And this is exactly where I disagree. Andor does not stand very well on its own outside of SW (and that takes it from great tier to very good for me with the ot

And this is exactly where I disagree. Andor does not stand very well on its own outside of SW (and that takes it from great tier to very good for me with the other minor squibbles that I have). If you don't know the lore, things will be less clear and the writing will feel strange at times. FWIW, I have recommended this show to many friends who never watched anything SW, they mostly liked it but found some things odd. WARNING, SPOILERS The story is not properly resolved. If you have no SW knowledge, the threat isn't even very clear. Some galaxy government lead by an emperor is building a weapon, shown once. If S2 is the end it's pretty unsatisfying in general. The politics are kind of unclear. The sacrifice of Mothma is very unclear without a SW background. A senator said something and had to flee to a planet (oversimplified). Without knowledge of R1, the killing machine super droid is down right comical/a sloppy resolve for things. Without SW knowledge the (imo) best part of the Imperial machinery, bureaucracy, power hunger also becomes awkward at times and frankly less interesting. Syril is my favorite character and Dedra probably second. I found their arcs great, every single non-SW viewer I talked to found them "boring", "that guy with the annoying mother was strange" and "why did they have to be a couple, that's pretty unimaginative writing" etc. END SPOILERS My personal quibbles are that the crashed tie episode was pretty bad filler. I have not heard anyone say anything good about it. Someone else already mentioned minor technical problems (field scene). I found Diego Luna's acting ok but not great. It felt wooden at times. To some extend that's subjective but it doesn't compare to the lead acting I have in my personal top tier (Breaking Bad for example)