Read This Before You Watch Andor Season 2
When Star Wars fans were introduced to Cassian Andor nearly a decade ago in 2016’s Rogue One, Diego Luna’s steely captain was already a fully realized revolutionary ready to die for his cause. And in that movie—spoiler alert—die he does, sacrificing himself alongside his fellow crew members to secure the Death Star intelligence that allows the Rebel Alliance to go on to defeat the Galactic Empire in the Battle of Yavin in A New Hope.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In the prequel series Andor—considered by many to be one of, if not the best of the Disney+ Star Wars TV shows—we meet Cassian five years before that fateful mission, when he’s still a self-interested smuggler doing his best to scrape by in a galaxy gripped by the iron fist of the Empire. The series opens with Cassian killing two low-level Imperial goons while searching for clues about the whereabouts of his long-lost sister, a decision that sets in motion a chain of events that slowly begins to convert him from cynical mercenary to radicalized freedom fighter.
Created by Bourne franchise veteran Tony Gilroy (who also co-wrote Rogue One), the Emmy-nominated Andor has been anointed the dark, gritty, adult entry in the Star Wars story. Rather than the epic battles of good vs. evil that ground the Skywalker saga, Andor‘s focus is the human cost of rebellion and harsh realities of a prolonged uprising against an authoritarian regime. As ruthless rebel spymaster Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) memorably monologues in Season 1, “I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see.”
Here’s what to know about Andor before the first three episodes of Season 2 premiere on Disney+ on April 22.
Where Andor Season 1 left off
The 12 episodes of Andor Season 1 spanned a year in the galaxy far, far away and saw Cassian go from being reluctantly drawn into the rebellion in order to save his own skin to becoming a devoted resistance operative. His commitment to the cause was ultimately galvanized by a series of transformative incidents, including serving a stint in a brutal Imperial prison, hearing the final message his late adoptive mother Maarva (Fiona Shaw) left for him, and witnessing the people of his longtime home planet Ferrix revolt against their oppressors while rescuing his childhood friend Bix (Adria Arjona) from the Empire’s clutches.
Cassian’s Season 1 arc ended with him confronting Luthen—who had come to Ferrix with the intention of eliminating his former recruit to prevent him from spilling any rebel secrets—and telling the spymaster to either kill him or take him in. This prompted a smile from Luthen, suggesting that Cassian’s change of heart was the outcome he’d been hoping for all along. That was followed by a post-credits scene that revealed the mysterious pieces of machinery Cassian and his fellow inmates were being forced to build at the Imperial prison were being used to construct the Death Star.
Andor‘s first season also delved into how the early leaders of the rebellion, like Luthen, Galactic Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), and guerilla fighter Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), had conflicting views on how best to manage the movement. This resulted in disparate rebel factions that had thus far failed to ally under one banner.
What to expect in Season 2
The second and final season of Andor will also run for 12 episodes, but this time around, it will cover four years of time instead of one. That means the show will end right around when the events of Rogue One are beginning. Like its predecessor, Season 2 will be divided into arcs of three episodes each, with a new set of three episodes dropping weekly every Tuesday through May 13. An in-universe year will pass between every episode block, each of which will span three days in the lives of the show’s central characters.
“I did not want to have the opening scenes of every year later block be, ‘Since last I saw you,’ and ‘You cut your hair,’ and ‘Now you’re a doctor.’ I did not want to have all the sort of let’s get this out of the way, Chekhovian exposition,” Gilroy told IndieWire of the unique setup. “There’s a couple places where the actors really need to know what happened. There’s a couple places where we really need to know what happened, the people making up the story. But by and large, what we’re leaving in the middle, we know.”
Gilroy has said one event that will play a significant role in Season 2 is the infamous Ghorman Massacre, an incident previously referenced in a number of Star Wars novels and comics as a pivotal moment in the rebellion timeline. The massacre will see the Empire slaughter thousands of peaceful protesters on the planet Ghorman, an atrocity that spurs Mon Mothma to unite the fragmented rebel factions into one Rebel Alliance.
We’ll also see some more familiar faces from Rogue One pop up, like the Imperial Military’s Director of Advanced Weapons Research Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn) and Cassian’s sassy right-hand droid K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk). However, not every legacy character you might expect to show up is going to make an appearance.
“There’s probably a couple people that we wanted to have in Yavin at the end, who are in the beginning of Rogue, but we just couldn’t get them because they were busy,” Gilroy told the Hollywood Reporter.