We always knew that the second and final season of Tony Gilroy's criticality acclaimed series Andor would explore four years across 12 episodes, in the lead-up to the devastating events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. While Season 1—which has garnered praise and accolades during award season—covered the span of one year of Cassian Andor's (Diego Luna) life, the expedited style of Season 2 is not just about increasing tension and stakes, it's about being practical about what they're able to do.
When Andor returns to Disney+ in what will most likely be 2024, Rogue One will be edging toward its 10-year anniversary in 2026. Andor, of course, is a prequel to the film, and while ILM has a lot of state-of-the-art technology at their disposal, they haven't actually discovered a way to make people age backward. Technology like the impressive de-aging that will be featured in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny works on a smaller scale, but it would be impossible to de-age Luna for four seasons, considering production would likely stretch into the latter half of the 2020s.
During an interview with Perri Nemiroff to discuss his Critics Choice Award nomination for Best Actor in a Drama, Luna echoed how impossible it would be to explore the last four years of Cassian's life in the same formula as Season 1. The actor shared, "It's not possible, but you know what? It's not because of us. It's because of Rogue One. I mean, I also have to look close enough to Rogue One. Can you imagine me in 10 years pretending to be the [character] I was 20 years ago? Just impossible. I mean, sadly there's no machines or CGI that can do it."
Earlier in the conversation, Luna expanded upon just how much work goes into a single season of a series like Andor, and stressed that with the first season, what audiences saw was around four years of Luna and Gilroy's lives spread out across twelve episodes of television. While televisions may be getting shorter because of streaming, there is still a considerable amount of human labor that goes into them, which is often left out of the conversation by audiences. Luna shared:
We didn't want this to end up being an animated series. I am who I am, and Tony Gilroy has to be the writer of this. We cannot be doing this for 10 years. Basically, the first season took four years. The second will take a little less, but he has to write 12 episodes. Then we have to go [into] pre-production. That normally takes six to eight months to build these places and to start with the whole process of designing, casting. Then the execution is another seven [to] eight months, and then post-production starts. That's not easy either. So it's a long journey. Each season takes three [to] four years of my life and of Tony Gilroy's life.
How Tony Gilroy Arrived at Season 2's Story Structure
In a previous interview with Collider, Gilroy shared that when Season 2 returns, the story will see its first time jump, moving forward a year after the finale, before exploring 1-year spans of Cassian's life, which will play out across three episode blocks. While speaking with Nemiroff, Luna went into more depth about how Gilroy arrived at this story structure, noting that initially, they had considered a 5-season storyline for Andor, before it became apparent that it wasn't really feasible.
"[O]bviously at the beginning we said like, "It'll be great to do five seasons." This was before COVID, long ago. But once we started, and we decided it was going to be this story this way, it was pretty clear that it would've been impossible to do five seasons of this. So Tony came with this amazing idea because we were already breaking it in blocks, in four blocks, four blocks of three episodes. That's how we shoot. So each director gets three episodes and shoots that as a movie in a way. So Tony said like, "Well, if we're missing four years, and we have four episodes, it could be perfect because it's going to be like movies that would have a beginning and an end." Each year will have a beginning and an end, and it would be a chapter of three episodes."
While it's disappointing that we will eventually have to bid farewell to Cassian Andor once again, at least Andor has provided audiences with another opportunity to spend time with the character, and be inspired by the same spark of rebellion that fueled his actions in Rogue One.
The second and final season of Andor is currently in production. Stay tuned for our full interview with Luna in the new year.