Andor is not the first Star Wars spin-off and it certainly won’t be the last, as Flicks learned when we attended Disney’s mammoth D23 presentation. But the series might be the first standalone adventure of a character from the modern spate of Star Wars stories, reintroducing us to a character much more recent than oldies like Obi-Wan or Boba Fett.
Diego Luna first appeared as the rebel Cassian Andor in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, which remains one of the most celebrated new additions to the Lucasfilm canon. That movie filled in the gaps of a heist mission briefly mentioned way back in A New Hope, making it not only a sequel and a prequel but also a “midquel”, letting us meet new heroes who lived and died in between the beloved legacy character’s adventures.
Luna’s own series Andor takes place five years before Rogue One, following the rebel spy’s missions before he took on the (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS) deadly heist we saw in that film. So it belongs in the Star Wars canon around the time that Luke was still a lonely farmboy on Tattoine, and a consolidated Rebel Alliance is only beginning to form against the tyrannical Galactic Empire.
But like, where does Andor belong, y’know?
The series wrapped filming in September of last year, with preproduction delayed due to continuing COVID shutdowns. Much like the last big Star Wars series Obi-Wan Kenobi, its release was much hyped by Disney+ before being unexpectedly bumped forward in the schedule: fans were a bit miffed when the August release date was suddenly shifted to September 21. It was speculated that the change may have been made to give new Marvel TV projects more attention on the platform.
And we can expect an even longer wait for the next season, which has already been greenlit and scheduled to film in November.
‘ANDOR’ Season 2 begins filming in November but likely won’t release until 2024. #ATM #Andor #StarWars #Disney pic.twitter.com/zfhwwhzJrQ
— At The Movies Online (@atmoviesonline) September 19, 2022
With Rogue One and the Bourne franchise writer Tony Gilroy returning to create and write for Andor, there’s certainly some big expectations behind this reveal of the Rebel Alliance’s origins. And Luna was singled out by many Rogue One viewers and critics for his charisma. Personally speaking, we would love to see him interact with Jabba the Hutt at some point, as he so clearly yearns to feel the beast’s “texture” in the countless press junkets and interviews below.
But does knowing that Cassian will die violently five years down the timeline detract from some of the show’s suspense, its sense of must-see urgency? “Andor” is certainly not as loved by the fandom as Obi-Wan or Boba Fett or Ahsoka, and even returning heroes like Mon Mothma (played in her younger years by Genevieve O’Reilly) and Forest Whitaker’s Saw Gerrera aren’t exactly household names.
The Star Wars fatigue is real, despite how vast and promising the concept of so many galactic stories may be. We’ll have to wait and watch to find out whether Andor earns its place in that endless galaxy far away—at least it’s not another Skywalker-centric chapter, right?
