The second season of Star Wars: Andor drops tomorrow, April 22, on Disney+. There are 12 episodes total in this season, which is more than we often get in the age of expensive genre tentpoles. However, the episodes will be dropped in groups of three, so the whole thing will be over in a month.
That might sound disappointing, but it sounds like creator Tony Gilroy has thought carefully about the season's structure. Each of the three episodes will cover three days in the lives of characters like Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), a key member of the nascent Rebel Alliance fighting back against the tyrannical Empire. A year will pass between each of these three-episode stories.
“It presented itself very quickly,” Gilroy told IndieWire about the structure of the season. “‘Oh, my God, when we come back, we should only come back for a couple days each time. It should be the most intense three days each time. … And it was one of those problem-solves that just kept energizing itself and then has this knock-on effect all the way through. It energizes the actors. It makes time. You get that, but you get to move, and you get to keep the show.”
The first season of Andor distinguished itself from a lot of other Star Wars series and movies by putting an uncommon amount of faith in the viewer to figure out what was going on. That will continue in season 2, with Gilroy resisting the urge to over-explain what happens in those one-year gaps. “I did not want to have the opening scenes of every year later block to be, ‘Since last I saw you,’ ‘And you cut your hair,’ ‘And now you’re a doctor’ — I did not want to have all the sort of ‘Let’s get this out of the way'; Chekhovian exposition,” he said. “There’s a couple places where the actors really need to know what happened. There’s a couple places where we really need to know what happened, the people making up the story. But by and large, what we’re leaving in the middle, we know.”
For instance, there's one moment where a big mission takes place offscreen; the audience doesn't see it and never will. “The controversy between them and that dialogue lets us fill in all the blanks,” Gilroy said.
Originally, Gilroy planned out Andor to last five seasons. That was cut down to two, which meant Gilroy had to compress some things. You might look at that and assume we missed out on a longer journey, and there's some truth to that. But the first season was so uncommonly bold and effective that I'm willing to trust Gilroy if he says we're all going to love this new season. “I’ve tried to tell people, it is the biggest, most important thing I’ll ever get a chance to work on. It is absolutely my best work. I’m really proud of it," he said.
Diego Luna "proud and honored" be have been part of Star Wars: Andor
As for Diego Luna, he told Deadline about his final days on set. "I had a beautiful opportunity to talk to the crew, to talk to the cast," he said. "Tony Gilroy gave these beautiful words, we had a drink, we hugged, we cried. I’m going to miss this family.”
"It’s sad, it’s painful, but also I know how lucky I am that I had this opportunity. Many go through the journey of acting without living something like this, you know? I didn’t know it was going to happen to me, it’s been 10 years of my life, so I’m proud and honored to be part of this family."
There's been quite a lot of news coming out of the Star Wars universe recently, but I'll be very impressed if any of those new projects are more entertaining than the conclusion of Andor will be.
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