Star Wars: Andor Showrunner Teases Series' Timeline Leading to Rogue One

Over the weekend at Star Wars Celebration came our first official look at the Andor TV series, a prequel to Rogue One that's in the works for Disney+ and marked to premiere later this season. Among the details about the show that were announced were both episode count (there will be 24 total episodes across two seasons/volumes) and where it takes place in the Star Wars timeline (five years before Rogue One). Speaking with ComicBook.com in an exclusive interview, we spoke to series showrunner Tony Gilroy about why that specific place in the timeline was ripe for exploring the character and the franchise. 

Gilroy said, "We always that it would be interesting to take somebody who was so accomplished in Rogue One, who has so many skills. He's obviously a leader and he's a seducer and he's able of changing his mind and he's creative and he's he's also soulful and he's gonna give himself for the galaxy. And it was like, well, if you're gonna start five years earlier, what's the longest possible journey he could make? So we put him in a big hole when we start. So five years earlier, he's a very different man. So watching you want to see people change."

The creator also confirmed that before landing on two seasons of 12 episodes apiece, there was originally a plan for much, much more, adding: "Originally we thought, oh, maybe we'll do five seasons, but it's just the scale of the show is I think when the show comes out, everybody will forgive us for not doing that. This is the show is huge and it's just physically impossible. So then we were like, what are we going to do? And then the answer turned out to be incredibly elegant and perfect. Which is because we knew where we wanted to go. Every now and then you get really lucky and the solution turned out to be really fortunate for us."

Finally, we asked Gilroy about replicating the ensemble feel of Rogue One in the new series, something he says they accomplished even though the show is named after just one character. According to Gilroy the have "25 or 30" people across the cast, anchoring by the likes of Stellan Skarsgard and Genevieve O'Reilly in addition to Diego Luna as the title star.

"We're introducing other people," Gilroy said. "We're carrying a lot of characters. We have a lot of real estate and so it's a pretty big opportunity from a storytelling point of view."

The first two episodes of Andor will premiere on Disney+ on August 31, 2022.