George R.R. Martin Thought One Star Wars TV Show Was Better Than All The Rest (And He's Not Wrong)

Scold the man all you want for being a procrastinator, but George R.R. Martin knows his pop culture. When he isn't encouraging people to check out forgotten but worthwhile fantasy fare like the 1980s Disney flick "Dragonslayer" (a sometimes shockingly grisly film that features one of the all-time best scaly, fire-breathing, on screen villains in Vermithrax Perjorative), he's lending his name as an executive producer to "Dark Winds," the deeply admired neo-Western crime drama show based on Tony Hillerman's cherished "Leaphorn & Chee" novels. "Dark Winds" even saw Martin sharing the screen with his fellow executive producer Robert Redford in what wound up marking the latter's final acting credit.

If all you impatient "Game of Thrones" fans are waiting for me to write, "And then Martin got back to work on his next 'A Song of Ice and Fire' novel, 'The Winds of Winter,'" you'd best look elsewhere. In a July 2025 entry on his personal blog (the cheekily titled Not a Blog), he instead brought his followers up to speed on the media he'd been engaging with lately. To his credit, Martin revealed that he'd been partaking in the crème de la crème of geeky goodness, including the James Gunn-directed film "Superman" and "Murderbot" (an Apple TV series that allows star Alexander Skarsgård to get as gleefully weird as he always should be). But it was another sci-fi show that Martin really wanted to toast.

"'ANDOR' was this year's highlight, though," he wrote, deeming it "far and away the best of the 'Star Wars' spin-offs." He's not wrong, either: The Tony Gilroy-created show is the most radical and otherwise creatively accomplished live-action "Star Wars" series produced to date. But more than that, it's a piece of genre storytelling that's subversive in all the ways Martin loves.

At their best, "Game of Thrones" and George R.R. Martin's source novels for the series succeed in taking well-established fantasy tropes and subverting them in order to make a larger thematic point. "Andor" consistently does the same thing when it comes to conventional "Star Wars" storytelling. As stirring as it is to watch the heroes in a galaxy far, far away make morally unambiguous choices or pull off high-stakes missions with flying colors, that rarely happens in Tony Gilroy's series. That goes double for characters nobly sacrificing their lives or dramatically facing off against their enemies. Rather, in the world of "Andor," death tends to be random or, at best, a necessary evil (as it typically is in real-life war), and the would-be cathartic showdowns between the show's righteous freedom fighters and fascist villains usually play out in a more grounded and less theatrical manner.

More broadly, "Andor" features standout performances across the board (including, naturally, Diego Luna as its namesake, Cassian Andor) and looks just as fantastic as it should, given the "Star Wars" series' massive budget (which the show's creatives spent on making majestic practical sets, filming in breathtaking real-world locations, and much more). As Martin himself put it:

"Looked gorgeous, [star] Diego Luna was first rate, and there was a realism and tension to the story that was sadly lacking in most of the other spin-offs. It's nice to see someone doing science fiction right."

"Andor" is now streaming in its entirety on Disney+ ... and if you're looking for the "A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms" to its "Game of Thrones" (that is, a lighter yet just as enthralling show set in the same fictional universe), give "Skeleton Crew" a watch afterwards.