The latest Star Wars series Andor has blown me away. I’ll be honest The Rebellion versus the Galactic Empire has never been my favourite part of the Star Wars movies. It’s not because I find galactic politics boring, it’s just that I tend to like more supernatural stories than tight, grounded thrillers.
Still, a great TV series is a great TV series, and Andor is probably the best show we’ve had set in a galaxy far, far away. I’ll always love The Mandalorian, aka ‘The Adventures of Space dad and Son’, but showrunner Tony Gilroy’s brought a new level of quality to Disney Plus, it feels like the first prestige show we’ve had from the streaming service.
However, I’m not writing this to wax poetically about how much I enjoyed Andor (I’ll leave that to my colleague Jakob and you can read his Andor episode 12 review here if you would like). No, I’m here to talk about Stormtroopers, supposedly the finest soldier that Emperor Palpatine could muster.
Now we all know that stormtroopers are about as accurate with a blaster as a man at a urinal who’s drank 12 pints. It’s also demonstrably true that a stormtrooper’s field of vision is reduced to about 2 feet ahead of them when they’re in the presence of a Star Wars character with an actual name.
That said, what’s been commented on less is the shoddiness of their armour. It appears that the Empire’s got some logistical problems in its armouries because whoever’s ordering the stormtrooper’s protective gear has either been conned or more corrupt than a Hutt spice dealer.
Seriously the only thing stormtrooper armour seems to protect from is stains, and even then, we’ve got our doubts. We’ve seen stormtroopers blown away by blaster fire, cut down by a lightsaber, and even killed by whatever the hell the Ewoks are, but Andor took things to a new low.
During the finale, a Stormtrooper was headbutted by Brasso, and they went down like a sack of particularly heavy spuds. Now, unless Brasso has a skull made of Quadanium steel, then we’re going to assume that the stormtrooper’s helmet offers about as much head protection as a pair of sunglasses.
We all already knew that stormtroopers are essentially a joke, of course, faceless mooks to be gunned down by our heroes, but Andor’s proven it. Still, at least the stormtroopers look cool when they stand in a line…
If you want a more serious conversation about Star Wars, check out our guide to the Andor season 2 release date. If that’s not enough, we have articles on the Star Wars characters Darth Vader and Ahsoka Tano.