There's a lot of intrigue surrounding Andor, including whether the show will feature the return of Alan Tudyk's straight-talking reprogrammed Imperial droid, K-2SO. We've heard that he might not appear in the upcoming first season, but the anticipation is Lucasfilm will one day reveal how these two met.
Talking to Vanity Fair, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy finally set the record straight.
"We don’t have Alan Tudyk," the filmmaker confirmed. "Not yet, anyway." Despite that, Gilroy suggested this is a plot point we'll see play out when the show returns with its second batch of episodes. "It is a second season, but it’s really, for me, the second half of the novel. This first season is about him becoming a revolutionary, and the second 12 episodes take him into Rogue One."
This contradicts recent reports that Andor will get a third season, and it instead appears as if the plan is to tell Cassian Andor's over two 12-episode seasons. That's ambitious, but Lucasfilm is clearly relying on fans being interested in following the character's story prior to the events of 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
"There are certain events that happen in these five years that are important and need to be paid attention to," Gilroy added. "There are certain people, characters that are legacy characters, that the audience, the passionate audience, really feels that they have an understanding of and know."
"In some cases, they’re right," he continued. "And in some cases, what we’re saying is, ‘What you know, what you’ve been told, what’s on Wookieepedia, what you’ve been telling each other...is really all wrong." So, we're clearly getting a deep dive into Star Wars lore with this show!
That's exciting on a number of levels, and suggests we'll get to explore the Rebellion's early days in a way that's previously only ever really been teased. We anticipate some familiar faces showing up along the way, of course, but who those characters will be is a mystery to us for the time being.
Andor is expected to premiere on Disney+ sometime this summer.