What you need to remember about ‘Andor’ before Season 2
The struggle against the Empire continues. Three years after the first season of Andor redefined what a modern Star Wars show could be, the Disney+ series about the early days of the Rebel Alliance is finally returning for Season 2. Since creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy has crafted such a detail-oriented story, it’s understandable if we all need a refresher on where we left off with Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his comrades and the Imperial officers trying to stop them.
Who are the main characters of Andor?
As the title makes clear, the series mainly revolves around Cassian, who first appeared in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Gilroy, who cowrote the screenplay for Rogue One and directed uncredited reshoots, has been using the show to flesh out Cassian’s backstory and that of the Rebel Alliance writ large. Interestingly, Andor viewers already know how the hero will die (killed by a blast from the Death Star in the Rogue One climax after successfully stealing its schematics so that Luke Skywalker can fulfill his destiny of destroying it), so the show does have a fatalistic air. But more importantly, it shows the process of radicalization by which someone gains the inspiration and experience to eventually sacrifice themselves for the greater cause of fighting oppression.
When the show begins, five years before the events of Rogue One, Cassian is a scavenger living on the planet Ferrix with his adoptive mother, Maarva (Fiona Shaw), and their adorable red droid B2EMO (voiced by Dave Chapman). Located in the Outer Rim, Ferrix functions as a sort of gas station and repair shop for spaceships traveling far from the galactic capital of Coruscant. Its hard-scrabble, no-nonsense inhabitants even wear reflector vests and hard hats like construction workers on our own planet. Cassian, though, made his living by scavenging old ships for valuable parts, which he then fenced to the black market through his mechanic ex-girlfriend Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona).
But one fateful day, Bix introduces Cassian to a mysterious contact, Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), who feigns curiosity in a piece of Imperial tech but is really more interested in Cassian himself, who Luthen thinks could make a great addition to the anti-Imperial cause. It turns out that Luthen, though he poses as an antiques dealer on Coruscant, is really an early leader of what will become the Rebel Alliance; he is the link between disparate factions like guerrilla fighter Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker) and posh Sen. Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly).
This activity does not go unnoticed by the Empire, and the show spends about as much time with the rebels as it does with the Imperial officials cracking down on them. Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) is an inspector for the Preox-Morlana Authority, a corporate conglomerate that the Empire deputizes to oversee Ferrix. Enraged by the lax behavior of his supervisors, Syril becomes obsessed with hunting Cassian and is roughly analogous to Inspector Javert from Les Misérables, another famous story about both sides of a revolution. Higher up in the Imperial hierarchy is Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), a member of the FBI-like Imperial Security Bureau who alone among her colleagues can connect the dots about widespread Rebel activity.
What happened in Andor season 1?
Season 1 of Andor was roughly divided into small story arcs of three episodes each. The first arc began with Cassian killing two Preox-Morlana security guards in self-defense. Though his supervisor told him to shrug it off, Syril correctly realized that the deaths were no accident and attempted to capture Cassian. But Syril was humiliated and outsmarted, and Cassian escaped Ferrix with Luthen aboard the latter’s cool spaceship, the Fondor.
Luthen then brought Cassian into a group of rebels planning to steal the Imperial payroll from the planet Aldhani. With Cassian’s help, the heist (scheduled to coincide with a local festival based around a meteor shower that disrupted the Empire’s security systems) was successful. But in a presage of the Rogue One climax, several members of the rebel group died, including the idealistic young intellectual Karis Nemik (Alex Lawther) and the cynical Arvel Skeen (Ebon Moss-Bacharach), who was killed by Cassian himself after attempting to betray the others. The Aldhani raid sent ripples through the galaxy, motivating the Empire to dial up the repression, which is precisely what Luthen wanted, so their iron-fist tactics would inspire even more revolutionary fervor and make his job easier.
Funnily enough, although Cassian successfully escaped Aldhani, he soon found himself caught up in the Empire’s dragnet and sentenced to six years in a prison factory on Narkina 5 just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The three-episode arc on Narkina 5 perfectly illustrates Luthen’s plan. Though the prisoners are each told they’ll be released after serving their sentence of free labor making parts for some mysterious Imperial technology, it eventually becomes clear that even when their “sentence” is up, they’re just reassigned to a different part of the prison and given more work to do. Realizing that following the rules gets them nowhere and that they have nothing to lose but their chains, the prisoners follow Cassian’s lead in rising up, killing the guards, and escaping the facility. Even the former factory floor manager, Kino Loy (Andy Serkis), joins the revolt and gives a rousing speech about how there is only “one way out.” After Skarsgård, who played Baron Harkonnen in the Dune franchise, this makes Serkis another interesting piece of meta-casting on Andor; Serkis previously played fascist-coded authoritarian leader Supreme Leader Snoke in the recent Star Wars sequel trilogy. On Andor, they’re both portraying humble revolutionaries.
After escaping Narkina 5, Cassian learns that Maarva has died in his absence. He returns to Ferrix for her funeral, which is exactly what every other character expects him to do, so basically the whole cast (save for Mon Mothma, who is busy on Coruscant navigating her crappy marriage and figuring out how to skirt new banking rules to covertly raise funds for the nascent Rebellion) converges on Ferrix for the season finale. But by this point, the revolution has grown beyond just a handful of people, and Ferrix inhabitants start a riot against the Stormtroopers (nearly crushing Dedra beneath their feet until she’s saved by Syril) without any assistance from Cassian. He uses the chaos to free Bix from Imperial captivity and send her off-planet to safety, while he comes to Luthen and says that he’s finally ready to join the Rebellion for real.
But the devil doesn’t rest either, and in a post-credits scene we learn what exactly Cassian and his fellow prisoners were building on Narkina 5 — component parts for the Death Star.
What do we know about Andor Season 2?
The show’s second and final season will bridge the gap between the previous episodes and Rogue One. To that end, more recognizable faces from the film are set to appear. Ben Mendelsohn will reprise his role as Orson Krennic, which makes sense since the Death Star is Krennic’s project and this season will cover its final stages of construction. But Rogue One fans should also be delighted to know that Alan Tudyk is also on board to voice K-2SO, the memorably mean droid who will become Cassian’s best friend.
We already know the fates of the Rogue One characters, and that Mon Motha will live to see the Empire defeated, but the rest of the cast is up for grabs. Luthen is prepared to die like any good revolutionary, but anything could happen to Bix, Syril, and Dedra.
As far as plot details, Gilroy has said that Season 2 will finally depict the Ghorman Massacre, an event that has been alluded to in past Star Wars installments, like the animated series Rebels, as being a key instigator of the Rebel Alliance. Now we’ll actually see what it entailed, and viewers shouldn’t expect the show to pull any punches.
“There's also a bit of confusion about the Ghorman Massacre, and what is the Ghorman Massacre? There's a lot of confusion within canon,” Gilroy recently told Collider. “So, it was an opportunity to rebuild in a really significant way. It's a very significant part of our show that can do a lot of different things for us. Quite honestly, it's very expensive to build, so we really want to use it as much as possible so it carries over five different episodes. I'm really confident that the really deep, passionate Star Wars community will appreciate how we've straightened out that story.”
When does Andor Season 2 premiere?
Remember how Andor Season 1 was divided into arcs of three episodes each? Andor season 2 is even more committed to that plot structure, and its release model reflects that. The first three episodes of Season 2 will premiere April 22 on Disney+, with three more following each week through May 13. Creatively, the 12-episode season is split neatly into quarters as well. Gilroy wrote the first three episodes, with Beau Willimon penning Episodes 4 through 6, Dan Gilroy writing Episodes 7 through 9, and Tom Bissell handling the final three. The directors for the series are Ariel Kleiman (who directed the first six episodes), Janus Metz (who did the third chunk), and Alonso Ruizpalacios (the final episodes).
Watch the Andor Season 2 trailer below.