As opposed to the much more focused scope of the first season, season 2 of Andor will feature several time skips as it portrays the final 4 years of Cassian Andor’s (Luna) life leading up to his appearance and eventual death in 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. As much as Disney probably would have loved more seasons to spread out that tale, that wouldn’t have worked out in the long run, at least according to Luna and Gilroy. After all, making a TV show is a time-consuming process, and when a character has to stay a certain age, that can make things rather problematic.
RELATED: Star Wars: Andor’s 5 Greatest Moments
In a recent interview with Collider, Luna went into detail on why condensing the final stretch into a single season is the best decision. “It’s not possible, but you know what? It’s not because of us. It’s because of Rogue One,” Luna explained. “I mean, I also have to look close enough to Rogue One. Can you imagine me in 10 years pretending to be the [character] I was 20 years ago? Just impossible. I mean, sadly there’s no machines or CGI that can do it.” As a prequel to Rogue One, Andor is in a precarious position where its actors can only look young enough for their roles for so long. Not many can brush it off like fellow excellent prequel series Better Call Saul.
“We didn’t want this to end up being an animated series,” Luna continued, going into detail on what goes into creating such an involved show as Andor. “I am who I am, and Tony Gilroy has to be the writer of this. We cannot be doing this for 10 years. Basically, the first season took four years. The second will take a little less, but he has to write 12 episodes. Then we have to go [into] pre-production. That normally takes six to eight months to build these places and to start with the whole process of designing, casting. Then the execution is another seven [to] eight months, and then post-production starts. That’s not easy either. So it’s a long journey. Each season takes three [to] four years of my life and of Tony Gilroy’s life.”
He makes some good points. There’s been plenty of speculation on what’s in store for Andor season 2, but it’s also been widely known that it would be the show’s final season, and that initially may have confused many fans. The long and short of it is, a 4-5 season show would be much more of a strain on the actors than just 2 seasons, particularly given how it’s a prequel series with a definitive end point already established.
So while the prospect of getting only 2 seasons of this fantastic series is bittersweet, at least fans can take solace in knowing that the folks involved are being given a much more manageable workload. It can be easy to forget that everyone’s favorite shows are still made by real people, and they need breaks just like anyone else.
Star Wars: Andor season 1 is available to stream on Disney+, while season 2 currently has no official release date.
MORE: Short vs Long, Many vs Few: Which Episode Structure Is Better For Shows?
Source: Collider
