The following contains spoilers for Andor Season 1, Episode 7, "Announcement," now streaming on Disney+.

The first villains viewers saw in 1977 during Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope was not Darth Vader, but the white-armor clad foot soldiers of the Empire. While most movies and shows treat them as ineffectual idiots, Andor is making Star Wars' Stormtroopers scary, threatening villains again. In the first episodes of Andor on Disney+, the iconic Empire villains were nowhere to be found, mirroring the mundane evil of the Empire's creeping authoritarianism. Viewers may not even notice the Stormtroopers until one is in Cassian Andor's face, sending him to prison for six years on fully imagined charges.

Just like Andor, viewers may not have spotted the troopers until it was too late. Cassian's arrest doesn't do anything to change the notion that Stormtroopers -- or in this particular case Shoretroopers -- aren't complete idiots. However, without a lightsaber or a hidden blaster, they're the scariest villain that Cassian ever faced down, at least until the KX Imperial Droid snatches him up by the neck. Andor is an incredible, mature Star Wars show, but perhaps its biggest contribution to the galaxy is what it's doing for Stormtroopers and their reputation among Star Wars fans.

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Star Wars' Stormtroopers Were Never Meant to Be a Joke

Han Solo running from stormtroopers in A New Hope

Perhaps the most known fact about Stormtroopers is based on an incorrect reading of the events of what was designed to be a movie children could follow. In A New Hope, Ben Kenobi identifies Imperial blaster fire as uniquely "precise." Later, when no Stormtrooper is able to land a shot on the heroes -- almost as if there was a magical "Force" protecting them -- it's revealed the heroes were allowed to escape in order to lead the Empire to the Rebel base. By the time the Ewoks were taking out Stormtroopers, however, they lost some of their villainous luster. All versions of the Stormtrooper go back to the designs of the legendary Ralph McQuarrie, who designed them to be inhuman villains people wouldn't feel bad about seeing killed en masse. While that impression still persists, no Star Wars fan sees Stormtroopers as a challenge anymore.

One way Andor excels as a story is that Cassian is so ordinary. He's not a great fighter or a perfect shot. The Force does not move through him as it does through Jedi. He's not even particularly skilled at talking his way out of trouble the way Han Solo is. As such, when he comes face-to-face with a surly Shoretrooper, he is outmatched in every way. He can't even outsmart the Shoretrooper because -- as the exchange between them shows -- authoritarians don't need a reason to arrest someone for a crime they didn't even commit. A lowly Shoretrooper just arrested one of the most-wanted criminals in the Empire, and he did it by accident. While the Stormtroopers don't have to be (nor should be) elite, that doesn't mean they can't be scary nonetheless.

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Andor's Stormtroopers Represent the 'Closing Fist' of the Empire

A KX Unit drags two unconscious bodies along the shore on Andor

As Star Wars: The Clone Wars character Wullf Yularen -- now the head of the Imperial Security Bureau -- tells the rest of his officers, it's not about a matter of "if" the Empire will catch the Rebels but how tightly to close their fist. The appearance of Stormtroopers represents this, because as that fist grows tighter around the people, the familiar foils become more omnipresent. They aren't meant to be great Imperial fighters or even what the clones were.

The Stormtroopers are expendable soldiers who "win" because they're so replaceable. As such, all the inconsistencies about these villains make sense from a narrative standpoint. Their armor, for example, is more about the look than any actual protection. It is therefore cheap and useless because the Empire doesn't care if a Stormtrooper lives or dies. Playing to this idea is what makes Stormtroopers frightening in Andor or any Star Wars tale; one isn't unstoppable, but no one can stop them all.

As the story progresses in Andor, viewers will likely see more familiar Imperial characters and settings. As Cassian goes further and further towards the point of no return in each episode, fans know he will eventually lose track of all the Stormtroopers he kills. At this point in Andor, however, they are the scariest things in the universe to him.

Andor debuts new episodes Wednesdays on Disney+.