Andor will avoid fan service despite featuring multiple cameos

Tomorrow marks the premiere of Lucasfilm’s latest Star Wars television show Andor on Disney+, and by all accounts it’s pretty good. Andor follows the titular Rebel Spy played by Diego Luna, and details how he goes from a disillusioned man struggling to survive under the Galactic Empire to the hero he’ll need to become in order to sacrifice his life to steal the Death Star plans during Rogue One: A Story Wars Story.

Like Rogue One, Andor is the brainchild of writer/director Tony Gilroy (Bourne, Michael Clayton), who says Andor will be a bit of a departure from the Star Wars fare we’re used to, especially in that it won’t be overly reliant on Easter eggs. “We didn’t want to do anything that was fan service,” Gilroy told IGN. “We never wanted to have anything… the mandate in the very beginning was that it would be as absolutely non-cynical as it could possibly be, that the show would just be real and honest.”

Andor, a show that avoids fan service, will include multiple Star Wars cameos

That said, it’s not like Andor can completely divorce itself from the rest of the galaxy. After all, the show is a prequel to a different Star Wars movie which itself was a prequel to Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. So it’s inevitable that there will at least be some cameos and guest appearances.

“We will be introducing people along the way,” Gilroy said. “I don’t think it’s any secret that Forest Whitaker is in the show… Saw Gerrera is in the show. There will be some other people. But when we bring them, we bring them because we need them and because there’s really some protein there, there’s something for them to really do.”

Gerrera is a mainstay in the Star Wars canon, appearing in both the animated Clone Wars and Rebels series as well as making his live-action debut in Rogue One, where he was played by Forest Whitaker. Star Wars producer Dave Filoni has referred to him as “the first Rebel,” so it makes sense that he’d appear in a show like Andor.

And Gerrera’s not the only character from the broader Star Wars universe we know will crop up; the show will also feature Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), a Rebel leader who appeared in Rogue One, a deleted scene from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, and the iconic scene in A New Hope where she tells the Rebel Alliance that “many Bothan spies died” to steal the Death Star plans. No doubt that line is going to hit a lot differently after Andor.

Star Wars: Andor will show the sexy side of the galaxy

Andor will break new ground for the franchise in that it will be the first Star Wars project to acknowledge that people have sex in the galaxy far, far away. Most Star Wars films or shows are relatively chaste, only hinting slightly that people have had sex because of things like them suddenly having a baby on the way (and sometimes not even then, as with Anakin Skywalker’s immaculate conception). But according to SyFy Wire, the first episode of Andor features a trip to a brothel, where it is made crystal clear that carnal pleasures are being catered to.

“It sure is a good tell when you turn in that first episode for them to say, ‘Whoa! OK, this is what the show’s gonna be like,’” Gilroy told Rolling Stone. “It was a marker, but it’s also good for the story. It served double duty.”

Gilroy had a “blue-sky conversation” with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy where they talked at length about what he could and couldn’t do in Andor. “The galaxy is just enormous. There’s billions of creatures that are living their lives. And so far the narrative has been focused on a singular group of people in a centralized storyline. It just seemed like infinite possibilities to take it [away from that],” Gilroy said.

"War is coming. The stories and characters are meant to be ground level; even a plot twist early on, where a character calls the Imperial cops on Andor because of romantic jealousy, is fresh territory for Star Wars. If you think about it, most of the beings in the galaxy are not aware of Jedi, and have never seen a lightsaber. That topic and the Star Wars royal family have been chewed on for a long time. It’s like, there’s a restaurant and we’re in the kitchen. This is what’s going on underneath the other stuff."

Lead actor Diego Luna weighed in as well: “This is the most grounded that Star Wars will get. We are stressing that change and revolution happen when regular people decide to do something. It’s just regular people trying to survive in the darkest time in this galaxy, and finding out they can’t take it anymore. It’s about a system that is choking society.”

Star Wars: Andor season 2 will likely come out in 2024

Based on the early reactions to the show, it seems like a safe bet people will want more. Andor is being designed as a two-season story that spans 24 episodes. With season 1 coming out now, when should we expect season 2?

According to Gilroy, not soon. “I have two more years to go,” he said. “We start shooting in November on Part 2. And I don’t know if … Our past pattern was two years, but I mean, I’ll be on … We’ll shoot from November to August. And then our post[-production] last time was about a year.”

In other words, we shouldn’t expect Andor season 2 (aka Part 2) until at least 2024. Fortunately, we’ll have a while before we have to worry about that. The first three episodes of Andor premiere on Disney+ on September 21. After that, new episodes will drop every Wednesday until late November.

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