear that there will be characters who enter and leave Andor's life, and we've got a lot of ground to cover, so there will be a lot of these side characters. Even Kino Loy (Andy Serkis) may or may not be coming back, so it's not a matter of stunt casting. Clem, Skeen, Nemik, and now Maarva, all gone. Perhaps even Brasso and the others on Ferrix who survived the uprising are now in the past. The story moves forward, and those were just people whose paths crossed Andor's at some point.
We never did find out the real connection between Luthen and Vel. It's hinted to be more than what we see on screen.
Dedra and Syril, seriously where is this going?
There will be more "questions unanswered (so far)" I'm sure.