It's a bit of a slow burn, and I don't know that I think Diego Luna himself is an especially compelling actor, but the story was exceptional and it definitively proved that Star Wars is a much bigger universe than stories about the Jedi and Luke Skywalker.
It also had multiple top-notch speeches about freedom and tyranny that were dead on, the production design was everything you'd hope it to be, and I think there's easily room for a season 2 and possibly 3.
It's very different from Mandalorian, so I'd hesitate to rank it in comparison, but I definitely agree that it's one of the few truly great things to come out of Disney's era of Star Wars. Plus that prison was a very clear homage to THX1138, so that gets some added points right there.
If I was still doing a podcast, I'd have at least 2, maybe 3 different episodes on the series -- one about the creeping ratchet effect and death by a thousand cuts that lead to complete totalitarian regimes; one about over criminalization, the pettiness of law enforcement, and the insanity of mandatory minimum sentences; and possibly one about the moral cost of becoming your enemy when fighting against them (and at what point defense of a society becomes -- as Saw Gerrera put it -- "war").
In any case, well done.