Diego Luna teases ‘Andor’ Season 2 timejumps: ‘The audience becomes part of the storytelling’
A long time ago now, Rogue One portrayed the events immediately preceding the original Star Wars, such that if you watch the two movies back-to-back, the progression of the plot can feel pretty seamless. Andor Season 1 went back even farther, showing how Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) was radicalized from a scrap-metal dealer to a true-believer rebel capable of stealing the Death Star plans in Rogue One.
Andor Season 2 fills in the remaining blanks between Season 1 and Rogue One, but that’s a lot of time to cover — five years, in fact. So the new season is full of little timeskips. The story picks up one year after the events of the previous season finale, and jumps ahead another year after every three episodes. Keeping track of how their characters were evolving became an exciting challenge for the cast. A lot is left up to viewers as well, to imagine how the characters spent the intervening time.
“Five years can be a long time — or not, depending on your choices,” Luna tells Gold Derby. “[Andor creator] Tony Gilroy really had these characters move dramatically. Their arcs are huge and they have to learn so much. It’s cool to fill in the blank spaces ourselves and to find, in these very intimate scenes, the answers for that whole year. It also helps the audience become part of the storytelling of the show. You are there with us, trying to fill in those blank spaces.”
READ: Everything you need to remember about Andor Season 1 before watching Season 2
But that doesn’t mean it was easy to film. The actors had to be coordinated not just with each other, but with the whole filmmaking team.
“It was a challenge because you have to work as a team,” Luna says. “We all had to be connected, sharing our questions and finding the answers together. And not just actors, but designers and everyone else. It's like if Tony Gilroy thought, how can I make it even more complicated for them? He managed to find a way!”
The process made Adria Arjona, who plays Cassian’s longtime love Bix Caleen, think about how much can happen in a year.
“When I first heard Tony tell me that it would be one year every time, I realized I've never really seen that happen in any other format,” Arjona says. “You always see five years pass, or 10 years, and the changes are way more evident. That’s something that you can really play as an actor. But then I was thinking, how much does one really change in a year? Because we do, but it's so subtle. So that just makes it even more complex to make these choices. It was tough, but it made everybody symbiotic. It made everybody collaborate even stronger and more deeply. Everybody had to be so connected.”
Andor is, after all, very much about teamwork and organizing. The origin of the Rebel Alliance is the story of many different people from different backgrounds with different ideas coming together in service of a greater goal. In Season 2, Cassian and Bix struggle to balance their personal relationship and personal struggles (such as Bix’s torture at the hands of the Empire back in Season 1) with the bigger fight against the Empire.
“She wants to be a part of [the fight against the Empire] so bad and not only that, but also part of this relationship and be a good partner,” Arjona says. “There’s this really beautiful love story sort of forming. Maybe if times were different or if they were in a different place, their story would be very different. So that's a little heartbreaking, but I think she desperately wants to get better and heal herself to be a part of something that's greater. The fact that there is something out there for her to look up to is what helps her get better.”
Once again the audience is part of the storytelling, because viewers will have to balance the progression of Cassian and Bix’s relationship with the fact that we already know how Cassian’s story will end.
“He's finally connecting in the way he probably wanted to for many years with Bix,” Luna says. “He’s finding out he has this ability to give everything to someone. At the same time, he has to understand that the cause needs him and that he's capable of doing great things. I think he has to learn he's capable of loving someone in order to give himself to the cause. As contradictory as that sounds, it's important. One thing triggers the other, but it's a conflict that will follow him in every step of the second season and also through Rogue One.”
The first three episodes of Andor Season 2 premiere April 22 on Disney+, with three more episodes following each subsequent Tuesday through May 13.