‘Andor’ Season 2 To Pick Up One Year Later, Tony Gilroy Explains Lack of Aliens and More

Andor season 1 may have already wrapped on Disney Plus, but small nuggets from interviews with showrunner Tony Gilroy keep coming out. Most recently, Gilroy weighed in on why the show doesn’t have a lot of aliens, explained how they pulled off Luthen’s space scene in episode 11, and confirmed that season 2 will start a year after the final moments of the season 1 finale.

 

Speaking to Collider, Gilroy gave the following explanation about why the show features fewer aliens than any other Star Wars series or movie before:

 

“In some places, people were saying, oh, ‘Why is Narkina 5 all humans?’ Well, I don’t know how you would work out the bathroom on the floor with eight different varieties of genitals or whatever. I mean, it has to be that way, a system like that, maybe there’s Narkina 2 where there’s different things. We’re probably a little bit shy about it because it’s such a behavioral show and most of our principles are in this particular world. And certainly, the Empire doesn’t have a surplus of aliens on their side.”

 

The Empire has always been racist towards non-humans, so them having no aliens in their ranks is certainly no surprise. (It’s also one of the reasons why Grand Admiral Thrawn is so special.) One would think that is also the reason why Narkina 5 would be over-populated with aliens, but then again, if they are firm believers in segregation, perhaps a Narkina 2 that only contains aliens makes sense.

 

Maarva's hologram speaking to the crowd in Andor

 

Apparently, though, season 2 might feature more non-human characters than the first one:

 

“There’s some [in Season 1], and we’ll probably have more. It’s a very strong flavor when it comes in. It’s not just a visual flavor, it’s a very strong character flavor. You have to deal with it politically. We will have more, and we’ll have them in the appropriate places. We try to pick our shots and make them cool, I guess.”

 

Gilroy also told Collider how he, together with Andor production designer Luke Hull and visual effects supervisor Mohen Leo, came up with the design of Luthen’s ship, and how they conceptualized the space battle from episode 11:

 

“We’re like, ‘Wow, we’re not doing that much with it.’ And it’s like, ‘Well we do have a place here, we could do this thing.’ I sketched up this drive-by traffic stop scene, and this is insight into how this tribe does work. Here’s a scene, and we could do this, and it’s expensive, but it’s also the kind of thing that’s easier to get money for than something else because it has IP in it, and it helps sell the Fondor Haulcraft, and the rest of it. It’s really fun, and it’s legit for a show, and it really lets us add something to Luthen’s resume.

So, I sketch it up and do all that, and then Mohen Leo and TJ Falls […] takes that over, and part of their deal is what they can afford to do and which shots are expensive. But they also come back with a storyline, and they know the lores better than anybody. When they come back, and they give us a pre-vis, and we look at it and go, ‘Holy, shit! Let’s have something of that. I like this, just flip this around.’ You bounce it back and forth, but that’s really, in many ways, finally articulated by the visual effects department. That’s their show, and John Gilroy, and the editors coming in, and the visual effects editors. So, it’s almost like a side project.”

 

Andor - Luthen's ship

 

About season 2, Gilroy confirmed the first episode will pick up a year after the final scene of the season 1 finale, where (spoiler alert) Cassian finally joins forces with Luthen. He told Collider:

 

“It’ll be a year later after what you just saw. [A] great deal has happened in the interim.”

 

Additionally, Gilroy was asked about whether or not season 2 will include K-2SO, Cassian’s unlikely companion from Rogue One. The writer did not provide many details, but he basically confirmed that Alan Tudyk’s character will be in it:

 

“Well, I think that’s one of the responsibilities of Part 2. Obviously, if we’re going to walk into Rogue, we have to deal with that.”

 

Tudyk had originally been announced as a co-star in the show back in 2019, before it was reworked into what we now know as Andor. The actor would later confirm that he was not a part of the first season, but he would appear in the series down the line. With only 12 more episodes to go, his inclusion in season 2 seems inevitable.

 

K-2SO

 

Andor Season 2 promises to be another wild ride of emotions as the Rebel Alliance starts to form. Season 1 was just about putting together scattered pieces across the table; now they can finally start to build something huge. After all, there was no mention of Bail Organa, who is present in Rogue One as a key member of the organization, or even Dantooine, simply because the Alliance was not formed yet. Season 2 will take us to Yavin, Gilroy has said in past interviews, but we’ll have to go through Dantooine first. And we are also getting legacy characters involved, though we lack specifics.

 

Filming started earlier this week and will take place in the U.K. until August of next year. A release in the third quarter of 2024 is more than likely.

 

Make sure to check out Josh’s review of the season finale here, and stay tuned for more news regarding Andor over the next few days as the second round of press interviews comes to a close.

 

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Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.

Miguel Fernandez

Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.

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