The Star Wars universe will never be the same now that Andor exists, proving that a galaxy far, far away is capable of yielding rich storytelling that tackles lofty themes about the sacrifices and emotional cost of rebellion, how everyday people can rise up against authoritarian regimes, and how complacency doesn't help anyone escape the Empire's warpath. With Andor's first season at its end, creator Tony Gilroy and the creative team are already fully ensconced in Season 2, which began filming this month, and Collider's own Steve Weintraub had the chance to speak with him about both seasons, and delve into some of the finer details of the finale.

During the 1-on-1 conversation, Gilroy spoke about who was the first actor on set for Season 2, teased some of the big props being designed by the team, confirmed that K-2SO will be a part of the final season, discussed the decision to end on the final scene between Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), unpacked the epic fight sequence with Luthen's haulcraft, and he spoke on that uncomfortable scene between Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and Dedra Meero (Denise Gough). Check out what Gilroy had to say below.

COLLIDER: I said this to you last time, and I'll say it again. The show is incredible. I don't have the words to say how much I thank you for making an incredible show that just happens to have Star Wars in it. It's just fantastic. We all at Collider love it so much and really appreciate all the hard work.

GILROY: Well, all right. Let's go from that. All right. What do you got?

I have a lot of questions. You obviously start filming tomorrow. I'm assuming all 12 scripts are locked and done?

GILROY: No. We know what we're doing. We can budget and block and cast everything we have to do. We know every scene that we're going to do, there's maybe one or two little black holes for me along the way, but no, locked and perfect is a whole other process and it rolls out.

When do you actually film until?

GILROY: August.

Is there any chance of the show being out in late 2023, or because of the VFX industry and how behind they are and everything, is it safe to assume it's 2024?

GILROY: There's a couple [of] things that will stun you that I don't know. I don't really know. If past is predicate, and we do the same thing we did before, it'll be on the same schedule. It will come out two years later. The only place you can accelerate the processes is in post, and the only way you can accelerate in post is with money, and money is tight. And so, I don't really know, there would have to be some serious motivation next May or June or something. Someone would have to say, "Wow, we really need this, and we're willing to pay X." Rogue One proved, if you throw money at it, you can do post really, really fast. It's just very, very, very expensive.

I have some specific questions. Is Cassian's search for his sister officially over? Will he ever get closure on that?

GILROY: TBD, but a lot of times people don't trust what people say in the show. I saw people saying, "Oh, Luthen’s monologue means something else," “this means something else,” Maarva's telling the truth. I'd say TBD, I don't want to close the door on it, but anyway, next.

How early on did you know you wanted the finale to be Cassian and Luthen in the shuttle with him finally wanting to join the Rebellion?

GILROY: Early, early. Probably when I was still in the sketching phase. I was trying to fill out the whole jigsaw puzzle. What do you do first in [a] jigsaw puzzle? I'm not a jigsaw puzzle expert, but I think what you usually do is they usually start with the edges, right?

Sure.

GILROY: The edge, get a frame. So, probably along the way, while I'm sketching all different things, and here's a scene for who knows where this goes, and here's another scene for another episode and landmark scenes all the way through and different things. But at a certain point, I'm looking for that, and a certain point I'm wasting my time if I don't know what that is. I have to know where I'm going. Otherwise, you're wasting time.

I write faster now than ever before. But, not because I have more energy, it's just because I'm more of a sniper and I try not to make mistakes, and that's a big mistake. It's a big mistake to just keep vamping along and not know where you're going. Once you know where you're going, and it's pretty obvious that the whole show knows where it's going. We know what the final episode of the show is. So, if it's the end of the first year, it's pretty clear where I want to end up. And no, I had the funeral and I had a lot of that stuff in the beginning.

Yeah, because it's interesting with a lot of other shows, the money heist, or the prison escape, could have easily been the finale or would've been the finale on another show. And on Andor, the finale is someone wanting to join the Rebellion.

GILROY: Well, all right. I don't know, I wouldn't sell everybody else short on that. There's some pretty amazing shows. I don't know. I think you might be right.

It's just some shows like to end on a big cliffhanger with a big action set piece. You know what I mean?

GILROY: We have a riot.

Listen your finale's fantastic. I'm just saying-

GILROY: We have a marching band of amateur musicians and the daughters of Ferrix.

Yeah, 100%. How long do you think Luthen and Saw have actually known each other and been working on their relationship?

GILROY: Oh, wow. Huh. I don't have a fixed date. I would assume, I'll say six years. I don't really know. I'd be making it up. But, I think it goes back a bit.

I know every three episodes of Season 2 is another year. So, does Season 2, Episode 1 start one year after the events of the shuttle, or is there not a jump and it jumps with the second set of episodes?

GILROY: No, no. It'll be a year later. No, it'll be a year later after what you just saw. No, it'll be one year later. So, a great deal has happened in the interim.

And I'm assuming Stellan is a part of Season 2, but can you confirm he's back? And who else can you say is in Season 2?

GILROY: Well, who lives, right? Everybody who lives that we care about has got to come back.

Well, it's nice to hear from the creator of the show to confirm-

GILROY: Yeah, nobody died. I don't have anybody dying in the gap. So, if they live, and I'm not going to promise how long they live when they get to the other side, but they all know that. But, no, if they lived in the show, they're alive. People ask me about Andy Serkis all time, he said, "I don't know. He didn't die." So, if they're not dead, still in the mix.

You bring up something I wanted to ask you, everyone, including myself, was so blown away by Andy's performance in that three-episode arc. When someone comes in and just absolutely is so amazing like that, do you all of a sudden think, is there a way to bring him back in Season 2 because he was so great? Does that play into anything?

GILROY: Yeah, I mean, yes. To the general question, yes. Anytime anything really great comes up in front of you, you want to think about how to use it. Look we audition—you know how many actors we auditioned this year, right? 190-something actors for speaking parts. And so Nina Gold and Martin Ware, they are this powerhouse, it's a real superpower for our show. So, we see a lot of people. So, if we see eight people for a part, and we all pick a winner, we all like who we like. But, there's two other people in there that didn't get this part, but they're really handy actors. We really like them, we build a repertory company.

So, we build a repertory company of the people that we like, that we didn't cast. And I can't tell you how many times the first thing that we do, well, later on, "We need somebody to do this thing. And this is kind of a cool thing. Oh, didn't we have her? Where was she from before?" So, yeah, you're always looking to step up, always. Anything of the show, cause you don't resolve everything along the way, a lot of things, but casting not. But yeah, and I mean, who wouldn't want to be involved with Andy Serkis, man. Man, I pursued him, I think I told you, I pursued him for a year to try to get him.

Is there any chance Andy could be back in Season 2?

GILROY: I'm not answering that question. He could have his own show, maybe he'll have his own show on Disney Plus.

Sure.

GILROY: Kino Loy: Attorney at Law. Maybe he'll become a maritime lawyer in the future, or swimming instructor.

Not funny, Tony. Not funny... Do you think Cassian and the other people on Ferrix know about Jedi and lightsabers? Or are Jedi and lightsabers just a myth that they don't know about.

GILROY: That's one of the first things I asked. And you know what, most people don't know, I don't think anybody on Ferrix knows anything about it. I don't think so.

So if a Jedi walked in–

GILROY: I don't think they know about the royal family. I don't think they pay much mind to that. I mean, how many beings are in that gigantic galaxy? I think the vast majority of all of the creatures and beings and sentient things that are in the galaxy, I think the knowledge of the Jedi and the lightsaber is a pretty small number.

When did the decision hit to present Maarva's death through a Droid's POV?

GILROY: Well, I had an ace, I had a hole card. I knew I was going to do the hologram. And so, you try to give the audience confidence that you're taking care of them. And by that point, the audience probably has confidence that we know we're doing. And then the audience goes, "Well, wait a minute. She just died, and she's off-stage, and you've been so good about all these other things, and really you're going to do that?" And it creates a little bit of tension, too. You didn't see it, but I knew what I had coming. Were you surprised when she popped up?

I figured there was going to be something, but I didn't expect it the way that it was going to be. I didn't expect her with the hologram.

GILROY: Her own eulogy, yeah.

I didn't see it coming.

GILROY: Yeah. So, I mean, I knew we had that. If I didn't have that, I don't know what I would've done. And then once you're going to do her death in that sort of way, well who cares about it the most? And B2 is just so endearing and so special and just beloved. To see it in person, it just draws you to it in person, it's like it's a puppy or something, it's just really cool. So, I don't know. That was just, who's hurt the most in that room?

I love the way that you brought back Rogue One's rebel Sergeant Melshi. How did you decide where Cassian and Melshi would separate?

GILROY: I didn't want to take Melshi with me, they got to do something, Cassian has to go back to Ferrix, and before he can even say, "Hey, man, we're going to have to split up." Melshi comes up with the heroic version of that, which is, people have to know what we just went through. Melshi's been radicalized, everybody's been radicalized. So, that moment, that line, that's when you're writing from dialogue that it really helps you. That's a really good example, I'm talking about that all the time. That's where sketching the scene and plotting it out of dialogue and just getting them talking there.

All of a sudden, I find myself writing Melshi saying, "We got to split up. People have to know what happened." And you go, “Oh, my God, holy shit, yeah. What a righteous thing. And take this gun and go and let's split up, that's our better chance.” So, the first impulse says, oh, my God, I can't have these two good guys. I do not want to carry Melshi around with me to Ferrix, so what am I going to say he's doing? So, that's the algorithm here in the laboratory, I guess. Does that make sense?

100%. I was just curious how that came about.

GILROY: That's the thought train. But, yeah.

Andor is mostly humans, and Star Wars previously is really focused on a lot of aliens and creatures. And I'm curious, was it intentional to not have as many aliens walking around on Ferrix? How did you decide that?

GILROY: There's some, 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. And 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. We will have more, and we'll have them in the appropriate places. And we try to pick our shots and make them cool, I guess. I don't know.

Will Nemik's manifesto play at all in Season 2?

GILROY: Huh. It's certainly tempting, isn't it? It's a gift that keeps on giving. It's tempting.

Can fans look forward to seeing how Cassian and K-2SO meet in Season 2?

GILROY: 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.

I loved the battle scene where Luthen has to fight off the Cantwell-class Arrestor Cruiser. So, how did that come about?

GILROY: We had the Fondor Haulcraft, we built it early, Luke [Hull] and I, and built it up and did all this stuff and worked with ILM and worked with Mohen Leo in the visual effects department. And they came up with this thing, and we just loved it, and it's just so cool. 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." And 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. And 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, the visual effects department, 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 go, holy, shit, let's have something of that. And I like this, just flip this around. And 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. And so, it's almost like a side project.

That sequence is just fantastic.

GILROY: We also wanted to... Oh I don't know even if I should... It's not me, I'm in the chorus of this, but there is a pride, a community pride – because there's so many people that work on the show, we know how to do this, we should show people that we do know how to do this. So, let's just do one and show everybody, if we could do this all the time if we wanted to, I think there's a lot of people on the show that are like, "Let's show people we know how to do this." So, there's pride in that, I think.

Was Maarva's death Cassian's final turning point?

GILROY: No, I don't think so. I think when he leads the rebellion in the prison and, I mean, you have to imagine being him on that first night. You got six years in that freaking thing and they always say when you hear the bars close behind you or whatever, well there's all kinds of ways the bars close behind you, and the idea of what that means and the idea that a month later you could lead a revolution to get out of there and be so smart that you could lead the revolution through somebody else. I think he's well on his way when he gets there, I think it's the punctuation and the confirmation, it's the merit badge on where he already is.

Are we supposed to be as utterly uncomfortable with that Dedra/Syril scene?

GILROY: Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. I mean, if they were your neighbors across the hall, you'd be very interested in them. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I want you to be fascinated by them for sure.

How does Syril saving her play into their future together?

GILROY: Well, I'm not going to answer that question.

I have to try certain-

GILROY: I don't think it pulls them apart. I mean, it's the ultimate Tinder date there, isn't it? It's swipe, what is it, swipe left, right? I'm married, so I don't really know. Is it swipe left or swipe right? I don't know.

I don't use it so I don't know either.

GILROY: Well, I don't know. But whichever one's the one you swipe to, yeah, it's a swipe right.

What's interesting about Season 2, is that every three episodes is one year, which means that you can have a batch of three episodes that is really small character stuff, or you can just be jumping into when there's a big action sequence about to happen. The format of it being every year makes it just a really interesting season. So, I'm just curious how you are planning on balancing having action versus character moments when you're jumping into Cassian's life every year?

GILROY: Well, super big believer in dynamics, anyway. Loud, soft, fast, slow, think, run, you want to balance all that stuff up. Job one is an adventure story. Job one is to make you want to turn the page or tune in next week. So, we have to tell an adventure story and we have to keep things on the edge. But, the question that you ask, it's way too long to answer here. I don't know, if anybody ever got to do this before, maybe someone's done it in a novel. I don't really know, I'd be curious. As writers, as dramatists, it has all kinds of really cool implications. It has a couple of things that make things difficult, they have to be very brave about the negative space between the years, and you have to really trust the storytelling to not explain everything. I don't know, there's a lot of things to it. Cause no one involved in it, not I nor Beau [Willimon] or Danny [Gilroy] nor Tom Bissel on this, and no one had ever done anything like that before.

I don't know when you'd have a chance to do that. So, we have found out all kinds of things about it that are pretty interesting. That'll be a really interesting conversation if it works. Hopefully, it will work in two years. But, yeah.

Are you actually designing or using some sort of Bible? Say events happen year one, you jump to year two. Are you coming up with story beats that happened between year one and year two, in terms of being very specific? So, if Disney wants to do a comic book or a novelization or something, it will fit? Or are you sort just accepting-

GILROY: I don't worry about that. I remember two months after Rogue One in an airport, I saw a novelization of Rogue One. And I’m reading it going, what is this? Who did this? So, what they do, I don't know, after the fact, if that's the question. I have a calendar, I have a canonical calendar of events. I know how everything goes in these five years, of our character's point of view. But, I know what's happening on the calendar. I know when the Battle of Waterloo takes place, and I know when the siege of Hong Kong takes place. I know where all the things happen.

Listen, like everyone else, I love B2, and I love the way you're showing a different side of Droids and the way he mourns Maarva. He seems very independent, and I love the little detail of how he has to use more power when he has to lie. How did you design or come up with B2 and the way he would act? Because it's just a different side of a Droid.

GILROY: Man, that was just so much fun. Because you're going to do one, right? You're kind of like, "Okay, I'm going to do one, and I want to have it be the family dog." And it's an older woman who's alone, and she's got this old dog and the dog just loves her. And what's it like to have an old dog in the house? So, you have that idea, and then I probably wrote up one, two, and three beforehand. We started those conversations when I was over to direct, when I was over pre-COVID, and you start sketching and Luke [Hull] and I are talking about how big it is and how it feels and how it's decayed, and what it does. What it does, also, what's the reality of what a salvage Droid does? Why would they have that actual unit and what does it do?

And then it goes up to creatures, and Neil Stevenson, and the concept art goes up there. And there comes a day where you go up there, and they have prototypes and it's amazing. So, the level of technical expertise and the creativity and the depth of it and the stuff that's even beyond. We're supposed to shoot on Monday, so, on Friday we had a props meeting and I do a lot of stuff remotely, doing props is very difficult to do remotely. You really want to see them. So, we have a big props meeting, and my brother John is there, and he's hearing it now. So, I said, "Man, come up to this thing." Because he loves all this shit, too.

So, we went up to the props house on the lot, and they showed us all this stuff. And they finished by showing us this thing that will play a big part, it's a big prop, it will be in Season 2. It has a big utility, and it's really complicated, and this guy had built it. And Johnny and I were just standing there and Ariel Kleiman's standing there, we're standing there watching this guy explain this fricking thing that they built. It's so elaborate and so insane and so beautiful and so far beyond what we thought of. It's amazing.

The thing about the design of B2, is that it could have been a million other things. Can you talk about, was the Droid ever almost radically different? How did you figure out the look and feel if you will?

GILROY: We didn't flop around, we didn't have a shiny, tall, walk-around. No, we always knew we wanted it to be like a dog. We wanted it to be something that you could put your hand on and pet, we wanted it to be something that you could reach down, and we wanted it to be warm. I'll tell you a really cool thing about it is that a guy named Dave Chapman is the puppeteer who runs the machine. And you try to figure out different strategies: What should we do when you're playing scenes with the actors? Should we have another actor off-stage or should Dave do it or should we have, whatever, should we have the script supervisor, what are we going to do? And so Dave just started doing it right away and that seemed to be the most efficient system, and it's the best timing for the actors.

Well, we got deep into the show. We were always going to replace the voice, that was always the plan. But, we got to a certain point, we brought in a bunch of voice actors who auditioned for the part and then Johnny called me up one day and went, "I don't think any of these people are better than what we have." And he goes, "Not only that, but I'm not sure you're aware, but we don't have any ADR for B2, like nothing, Like, a couple off camera lines where we need help, not because we're replacing something that we don't like." So, I called Kathy [Kennedy] and it was approved, and I called Dave Chapman, and he'd been doing this for I think 15, 20 years. He's a puppeteer, and he's done it a million times and been revoiced, and expect to be revoiced. I got to call him up and go, "Dave, we're going to keep your voice." And man, those calls were just so much fun to make, and he was really overwhelmed. So, that's a cool thing about it, I guess.

He's perfect, and I can't imagine what his emotions were getting that phone call.

GILROY: Beyond all the immediate stuff, it also means that for the rest of your life you can go to a convention and sign cards if you want to make money. It has all kinds of ramifications, he's B2.

I'm going to go fishing and see if you'll answer this, but you obviously start filming tomorrow morning. What can you tease about your first shot on day one of Season 2?

GILROY: I'll just say we're shooting Syril first, Kyle's working first.

I appreciate that. When you make Season 1, you obviously learned a whole bunch in terms of how to make Andor. Was there any big lesson that you took from the making of the first season that you are implementing in Season 2?

GILROY: Oh, millions of things. Is it three years ago or over now? I mean, I started so naively. When you go to direct your first movie, one of the things that really saves you, and I've been around movies my whole life when I went to do [Michael] Clayton, but you really don't know what it's like until you do it. And it's really good you don't know what it's like when you do it, because you go in just completely boldly, and vainly, and idiotically forward. If you knew how much trouble you could get into really, you'd wither before you get there. it's like the second jump out of the plane, they say the second jump is the scariest one. So, I think, everybody's intimidated by knowing the full extent of how far we are all going to have to take ourselves for the next two years to get this done.

So, you're like, "Oh, my god, we have to do that." But, we have learned a tremendous amount, and beyond that everybody talks about their teams and they always do because on a show that works or a movie that works, anything, and particularly the larger the show is, and it's pretty clear how abundant our show is, it's a cliche, but it just really takes a massive community. And how you make a hive mind, and how you hang on to people and how you get them to talk to each other, and how you make them all feel like filmmakers and how you make decisions quickly, so they don't waste their time. I left the studio on Friday, confidence was high and people were really comfortable because we know that if nothing else we have each other, and we know how to figure it out.

The other thing is, and I have to wrap with you, but I would imagine that everyone, including yourself, sees online how much people are raving about the show and everyone wants to work on something people love.

GILROY: We made the show utterly submerged, I think, we talked about this in an earlier piece, because when we went to [Star Wars] Celebration, Sanne and I were just blinking because we'd been under a rock for three years making the show with COVID, and in London, and nobody knows what you're doing, and all your friends are wondering if you've lost your mind, and your wife is wondering if you've lost your mind, and what the hell are you doing over there? Why is this worth it? And, it sounds weird, but you feel like you're making the show in private, in a vacuum. So, pretty astonishing to take it out.

I just want to thank you again so sincerely for making such an incredible show and I really look forward to talking to you again down the road for future things.

GILROY: All right, well thank you, and thank all the stringers and everybody else. You guys just ingested this show in the coolest way possible. So it's deeply appreciated, it really is.

Man, you might appreciate it, but I say this on our side, I'm so thankful you are making this. I haven't enjoyed a show like this in a really long time.

Andor is available to stream on Disney+. Check out our interview with Andy Serkis below: