Ever since The Last Jedi came out, some of its admirers have made the maddening argument that its detractors "just don't want anything new with Star Wars." I always found this argument both laughable and noxious - laughable, given how many plot beats, thematic elements, character turns, and visuals TLJ borrowed from Empire/RotJ, and noxious, in that it was generally made in bad faith. Just because some critics of TLJ didn't think the penultimate/eighth entry in a nine-film saga was the right project to undercut the previous movie's setups and experiment with Stars Wars' tone didn't mean they never wanted anything new from the franchise, period; they might have simply thought that such variety would more properly appear elsewhere.
Well, now we have Andor, and, IMO, it's a helluva lot more of a departure from classic Star Wars than TLJ was. Unlike TLJ, with its pointless surface-level flirtation between the perfectly virtuous Rey and the angsty "bad boy" Kylo, Andor gives us a major plot point consisting of petty sexual jealousy. Instead of ham-fisted, anvilicious social messaging like "corporate war profiteering is bad," which doesn't have anything to do with the story at hand, Andor shows in painful and believable detail how turning a blind eye to the accused in criminal justice systems allows for horrific abuse. Instead of heroes who are so idiotic they park their spacecraft wherever they like in an elite area they have zero familiarity with, Andor has characters who make elaborate plans, and practice their manuevers with professionalism and determination. Instead of First Order villains who blubber and yell at their enemies, Andor gives us nuanced and layered Imperial characters who react to warfare with disorientation and panic. I could go on, but one gets the idea. Abrams built a crappy sandcastle with TFA, and Johnson thought he was being wonderfully clever by simply kicking it flat. Enter Tony Gilroy, with an almost entirely new slate of characters, who came and built something genuinely great.
Andor S1 isn't perfect - I thought at least two episodes sagged a bit, and the idea of a universe dominated by a fascist government that doesn't have a clear external enemy to fight will never quite make sense to me, because, as the old saying goes, "Fascism means war." Ergo, any depiction of a fascist state, even in fantasy, that isn't actively opposed to and in conflict with another system/force/entity, will always ring at least somewhat hollow. However, coming up with such an external and publicly known threat at this point in the saga, be it the Yuuzhan Vong or whatever, would have done more damage to the canon than it was worth.
So, while I haven't seen the animated shows, or ready any of the new continuity books, I feel confident in saying Andor S1 is the greatest Star Wars story since the Thrawn Trilogy, and the best screen story since Empire. For this, I offer Lucasfilm and Kathleen Kennedy sincere congratulations; they finally made something not just decent, but excellent.
S1 Grade: A-