‘Andor’: Tony Gilroy on Cassian’s Season 1 Final Ultimatum; Tease season 2 full of rebellious gangsters and runaways

Warning: The following interview contains spoilers Andors Season 1 Finale “Rix Road” on Disney+

war of stars Creator George Lucas once wrote in the opening prologue of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and as Disney+s war of stars Series gave the die-hard fans everything, this is the binary, detailed look at how such universe politics come about.

While The Mandalorian, Obi Wan Kenobi and Boba Fett’s book is intoxicated with callbacks to old characters and everything atmospheric from Lucas and even war of stars Animation architect Dave Filoni, Gilroy focused on the smaller conversations — the administrative details, if you will, of how a bureaucratic Imperial power rises and how a rebellion between disparate factions coalesces — (Hint, it helps to have an empire person in your corner, trying to spin money around and finance the opposition, read: Genevieve O’Reilly’s rebel co-founder, Mon Mothma).

One of those amazing details revealed in the epilogue, those huge steel wheels that Cassian and the Narkina 5 prisoners assembled a few episodes ago were parts for the Death Star’s fire cannon. Moron. It’s those Easter eggs Andor thrives on, for example, cameos from the deep universe of the Filoni animated shows.

Season 1 concludes the first year of Cassian Andor’s rebel life. He returns to Ferrix for his adoptive mother Maarva’s (Fiona Shaw) funeral, but he can’t really be outside. The Imperials sense that something is about to collapse, and it is, as the droid B2Emo projects a hologram of Maarva in front of the crowd, Obi-Wan style, encouraging them to fight for power (“Fight the Empire!”). At that point there is an eruption worse than a drunken carnival of exploding pipe bombs. Let the Star Wars begin. Andor escapes through blast furnace tunnels, and Imperial Security Supervisor Dedra Meero (the sublime Denise Gough) is trampled by protesters but saved by her twin soul, the anti-Andor, via-imperialist wannabe Syril Karn (Kyle Soller). It’s only been a few episodes since she played hard to get it. Now it looks like a romance that is hotter than anything Grey’s Anatomy.

It all ends in Luthen Rael’s (Stellan Skarsgård) Fondor, where he meets Cassian.

“You came to kill me,” said Andor. “You’re not making it easy for yourself,” Luthen replied.

“I’m going to do it now,” Andor said and gave up. “Kill me… or take me with you.”

Luthen grinned, knowing that Andor was part of the rebel movement.

Here is our interview with Andor Creator Tony Gilroy, who took a break from filming Season 2 in England:

MEETING: Was there something in the story that inspired the season 1 finale? Especially with everything going on in Ukraine.

TONY GILROY: It’s just so unbelievably sad how all the things that seemed sad at the same time are readily available throughout history and keep repeating themselves.

There’s stuff throughout the program and I don’t want to go through chapters and verses and quote, but it’s the Russian Revolution. This is the Montagnard. This is an interesting thing that happened during the Haitian revolution. This is the ANC. Oh, that’s the Earth Gun Building, Palestine. This is the Continental Congress. It goes all the way…I mean you can drop a pin in the latter I don’t know what recorded history is 3000 years legitimately recorded I mean slavery oppression colonialism misconduct betrayal heroism I mean it’s a continuum.

MEETING: Mon Mothma, co-founder of the Rebellion, is a replacement for Nancy Pelosi. She is an upper class person who knows she is a catalyst for making a difference and righting wrongs.

Gilroy: Her job title is Senator, former politician, ruler, doesn’t get everything she wants, doesn’t get everything he wants. I certainly didn’t have the US Speaker of the House in mind when I wrote the scripts.

MEETING: The abyss where Cassian risks his life and faces Luthen Rael – was this always your plan?

Gilroy: I said we take 12 episodes spread out over a year, we take all that time, and we take someone who’s totally disillusioned and completely self-absorbed and really having the worst day of their life, and just someone themselves turns into ‘ a cockroach and we’ll change that person in a year we’ll make the first round to be the man that’s in Villain Oneand we’ll make sure he signs up.

And so, yes, the last moment of it is a bleed. It took us so long to do it. It is what it is, the road to Damascus or the 12 Stations of the Cross, or in whatever context you want to put it. says, “That’s it, I’m in.” We will no longer doubt his commitment to the Rebellion and the fight against the Empire and the dedication of his life to it. In the future, we have many new problems that we will tackle. But that last line was on the table before many other things were worked out.

MEETING: How many episodes of Cassian’s life will air in the next season per year?

Gilroy: We’re going to cover the next 12 episodes, we’re going to cover the next four years. So we shoot each block of three episodes, and that happens to be our organizing principle for the production.

So when we come back for our second half, it will be a year later. A whole year will be over. Everything will have happened and we will resume the show; sometimes we do a week, we do three days, we do four days, whatever, and then we put a year in between.

The last one will be the last one, I don’t know what it is, three or four days before the start Villain Oneand then our last scene is already known, which will lead him to the first scene Villain One. So we’re going to handle time differently, but it’s going to be blocks of three. This will be our principle.

MEETING: can you tease season 2

Gilroy: We will take care of it until you get there Villain One, you have the Rebel Alliance, a bunch of disparate factions and people who have arrived in Yavin and banded together in an organized rebellion. Well, we have four years to find out how hard it is to create a revolution, how hard it is to become a leader, how hard it is to be a victim.

But what about the original gangsters? What happens to the outliers? What happens to the people who…every revolution consumes and glorifies people, and not always the people who did what mattered. How do you scale something that basically doesn’t thrive in the sun? How do you do it? And these issues and all the chaos that comes with them will be of great importance to us in the future.

Duncan Pow, who plays Melshi, returns. Of course we play with it, because he’s going to play along Villain One.

MEETING: The Imperials seem to make Cassian out to be a more infamous man than he really is. They seem to give him a bigger reputation. Do you agree?

Gilroy: People don’t even really know who he really is. You don’t even know how bad he is. They don’t know. I mean, they think maybe he was in Aldhani, but the reason why Denise Gough’s Dedra Meero is trying so hard to get him – it’s a great hunter and hunted relationship. It’s a desperate thing and she’s right to be after him. Much like him, she thinks that she is the first person to realize that Aldhani is not a heist, but an announcement. And she’s going to haunt him for a long time, and you know Cassian is the link. It’s the only viable connection she can find. If she finds him, she might find Luthen. Luthen von Stellan does not know who Cassian is.

MEETING: That Death Star building epilogue, was that always in the cards?

Gilroy: Yes, when we got to prison and then we started saying: ‘What are we going to do?’ and then we built the thing. It’s like, ‘Oh my god. Well, let’s do it. How ironic and how powerful and how round and synchronized it is.’

And then, Mohen Leo and TJ Falls, who are from the art department, who are just amazing, and they were there Villain One, they said, ‘Oh, let’s play with it.’ And you know, six months later you go into a visual master deal and it’s like, oh, we have a special gift to release today and it’s like the raw version of it, it was so cool. They did it all and we helped refine it, but it’s also their part.

The questions and answers have been edited for length and clarity.