How Star Wars: Andor will break up its five-year story

Disney is currently working on approximately 10 million TV shows set in the Star Wars universe. The next one is Andor, a prequel to the 2016 movie Rogue One. It tells the story of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), who becomes a fighter in the Resistance against the Galactic Empire.

Disney is going whole hog on this one. They’ve already committed to two seasons of 12 episodes each, which means the first season of this show will have more episodes any other season of a Star Wars series they’ve produced thus far. Speaking to Empire, creator Tony Gilroy broke down how the first two seasons will go:

"The scale of the show is so huge. Directors work in blocks of three episodes, so we did four blocks [in Season 1] of three episodes each. [For season 2, we] looked and said, ‘Wow, it’d be really interesting if we come back, and we use each block to represent a year. We’ll move a year closer with each block.’ From a narrative point of view, it’s really exciting to be able to work on something where you do a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and then jump a year."

So that means that the first season of Andor will cover a year in the life of Cassian Andor, while the second season will take place over four years, which should bring us up to Rogue One. “Rogue One is more about an event than the actual journey of [the] characters,” star Diego Luna said. “It’s quite amazing to start a show where it’s not about where we can end – it’s about, how did we end there?”

Did anybody want Star Wars: Andor?

Okay, please forgive me if I’m being a downer, but from the start, the idea of a show about Cassian Andor always struck me as odd. Was this character that popular? Were there throngs of Cassian Andor fans demanding to see his origin story that I missed? From Obi-Wan Kenobi to The Book of Boba Fett to Ahsoka, there are a lot of shows about popular Star Wars characters either on the air or already out, and I dunno if the secondary lead from Rogue One fits in among them.

Plus, we already know how Cassian’s story wraps up. I dunno, it just seemed like a weird choice, and it’s really weird that Disney is putting so many resources behind it. I dunno about you, but I’d rather they commit to making 12 new episodes of The Mandalorian, a show that’s already proven itself a hit, than this. As for a two-season order off the bat, isn’t Obi-Wan Kenobi a better candidate for that?

Hopefully my misgivings are misplaced and the show ends up taking the galaxy by storm. Star Wars: Andor premieres on Disney+ on August 31.

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