GOING ROGUE
ANDOR Digging into the backstory of Diego Luna’s Cassian…
Rogue One was a glorious Star Wars experiment – the first anthology film in a galactic franchise ripe for further exploration. Gareth Edwards’ epic told the story of a small group of Rebels who defied an Empire and stole the plans for the enemy’s ultimate weapon, the Death Star. Now comes the spin-off to the spin-off, a Disney+ series that delves into the origins of Diego Luna’s breakout character, Cassian Andor.
“Rogue One is very much about the event, and now the journey of Andor is about the character,” Luna tells Total Film at Star Wars Celebration, where the first trailer played to thunderous applause. “It’s a huge show, and it’s epic, and it has this thriller aspect and spyish tone. Yet, it’s also a very intimate story of the awakening and transformation of a man. It reminds us that we are all capable of doing great stuff. We’re all capable of finding out that we are a tool of change.”
Spoiler alert: Rogue One concludes with Cassian sacrificing himself to make sure the Death Star plans are safely delivered to Princess Leia. The upcoming series, however, starts five years prior to that, with Cassian
“as far as you can imagine away” from being a hero. Luna points to a moment in Rogue One where Cassian tells Felicity Jones’ Jyn Erso with a ferocious conviction that he’s “been in this fight since I was six years old”.
“That talks about a wounded man,” he says. “We find him in a place where he’s not aware of how capable he is of transforming or being part of change or executing such a sacrifice, but he is the man that comes out from fighting since he was six years old. He’s a very interesting, dark, wounded person. You’re not
IT’S A VERY DIFFERENT KIND OF STORYTELLING TONY GILROY
going to believe that he’s capable of what he does in Rogue One.”
The beauty of Andor being a series is that there’s more room to tell extended stories about a vast array of characters. “It’s a very different kind of storytelling,” showrunner Tony Gilroy – who helped pen Rogue One’s
script – says, having just stepped off the Celebration stage. “The biggest is the depth of storytelling, the amount of behaviour in it, the amount of interaction.”
Andor will be two seasons long, the first batch of 12 episodes taking place across a single year in Star Wars continuity, and the second season stretching out across the subsequent four years, leading directly into Rogue One.
“That five-year period sees people under really extreme circumstances,” Gilroy teases, with executive producer Sanne Wohlenberg describing Andor as “a very long mini-series” that’s “Dickensian by way of Star Wars”.
Genevieve O’Reilly, who returns as Mon Mothma, also uses the word “Dickensian” – reference to how Andor balances many stories, not just that of Cassian. “This show is a broad ensemble,” she says with her Irish lilt. “There are so many extraordinary characters, played by Fiona Shaw, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Stellan Skarsgård, and Diego Luna. There are lots of stories.” When Andor arrives on Disney+, then, prepare for an “ambitious” ensemble unlike anything we’ve previously seen in that galaxy far, far away. As O’Reilly confidently says: “It’s going to be pretty special.”