Most Star Wars fans didn’t expect a lot from Andor before it premiered on Disney+ in September 2022. “A prequel about the fourth most interesting character from Rogue One? And there’s no Baby Yoda? Yawn.”
How wrong we were.
Andor ended up being the best Star Wars show — and maybe the best Star Wars production overall, including the movies — since the Disney acquisition in 2012 (it’s number two for me behind The Last Jedi, a take that you either wholeheartedly agree with, or you’re so mad at me that you just threw your laptop into a trash compactor out of disgust). It was even nominated for three Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series
Can Andor — a.k.a. “Star Wars for grown-ups” — pull off the same trick again? Here’s everything we know about season 2 of the Disney+ series, including the plot, returning and new cast members, and when it’s expected to debut.
Plot
Disney+ hasn’t released an official plot synopsis on the upcoming season yet, but we can piece together some details based on interviews with the cast and creatives.
Diego Luna (Cassian Andor) teased that season 2 will be more Rogue One-heavy (hopefully with a continued aversion to Han Solo’s dice-like fan service) than last season. “I can tell you, Rogue One is coming, so there will be characters there that you will recognize,” he said at ACE Superhero Comic Con. “For those who love Rogue One, this season is going to be very special. It’s going to be fascinating to go straight to Rogue One after watching this second season, because you will see Rogue One from a different perspective.”
To make up the timeline gap between Andor and Rogue One, the 12-episode season will take place over four three-episode blocks. “What we’re doing now for the second season, to finish, is we have four years to cover. Because we break down in these three block chunks, each block of three will be a year; we’re going to jump a year,” creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy explained, according to Screen Rant. “When we come back for the second [season], we’ll come back [and] a year will have evaporated, and it’ll take place over a Friday, Saturday, and a Sunday. Then we’ll jump a year, and we’ll do the same thing again. We’ll do it four times. The last tranche will be the [three] days before Rogue One, and then we’ll walk you into the movie.”
As for our hero, Gilroy told Vulture that season 2 isn’t about Cassian becoming radicalized. Rather, he said, “It is very much about, ‘How difficult is it for the Rebel Alliance to come together with all the outliers and original gangsters? Different agendas and betrayals? The tension of the next four years as things pull together? The effect of time on people?’ But I don’t look past that because my characters don’t know what’s going to happen after that.”
Still, even if the show has greater ambitions than just the guy whose name is in the title, he’s our way into this story of rebellion. “[Cassian] says he wants to be a part of the Rebellion, but I’m not sure if he knows what that means yet. He’s basically saying, ‘I want to speak the language,’ but now he has to learn it,” Luna shared to The Hollywood Reporter. “And so it’s going to take longer. We’re gonna go for four years [in season two], and when we find him, he’s so far away from where we left him at the end of season one. He’s basically the guy to trust for something like that mission.”
Cast
All the heavy hitters are expected to be back, including Diego Luna as hunky Cassian Andor, Stellan Skarsgård as freedom fighter Luthen Rael, Adria Arjona as mechanic Bix Caleen, Genevieve O’Reilly as secret Rebel leader Mon Mothma, Denise Gough as Imperial Security Bureau supervisor Deedra Meero, and Kyle Soller as civil servant Syril Karn, who loves law and order as much as he hates his mother. Forest Whitaker is confirmed to return as Saw Gerrera, while director Alonso Ruizpalacios teased that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story star Ben Mendelsohn is expected to reprise his role as Imperial baddie Orson Krennic. We might even get some more Alan Tudyk as K-2SO!
Release Date
There’s no official premiere date for Andor season 2, but Adria Arjona thinks it’s coming in 2025. “Season 2 of Andor is coming out hopefully next year,” the actress, who was so freaking good in Richard Linklater’s Hit Man, told The New York Times earlier this month. “I think people are going to freak when they see it. It’s so much bigger, smarter – Tony [Gilroy] really outdid himself.”
Trailer
How many times have you watched Stellan Skarsgård’s episode 10 monologue about how he’s burning his life to make a sunrise that he knows he’ll never see? There’s no trailer for season 2 yet, so why not one more time!
