Overall, it’s good! As most people said, the arc in the prison is the best part. I also liked the heist in episode 6 and the riot in episode 12. The prison arc and the heist both had excellent stakes, good moments of tension, reversals, character moments.
I also liked both scenes with Saw Guerra. Forrest Whitaker really is one of one. Meero is a pretty good villain, though she could have used less time doing internal politics. The corpo sergeant guy was pretty great for his little amount of screen time.
Now I’m gonna spend the rest of my time mostly complaining. I have a lot of issues with this show. I think it has waaaay too many characters. And a lot of them are underdeveloped. A standout one in this regard is Bix. She just didn’t have enough of a character. Another one is corpo guy (his name is Syril Karn but I literally had to look it up). In the first three episodes he at least had stuff to do, but we keep checking in on him over and over, even though his character never does anything again, really. Mon Mothma had this problem as well. I just didn’t really care about her plotline and it takes up so much screentime.
Speaking of screentime, this show has a lot of pacing issues. The first three episodes are all setup. They could have easily compressed it down to 1. The whole meted out flashback on Kenari should have been done in one go. The first two heist episodes are pretty slow with not enough tension. That makes five slow episodes until you get into anything meaty.
Now let’s talk about Cassian as a character. I get that this show is “about” him becoming part of the rebellion. But he’s kind of all over the place from the jump. He’s looking for his sister and that kicks the plot in motion, but is quickly dropped. Then he does a heist for money, but that’s kind of weird and minor. Luthen wanted to recruit him but then wants to kill him? A threat which takes too long to resolve imo. The only time I actually felt connected to his motivation is the prison break, but that’s also easy. After that, rescuing Bix “makes sense” but I also don’t care because I haven’t been made to care about her!
I think this is far from the best version of this show. It’s laudable they want to keep the scope of this show personal. And all of its best moments hit in that way (the prison break arc and the heist especially). However, pacing issues and character writing issues make it tricky to fully embrace. All in all, it is good. I think it was definitely oversold to me though.