Star Wars: Andor season 2 starts filming today, (probably) won’t be out until 2024

Before Star Wars: Andor premiered on Disney+, my hopes weren’t particularly high. We’d come off a series of good-but-not-great Star Wars series like The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi, and the bloom was coming off the rose. Why should a series about a secondary character from the one-off Star Wars movie Rogue One be something to get excited about?

And then the show came out and shut me up but good. Andor is a Star Wars show like no Star Wars show before it: careful, dense, and resonant, it feels less like a swashbuckling adventure in the typical Star Wars mold and more like a cloak-and-dagger thriller, and a really good one at that. It’s definitely giving The Mandalorian a run for its money as the best Star Wars TV series on Disney+, and may well eclipse it by the time the finale airs tomorrow.

I’m already anticipating the second and final season. According to showrunner Tony Gilroy, that starts filming today and will run through August of next year. That’s a good long time to be filming a series, and then there’s the post-production period that comes after.

Don’t expect the second and final season of Star Wars: Andor before 2024

So when might we see Star Wars: Andor season 2? Gilroy is being realistic about it. “If past is predicate, and we do the same thing we did before, it’ll be on the same schedule. It will come out two years later,” he told Collider.

"The only place you can accelerate the processes is in post, and the only way you can accelerate in post is with money, and money is tight. So, I don’t really know, there would have to be some serious motivation next May or June or something. Someone would have to say, “Wow, we really need this, and we’re willing to pay X.” Rogue One proved, if you throw money at it, you can do post really, really fast. It’s just very, very, very expensive."

Two-year gaps are basically the norm for today’s brand of expensive fantasy and sci-fi shows. The wait begins tomorrow.

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