April 24, 2025
Provided image/Disney+
The second and last season of 'Andor' has begun streaming on Disney+. The 'Star Wars' show will air in batches of three episodes.
It's time for viewers to say goodbye to two very different shows.
"Andor," the "Star Wars" prequel series to a prequel movie to the original, began its last season Tuesday. The Disney+ show will air its closing chapter in batches of three episodes, dropping each week through May 13.
The final season of "You" also debuts Friday on Netflix. The serial killer thriller/dark comedy will follow its protagonist on one last murder spree, supposedly in the name of love, in New York City.
It's not all spaceships and stabbings out there. "Hacks" is also airing its newest season on Max, and there's never been a better time to watch the recent Prime addition "Conclave."
Starting a revolution may look cool, but it can also be profoundly embarrassing. Season 2 of "Andor" opens with a bit of espionage that devolves into slapstick as Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) slips into the cockpit of an enemy aircraft and pilots it out of the hangar with all the grace of Jabba the Hutt.
This interest in the actual work of building a movement, pitfalls and all, distinguished "Andor" from the rest of the "Star Wars" shows when it debuted in 2022. It's still the franchise's best series in its second season, the first three episodes of which are now on Disney+.
The action picks up a year after the Season 1 finale, or four years before the events of "Star Wars: A New Hope." Andor is still working for the burgeoning Rebel Alliance, his enigmatic boss Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) is still scheming and the resistance's inside woman, Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly), is reluctantly marrying her teen daughter off to secure funding. The Empire is as evil as ever and looking for new ways to crush the emerging threat to its power.
"Andor" will lurch forward in time with each new batch of episodes until it more or less catches up with "Rogue One," the film where Cassian Andor first appeared. This second season is also its last, but from the looks of the initial episodes, it's going out with a bang. (The bang is the Death Star exploding.)
What do you do when you blackmail your boss to get your dream job, and then the two of you have to work together? "Hacks" finds its central duo of Deborah Vance (Jean Smart), a has-been comedian on the come-up, and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder), her much younger writing partner, at their most contemptuous yet. And that's saying something, since the pair's dynamic has never been especially harmonious. (To recap, Deborah has slapped and sued Ava, and once left her on the side of a desert road.)
Season 4, now airing Thursdays on Max, picks up where the previous season ended, with Ava's unexpected power play. Deborah has responded by tormenting the new head writer of her late-night show with "pranks" like leaving Ava's underwear on a coworker's desk or anonymously reporting her for drug testing. But they have to find a way to work together, especially once their network decides their working relationship is the strongest publicity point for the show.
After starting over in Los Angeles and London, the serial killer protagonist of "You" is going back in his old stomping grounds. Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) has returned to New York for the show's fifth and final season, premiering Friday on Netflix.
Based on the books by Caroline Kepnes, the series examines the twisted, misogynistic nature of its "nice guy" lead. Each season, Joe fixates on a woman he's convinced he understands like no one else can. But it's not enough for Joe to romance her; he has to control her through stalking, manipulation and occasionally murdering her friends. The show juxtaposes his inner and outer selves through frequent voice-over narration, where Badgley's performance really shines.
The nature of Joe's, uh, work, means he's often moving house. But his marriage to heiress Kate (Charlotte Ritchie) last season has allowed him to go home for good, and live in the public eye with his wife and son. Once they're settled, it doesn't take long for Kate's business rivals, including her twin siblings — they're all the rage this season — to stir Joe's killer instincts.
In the aftermath of Pope Francis's death, people have latched onto the one-time Oscar contender "Conclave" as a movie for the moment — and fountain of meme material. The political thriller, which dramatizes the election of a new pope, spiked in streaming viewership by 283% Monday as news broke of the pontiff's passing. See what all the fuss is about on Prime, which added "Conclave" to its library earlier this month.
The movie is centered on Cardinal Lawrence (Ralph Fiennes), the man in charge of the electoral proceedings. As rumors fly about some of the candidates (John Lithgow, Lucian Msamati, Sergio Castellitto, Stanley Tucci) for the big job, the cardinal taps his whisper network of nuns and clergymen to determine the truth. If this sounds like "Gossip Girl" or a dishy reality show, it kinda is. Even though their faith forbids them from swearing or slugging each other, these men of God are messy. Their sniping concludes with a great twist that elicited whoops and cheers from the audience at the Philadelphia Film Festival last year.
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