The Final Shot Of Andor Season 2 Will Lead Directly Into Rogue One

This year's "Star Wars Celebration" has laid down the roadmap for the next few years of the franchise, but above all, we remain most excited for season 2 of "Andor," which was announced to currently be in production and planned for an August 2024 release. After Lucasfilm's studio showcase, showrunner Tony Gilroy as well as the cast and crew took the Celebration stage for a behind-the-scenes panel on the making of "Andor" season 1.

After three Disney+ "Star Wars" series that delivered more of the same, surprisingly, it was the prequel series following a character from "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" which stood out by showing us a darker, edgier side of the galaxy. Over the course of the first season, we watched Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) slowly radicalize from a cold-hearted cynic to a rebel with purpose. Gilroy made it clear that in season 2, the Cassian we'll return to is a man fully devoted to the cause:

"It took him a year, and he climbed up out of a ditch and he went through an incredible number of life experiences, and personal experiences. And he's been exposed to rebellion, and he's trying to push it away and he's tried to be a cynic and he's tried to be a mercenarym, and he's tried to lead a mini-Rebellion of his own and seen what that felt like. His mother has finally inspired him, and he's joined the Rebellion, we're never going back on that. He's a committed member now, there's no more of that debate."

Gilroy's motivation to create "Andor" was to give context to the hardened, passionate, and morally ambiguous Cassian we met in "Rogue One." To further accentuate that character's journey, it's been pre-planned that the final shot of "Andor" will lead directly into that film.

While many other Disney+ series have felt like elongated movies that were broken into episodes, "Andor" fully embraced episodic storytelling by breaking apart the show into three-episode arcs. It seems that the first season's structure will hold through season 2 of "Andor," and will also involve time skips to stretch the events over a longer passage of time. By the end of season 2, the series will fully transition right back into the events of "Rogue One." "Each block of three [episodes of season 2] will be one year apart. So, we'll do three episodes and drop a year," Gilroy explained. He continued:

"Our final scene of the show, we've never made a secret about. We've been saying it from the very first junket — the final scene of the show is him walking to the ship to go to the Ring of Kafrene, walking right into ["Rogue One."] So we're taking you right to that moment."

When Cassian was first introduced in "Rogue One," he was a man that's committed to the Rebellion at all costs, including his own moral code. Within minutes of his first scene, we watch him use his blaster on an informant to avoid valuable information from getting into the hands of the Empire as Stormtroopers corner and capture him. In his mind, the risks of leaving the informant alive outweigh the needs of the cause. In the first scene in "Andor," Cassian is a disillusioned man on the run, more concerned with his individual safety.

Between the people who have impacted him on his journey and his imprisonment on Narkina 5, Cassian has already come a long way by the end of season 1. Gilroy teased that as the rebellion continues to grow amongst all odds, it's going to be even more satisfying to see the events that will finally connect the remaining dots:

"We're going to let you know how he got there, what it cost him, and the power of the journey that isn't entirely self-directed. There's a lot of circumstances brought into this, and there's something very special about where he ends up and what his role is. We want to pay homage to that, and we will pay off and hopefully stick the landing on every emotional piece of all the characters that you care about."

"Andor" is the rare Disney+ series that has delivered on all of its promises, prioritizing story and character over gimmicks and nostalgia. Although it's a long wait until late 2024, Gilroy's fascinating, genre-bending character study in the "Star Wars" universe will be more than worth the wait.