The Evolution of Andor: From Five Seasons to Two

I loved Andor season two, maybe even more than I loved season one.
Beautifully crafted dialogue, politically pertinent and dripping in pathos. It’s made me weep on a weekly basis and reaches places that no other Star Wars has.

Episodes eight and nine were some of the greatest story telling I have ever seen on television, period.
Tony Gilroy has crafted a masterpiece and he has done it despite having to dramatically condense his initial five season plan.

Diego Luna was in his mid thirties when he filmed Rogue One and It was always part of Gilroy’s concept that the very end of Andor would directly lead into the start of Rogue One.
In the build up to the release of season two, Gilroy joked with press that Diego Luna’s face ‘wouldn’t take’ four more seasons-
an acknowledgment that if they’d proceeded with the original plan Luna would have been approaching fifty five years old by the completion of season five.

Early on during filming season one of Andor, Gilroy realised the scale of the project he had set himself was not sustainable.
Gilroy’s original intention was to have five seasons comprising of twelve episodes each, every season telling the story of a year in the life of Cassian Andor and the tentative formation of the Rebel Alliance.

Gilroy instead opted for a solitary second season comprised of four arcs evenly distributed across twelve episodes, each arc taking place ‘one year later’ in the timeline.
Gilroy’s epiphany while working on season one is primarily credited with why five seasons were cut in to two, but it was also likely that Bob Iger’s return as CEO of Disney had an influence.
With an overall budget of approximately $645 million, Andor is the most expensive live action Star Wars series ever made and Iger’s return as CEO brought with it a re-evaluation of the distribution of resources at Disney, streaming is ultimately a loss leader, Disney + is believed to have lost approximately $11.4 billion since it’s creation.
This coupled with a desire to get people back in theatres has led to a dramatic cut back in investment for Disney + shows moving forwards.

Tony Gilroy and team navigated this challenge with finesse.
It was never jarring to end an arc in one place and pick up somewhere totally different, between the fantastic writing, performances and production it just felt right, producing seminal, timeless work that will be appreciated for generations- which is why I feel somewhat conflicted writing this…

Gilroy made his choice to reduce the number of seasons as a way of maintaining control over the story he wanted to tell, as such the format was dictated by the story, however, I had this niggling feeling during episode twelve that the format was now dictating the story being told.

This was perhaps a necessity as Gilory had stuck with his original plan that Andor was to end where Rogue One started and as we hurtled towards that point, I couldn’t help but greedily think about the stories we had missed out on in the process of reducing five seasons in to two and how fast we were cycling through moments with characters we had previously lingered on and spent so long with.

Episode twelve primarily serves as a prologue for Rogue One and will undoubtedly blend Andor and Rogue One beautifully, but I can’t stop wondering what could have been if we had more time- one arc more? What would five seasons of Andor looked like?

Andor Season Two was inspiring, moving and at points terrifying.
Despite Tony Gilroy’s repeated insistence that he didn’t set out to write a political show, this story echoes so much that is so familiar in our world right now, offering allegory on a number of issues that many of us are wrestling with in our own personal way on a daily basis.
Maybe some of my lack of satisfaction in the final episode is born of that; for four weeks Andor has beamed into our homes, being painfully real but also offering words of wisdom and comfort during strange and challenging times. It often felt empowering and invigorating when not much does right now politically. That was powerful.
I didn’t want it to end, I wasn’t ready for it to end.

Stream all episodes of Andor and Rogue One on Disney + now