“It’s a very paranoid world we live in.” That’s how showrunner Tony Gilroy begins to describe the upcoming Andor Star Wars series, based around the early adventures of Diego Luna‘s Rogue One hero.
The 12-episode show is set to launch on Disney+ later this summer. Both Gilroy and Luna spoke with Vanity Fair for our cover story, Star Wars: The Rebellion Will Be Televised, about their new take on the intrepid Rebel agent. In this bonus story, the pair reveal new details (including how the Rebel political leader Mon Mothma intersects with her future top spy) while also correcting a few rumors about the show that have circulated among the fans.
For instance, don’t expect Alan Tudyk’s blunt-speaking droid K-2SO. “We don’t have Alan Tudyk,” Gilroy confirms. “Not yet, anyway.” But fear not. Prep for a second season is already underway, and the story of how Cassian Andor met that former Imperial battle droid may be told then. “It is a second season, but it’s really, for me, the second half of the novel,” Gilroy says. “This first season is about him becoming a revolutionary, and the second 12 episodes take him into Rogue One.”
They also say the series will make Star Wars obsessives reevaluate key tenets they have come to believe—all while trying to draw in fans who aren’t as well versed in galactic history.
Fair warning: There are some light spoilers ahead about how the Andor series starts out. For casual fans, it may be merely intriguing, but the more you know about the Star Wars universe, the more you might be able to read into what’s being suggested.
Gilroy is known for writing the first four Bourne thrillers, and he received Oscar nominations for both writing and directing Michael Clayton. He got involved with Star Wars by helping to rework Rogue One during its reshoots. Secrets, conspiracies and claustrophobic distrust are among his hallmarks, so expect Andor to put a galactic spin on those themes.
“Tony is probably the best there is when it comes to the spy genre and bringing that into the Star Wars universe,” says Michelle Rejwan, a producer of Andor and a Lucasfilm creative executive. She says Andor looks “through the lens of this character that had such a huge impact on Star Wars history, but who has a very personal, very rich, very committed investment in this fight.”
Luna emphasizes that the show will also be about the transformation of a fearful man. “I believe science fiction and stories that happen in a galaxy far, far away are a great tool to comment on our world—on your life, and my life and on the way we interact,” the actor says. “We need to explore how a revolutionary can come to change things, to stop war, to make this world a livable place. So Andor talks about that. I think it can inspire a lot of people on how much you can do by yourself.”
Rogue One, as those who’ve seen the 2016 movie know, is actually the conclusion of Cassian Andor’s story. It’s set just before the events of 1977’s original Star Wars and tells the self-sacrificing story of the Rebel spies who stole the Death Star plans that allowed Luke Skywalker to reduce the planet-killing battle station to a field of glowing debris. Andor will be primarily set five years before that mission in Rogue One, although the show will flash back even further to when Cassian’s childhood home world first falls under the tyrannical control of the Empire.
“His adopted home will become the base of our whole first season, and we watch that place become radicalized,” Gilroy says. “Then we see another planet that’s completely taken apart in a colonial kind of way. The Empire is expanding rapidly. They’re wiping out anybody who’s in their way.”
These are strategic moves for the Dark Side, asserting dominance over worlds that are manufacturing centers, that supply raw materials, or provide other vital supplies they need to maintain control. “They’re taking over the corporate planets,” Gilroy says. “They’re tightening up their supply chains.” What the Empire doesn’t destroy, it consumes. “It’s all the ways that oppression can pull a culture apart and destroy it,” Gilroy says.
Some things that were once only hinted at in the movie will be explored in more detail. “We got to invent and create and dream about all the answers you don’t find in Rogue One,” Luna says. “I thought that character was gone for me. And suddenly when they asked me if I would be willing to do this, my straight answer was, ‘Yes, of course,’ because I also have questions I would love to answer.”
Gilroy highlights just a few such blank spots. “You know he’s been fighting since he was a child, right? He says that. You know he’s been a guerrilla fighter. You certainly know he’s been an assassin. He kills an ally in the very first scene,” Gilroy says, referring to a moment in Rogue One when Andor murders an informant to prevent him from falling into the Empire’s hands. “That was a big gulp on Rogue One, to see who would swallow that. He’s morally complicated in a really dark way.”
Gilroy brings up another moment from the film in which Felicity Jones’s Jyn Erso fears the Rebel leadership won’t back her and Andor’s efforts to stage a heist for the Death Star plans. “Felicity comes out of the council meeting in Yavin and says, ‘They don’t want to do it. They don’t have the guts to do it.’ And he’s standing there with this murderers row of guys, and he says, “Man, if we don’t go do this, then all these terrible things that we did, all the crap that we’ve done, it’ll be useless. And all the moral, all the blood on our hands will be useless.’”
In the new series, Star Wars fans will learn how those hands got stained. We know from Rogue One that he’s willing to give up his life; Andor will show that long before that, he was giving up parts of his soul for the cause, too.
“He’s someone surviving in dark times,” Luna says. “If you know the Star Wars universe and story, these are the darkest times.”
As part of his prep for the original role, Luna says he imagined aspects of Andor’s history that never made it into the movie, just as background for himself as he brought the spy to life. He and Gilroy discussed all that as the scripts were coming together. “Now all that material is useful again,” Luna says. “I thought I was never going to be able to share that.”
That helped personalize Andor for him. Asked what he personally contributed to the spymaster’s story, Diego says he thought of people who are forced to run due to pressures beyond their control—until they decide to stop running and make a stand. “It’s the journey of a migrant, which to me is everything I come from,” he says. “That feeling of having to move is behind this story, very profoundly and very strong. Not being able to be where you belong. That shapes you as a person. It defines you in many ways, and what you are willing to do.”
But Andor doesn’t begin that way. “What I can tell you is that this guy, he doesn’t see further than himself,” Luna says.
Rebellion? Right vs. wrong? “In the beginning of it all, he couldn’t give a shit about any of that,” Gilroy says. “He’s a thief. He’s a ducker and a diver. He has a lot of anger about his childhood, and about the Empire, but he has no place to put it. He just doesn’t believe in anything at this point.”
But Cassian Andor is also a natural leader. “He’s seductive,” Gilroy adds. “Seductive in a way where he’s manipulating people. He compromises, he changes his mind. He’s really a perfect kind of spy, warrior, killer. How do you get to that place—and then sacrifice yourself?”
He says Andor “is taking someone who’s really anti-revolution, and turning them into the most passionate person who’s willing to give themselves to save the galaxy.”
To get there, Cassian needs to follow a leader as well.
Hardcore Star Wars aficionados who hear the name Mon Mothma know immediately who that is. Casual fans probably need a reminder. She has been an intriguing side-character for years, but Andor will place her, if not at center stage, at least closer to the heart of the action.
Mothma first appeared in 1983’s Return of the Jedi, originated by actress Caroline Blakiston. She was the priestess-like figure in a flowing white caftan who hosts a Rebel briefing to outline weaknesses in the all-new Death Star the Empire has under construction. She is most remembered for delivering the enigmatic and ominous line: “Many Bothans died to bring us this information.”
In the prequels, George Lucas revealed that before Mon Mothma was a leader of the Rebellion, she was a young member of the Galactic Senate. In Revenge of the Sith, Genevieve O’Reilly portrayed her in a brief scene, then she reprised the role years later in Rogue One as a sort of M figure to Luna’s 007. O’Reilly will return in Andor, and we will see how she and Cassian cross paths—eventually.
“I have the sheet in front of me. I have 211 speaking parts in this show. There’s probably 75 people in there who really matter, and there’s at least a dozen seriously important characters that we’ll be carrying forward to the second [season,]” Gilroy explains. “It is a huge, orchestral, Dickensian ensemble cast, with Diego at the middle of it, and Genevieve at the middle of another part of it. They intersect. I’m not going to get into how they intersect. They do have an intersection—but they do not meet. They will not meet until the second half.”
Her character is still in the galaxy’s leadership class on the capital world of Coruscant and is trying to navigate the turmoil of the Emperor’s new autocracy while quietly fomenting opposition. But Andor doesn’t start there.
Here’s where it gets a little spoiler-ish. “Our show starts with a very simple, almost film noir situation for a thief, a skeevy kind of guy who gets in big trouble trying to sell something to save his ass,” Gilroy reveals. “Someone’s been watching him, a rebel talent scout, and he’s sort of recruited on the worst day of his life.” That storyline focuses on Luna and two unspecified characters played by Stellan Skarsgård and Adria Arjona. “On episode four, we leave there and we begin to expand out…”
Gilroy and Luna didn’t explicitly make this comparison, but what they described sounds akin to the structure of a show like Better Call Saul, which weaves together storylines that only occasionally touch directly. But indirectly, the waves they make buffet against each other and have particularly dire implications for the future we know is coming in Breaking Bad. Star Wars has always told its stories out of chronological order, and the tension that comes from knowing that destiny becomes part of the drama.
“There are certain events that happen in these five years that are important and need to be paid attention to. There are certain people, characters that are legacy characters, that the audience, the passionate audience, really feels that they have an understanding of and know,” Gilroy explains. “In some cases they’re right. And in some cases, what we’re saying is, ‘What you know, what you’ve been told, what’s on Wookieepedia, what you’ve been telling each other … is really all wrong.”
Or, if not wrong, he adds: “It’s upside down, or it’s sideways, or it’s the opposite of what you thought was true. Or it’s way more interesting than you had ever thought. Or that’s a lie and there’s a reason for it. I would say that there’s some surprises in store.”
Three episodes in, he predicts O’Reilly’s character will become unforgettable even to casual viewers. “I bet that when episode 104 plays, when Mon Mothma finishes the episode, that there’ll be people tweeting about Mon Mothma.”
This is another mission of Andor—to please Star Wars die-hards, but also expand the audience beyond them. “The really passionate Star Wars community … All those people have a lot of people in their lives that are Star Wars hesitant, or Star Wars averse, or Star Wars reluctant. Their roommate, their husband, the guy at work, whatever.”
Andor, he says, is aimed at them too. “I mean, I want my wife to be watching this show,” Gilroy says. “She couldn’t care less. She’s not that interested in it. She hasn’t been interested in it for the last two years. But my goal is that she really is like, ‘Oh my God, I’ve got to see the next episode.’ Without losing anybody, it’s really about enhancing what we have.”
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