I have to say I found it completely flat, I just felt completely numb to anything here. Admittedly, never saw the TV show, and Andor turns out is way more my flavor, I guess. Even though I've seen the original trilogy a number of times (granted, it's been more than a decade since I watched them), I did not pick up on any of the stuff you picked up on, though they are very much there now that you point them out to me. I did not get the sense that my audience was having a good time, except for some titters around Grogu and his band of tiny friends.

There just weren't ups and downs, no sense that things were lost or were at stake. I think the voice performance for Rotta didn't help -- I didn't feel like it mattered, and that's where I should have been able to care a bit about what happened (but him being a Hutt certainly doesn't help). When I saw The Force Awakens I said "Well, they sure put a lot of Star Wars in that Star Wars movie," but at least it felt like there were things at stake.

The amphibious species fishing in the bayou reminded me of Sebulba (sp?), the pod racer. And of course, now that you have me reflecting on how this is touching on all people's favorite flavors, of course what he's doing is evoking/rhyming with Yoda and Luke about whether Luke is afraid... "You will be" becomes "You should be." None of that landed for me.