Andor: What We Know About the Story and How the Series Came to Be

We are less than a month away from the release of Andor, the new Star Wars live-action series centered around the title character that was first introduced in Rogue One. The series will also depict how the Rebel Alliance was formed in the five years leading up to the mission to steal the Death Star plans, and will include characters like Mon Mothma and Saw Gerrera.



Tony Gilroy is the series' showrunner and main writer. As he revealed at Star Wars Celebration in May, Andor will be two seasons long, with the first year capturing the events of the first year in the aforementioned timeline, and the second season, the remaining four years. In his own words:

Both Gilroy and lead actor Diego Luna have said multiple times over the past couple of months that the second and final season will lead us directly into the events of the movie, possibly hinting that the final scene in the show could see Cassian in the moments right before he's introduced in the movie. 'The final scene will walk you into Rogue One,' Gilroy said at Celebration.



The Inception





Then-Disney CEO Bob Iger announced the series back in 2018, including the return of Diego Luna, and though they have now been forgotten, the show did go through some creative shifts in its early days. Following the November 2018 announcement, it was reported that The Americans producer Stephen Schiff would act as showrunner. A rumor in January 2019 suggested that the show could begin filming as soon as October of that year. In April 2019, when the launch date for Disney Plus was confirmed, Bob Iger also confirmed that K-2SO would be appearing in the series, with Alan Tudyk returning. The Luna-Tudyk pair was brought out on stage at Lucasfilm's presentation at D23 in August of that year. A couple of months later, in October, it was reported that Tony Gilroy, who had helped steer the Rogue One ship back in 2016, had joined the series as a writer and director. Production wouldn't start until December 2020, and season one was eventually confirmed to not feature K-2SO. What happened exactly?



Details are a bit fuzzy here, though we can connect some dots. Diego Luna told Vanity Fair earlier this year that he got a call from Tony Gilroy with the breakdown of the entire Andor story in mid-2019. This suggests that at some point that year, Lucasfilm decided to give Gilroy a call, possibly as they decided Schiff's direction was not working. Pre-production was probably halted, and once Gilroy was brought on board, he decided to map out the entire storyline of the show with the help of his writers' room. They most likely wrote all of it in the following year. (Gilroy told Empire Magazine earlier this year that the series is 1500 pages long.) According to Luna, he was originally told it would be a twelve-episode series, which is probably why Lucasfilm was confident enough to bring out Tudyk at D23. Whether that was the case or not, at some point the writers decided on a two-season arc that wouldn't include the beloved droid until season 2. (We know for sure that he is appearing then.)



Ever since he was brought on board and, as he did with Rogue One, course-corrected the show, everything has been a very smooth process for Andor. Casting for the series took place in the second and third quarters of 2020, with filming beginning in late November/early December of that year. It took place all over the U.K., with multiple production units shooting at the same time during certain points. It lasted nine months, finally wrapping at some point in August 2021.







Gilroy explains his approach to the series in Andor's production briefing, a 29-page document that contains a lot of details about the production, as follows:

Gilroy is also a big advocate for practical effects, real sets, and props. This was one of his requirements when prepping for Andor:

The Story





From the very beginning, Andor was described as a spy thriller that would depict the dirty side of the rebellion. For Gilroy, being given almost free range in this genre was a blessing. As he explains, the story of Andor will start very contained, focused on this one character, and will start to spread out as he starts to meet and interact with other people. He is our point of view, and the main driver of the narrative:

When we meet Cassian in Andor, he will be a very different person from the character portrayed in Rogue One. He is now living in Ferrix with his adopted family, led by his adoptive mother Maarva Andor (Fiona Shaw), and in the first episode, he is at his lowest point. Gilroy explained:

Mon Mothma (Genevieve O'Reilly) in Lucasfilm's ANDOR, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.



According to canon, Cassian is 21 at this point. After breaking down the latest trailer earlier this month, we assume that the Empire is invading Ferrix, forcing Cassian to get off-world and start his journey as a migrant. Let us remember that the production name for the Andor series was Pilgrim, and that is no coincidence. Cassian will be a traveler through foreign lands in the series until he finds a new home in the Rebel Alliance. Through this journey, he will encounter a lot of new characters that will be introduced in the series. Toby Haynes, who directed six of the twelve episodes from season one, explained it as follows:

Haynes also explained Gilroy's take on the Rebel Alliance as follows:

Supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) in Lucasfilm's ANDOR, exclusively on Disney+. ©2022 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.



To Gilroy, the most fascinating aspect of making Andor was getting the chance to explore precisely those moral gray areas that haven't been really depicted in Star Wars before, thus bringing in a new perspective to the franchise:

We will judge for ourselves in just a few weeks, when Andor has its three-episode premiere, on September 21. Stay tuned for more news and coverage on the new series!



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