It sounds like Andor Season 2 will bring back another major character from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Ben Mendelsohn is said to be returning as Imperial Director Orson Krennic, the architect of the Death Star.
While there have been early reports that he wouldn’t be appearing in Andor, a director who worked on Season 2, Alonso Ruizpalacios, revealed to The Playlist that Mendelsohn was involved.
Ruizpalacios said that directing the Star Wars show was “a treat,” before adding that in particular, it was great to work with heavyweight actors like, “Stellan Skarsgård, Forest Whitaker, and Ben Mendelsohn.”
Lucasfilm has yet to confirm Mendelsohn’s involvement, the director seems like a pretty solid source of who he worked with.
According to writer and showrunner Tony Gilroy, the next season might be the most important story he’s ever told.
He said: “I’ve had a lot of fun over the years, but I don’t know whether I’ve ever done anything as important as these 24 hours of storytelling we’re doing now.”
Gilroy concluded, saying: “I don’t know if it’s just because it’s the thing I’m on, but I don’t think so. I’ve never had a chance to work this big before so it’s a pretty big deal for me.”
The second season will conclude the series and take us through the years of Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor‘s journey as a spy for The Rebellion and how he tracked down the secret of The Death Star’s construction. The story leads right up to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
He previously teased the end of the series, sharing that the creative team knows “exactly where we’re going” and that it’s been “creatively potent” to know where the story is going.
He said: “If you know your ending, it really helps. We know exactly where we’re going. You know what you have to deliver emotionally and what the story has to do. It’s a decision borne of survival, but it’s good for us creatively.”
Gilroy explained how the story will play out in the final season of the series, saying: “When we come back later, it’ll be literally like a Friday, Saturday and Sunday. And then, we’ll jump a year, and then it’ll be, like, four or five days, and then we’ll jump a year, and then there’ll be another four or five days, and then we jump a year, and be another four or five days.”
He added: “I don’t know whether anybody ever did it before because I don’t know if anybody had a chance to do it before. We’re in the brand-new era of making these shows.
“These shows are all new. This whole idea of how to make these shows, and the economic scale of them is new, and everything’s new.”
Every three episodes in Andor Season 2 will cover one year’s worth of story, and when previously talking about what we can expect from the series, he explains that it explores the stresses, heartbreak, and triumphs of the growing rebellion: “Think about the revolution, and think about it from Luthen Rael’s point of view, and Saw Gerrera’s point of view, and Mon Mothma’s point of view.”
He continued: “They’ve started off as original gangsters in this thing, and it’s underground, and it’s secret, and it’s small, and it’s isolated, and contained. In four years, it’s going to go big. Think about any restaurant that you knew that started off as a coffee shop, think about any startup company.
“What happens? Things get very complicated. If your stock and trade of your business is paranoia, and secrecy, and betrayal, and heavy consequences, expanding your business is really difficult.”
Gilroy went on to say: “Then think about it from the Imperial side and they are getting very, very close to a very important energy project. People may have heard of it. It’s an energy project.
“I guess that’s not a surprise, but I think you’ll see the wear and tear, you’ll see all the stresses, all the heartbreak, and all the triumph of the 20 or 30 people that we’re carrying forward, with Cassian at the center.
“You’ll see those people stumble forward into a very complicated bit of chaos and history that we will pay attention to.”
He added: “We’re gonna work the calendar. There are events on our calendar and you know what they are, some of them, and they’re very important, and we will play those out.”
There’s still no word on when Andor Season 2 will drop on Disney+, but I’m excited for its return! This series is the perfect example of great Star Wars storytelling.