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Tony Gilroy is a visionary individual with a clear direction. His vision led him from the extensive reshoots of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to a Disney+ series about one of the film’s heroes, Cassian Andor, resulting in critical acclaim unlike anything seen in the Star Wars galaxy in a generation.

He’s also a straightforward person who recognizes when his vision can quickly change, as it did while filming the series in Scotland. At that moment, Gilroy, the writer, director, and showrunner, realized that his grand plan for Andor wasn’t going to work.

“We were filming, about halfway through season one, and I was trying to come up with what would be the second season when we realized we couldn’t do five years,” Gilroy reflected over Zoom. “That became a rapid exploration – you have a year to work on the show. It was more about making the show, paying for it, and getting the budget, because between the time season one started and season two happened, the metrics and mandates of streaming had completely reversed.”

However, Andor’s success didn’t reverse in that time. Upon release, audiences and critics appreciated what the series was doing, leading to rave reviews. At a time when the franchise was navigating a post-Rise of Skywalker world, the series’ grounded exploration of the nascent rebellion against the Empire and its explicit examination of ideologies within the galaxy drew attention beyond the usual Star Wars audience.

“It was the critical success of the show’s release, and the response – the passion of the response, even though it wasn’t overwhelming – that really helped Disney decide to fund the second season,” Gilroy continued. “Which we were about to start shooting, because the alternative was not to do it.”

[Image: Star Wars Andor Season 2 Diego Luna Bts]

After a few years of waiting, impacted by a delay in production due to the 2023 Hollywood strikes, Andor’s second and final season is now just over a month away. Lucasfilm is keen to remind people of what they might have missed out on. Today, alongside the launch of a 14-minute recap video, the studio and Disney announced that the first three episodes of the show would launch for free on YouTube, and the entirety of season one would be available to stream on Hulu until the launch of season two.

The series is preparing to headline next month’s Star Wars Celebration convention in Japan, a crucial moment for fans to learn more about the franchise’s future, which has been in flux more than usual lately.

But it’s also arriving in a form that Gilroy initially scrambled to adapt to. “I would start with existence, for that’s the first one. It’s the only way it could possibly exist,” Gilroy joked when asked what the series gained from its transition from a five-season plan to just two. “The hubris, naivety, and stupidity with which I entered this process – we all did. How were we going to do these five years? It was impossible, absolutely impossible.”

For Gilroy, however, the consolidation was ultimately a galvanizing one. “Once we got hit in the head with that, I think – and it sounds a little cheesy, but it’s the truth – if I was going to design this in a perfect world, I would spend one year on Cassian’s education and transformation into a revolutionary. I think one season really fits that way, and I would stick with what we did on the way out, because it just, energy-wise, it just – I don’t really have anything else to say about it.”

“It seemed like in the beginning, we were like, ‘I don’t know, is this a cocktail napkin bar conversation that’s going to turn out to be a bust?'” Gilroy pondered. “In the end, it turns out to be this really thrilling, again, saying it’s a challenge makes it seem more like a game, but it was just a gas to do it this way. I wouldn’t do it any differently.”

Ahead of reaching that endgame, the opportunity to revisit season one with Gilroy, considering what we’ve seen to come in season two, is an interesting prospect. Although the show begins 15 years into the Empire’s reign, Andor doesn’t start with a version of it that we’re immediately familiar with. Out on the fringes, where the show is most keen to explore its seeds of resistance, the face of the Empire is through the shell of corporate security.

[Video: Star Wars Andor Season 2 Trailer]

Gilroy reflected on opening the series on Morlana One and Cassian’s first brush with authoritarianism coming not from Stormtroopers but from the world’s corporate police force. “It was a great opportunity to get a different look and get a different thing.”

It’s in this environment, and the inciting incident that pushes Cassian on a path to the larger array of disparate anti-Imperial cells across the galaxy, that introduces us to one of Andor’s most important characters: Syril Karn. Karn came to Gilroy, however, in the moment of creation, rather than necessarily as a major representative tool to show how galactic authoritarianism transitioned from the likes of Morlana’s corporate-operated state to the fascism the Empire wields brazenly by the season’s ending.

“I never thought in a big sense ever,” Gilroy rebutted when asked about Syril’s arc. “I never think about anything thematically or where I want a character to go. I was like, ‘Oh, okay, let me sketch a suit. There must be someone investigating Cassian killing two corporate cops.’ Here’s this guy, and he’s investigating. Oh my god, he could be like Javert. He could be like an obsessive dude. Let me start with that.”

[Image: Star Wars Andor Nemik]

“My take on Syril is a little bit different than some people,” Gilroy ruminated. “I think he’s completely unformed, and I think he could’ve, would’ve just as eagerly embraced any kind of family that had taken him in, in a way. I think he was eager for acceptance, but passionately in need of that acceptance.”

But Gilroy’s ability to completely turn conviction in the opposite direction comes to the forefront when discussing Syril’s ideological antithesis in season one: Karis Nemik, a young member of the cell Cassian is parachuted into by Luthen to conduct a raid on an Imperial payroll facility in season one’s second arc.

[Image: Star Wars Andor Season 2 Syril Karn Kx Droids]

Where Cassian ultimately is going by the end of the first season is back home to Ferrix. Season one culminates in a heady chessboard of pieces converging on the funeral of Maarva Andor, who died of illness during Cassian’s incarceration. For Gilroy, beyond navigating the chaos that was going to explode from that metaphorical powder keg, the setting was also one that he viewed as deeply important to Cassian’s character at the climax of the season.

And so, with that realization, we and Cassian alike march into season two. Gilroy has his revolutionary taught, and the time is to put that education into real practice – but Andor season two will open in a very different world next month to the one that saw Cassian running through the rain on an unknown world, brushing up against thuggish corporate cops.

Organized rebellion has begun to emerge across the galaxy, and with it, a world of familiarity. Season two, as it counts down the years to Rogue One, will bring in familiar faces like Alan Tudyk’s rogue security droid K-2SO or Ben Mendelsohn’s Director Krennic. The black-helmeted Imperial military will be supplanted more and more by the familiar white armor of Stormtroopers.

“It wants to feel inevitable. One of the responsibilities is to deliver, canonically,” Gilroy said of season two playing in a more familiar sandbox compared to season one. “I have a couple of events I have to deal with – the Ghorman Massacre, which is a canonically mentioned event, has some confusion about it that we’re straightening out.”

But don’t mistake any of that for a checklist. For as understanding as he is that the notes he has to play as part of that larger chorus, Gilroy also remains frank about where Andor’s focus lies. “More than that, we don’t care about,” Gilroy added. “We would never add anybody for fun. We’re not going to add anybody for a smile or a wink or anything like that. There’s nothing in there that’s some juicy tidbit just for the hell of it. Everything has to be organic.”

“That’s been our attitude all the way through: not to be cynical and to take it more seriously than anybody ever took it. Even while we’re changing – some people feel as though it’s changing a lot – but even while we’re changing the grammar of what you can do, we’re trying very rigorously to be more serious about this than anybody ever has been.”

Andor will return to Disney+ for its second season from April 22. Episodes 1-3 of the first season are now available to watch for free on YouTube, with season one now streaming in its entirety on both Disney+ and Hulu.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.


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