Star Wars: Andor to Answer Mysteries About Rogue One
Star Wars: Andor won't just be a series that helps us learn more about rebel spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna). The upcoming Disney+ will apparently help answer some other lingering mysteries from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story – something that Luna and showrunner Tony Gilroy both teased in a recent press interview for the show. Like so many other Star Wars projects, time has changed how a lot of people feel about Rogue One, with the pivotal standalone's break-neck pace and doomed ending leaving fans wondering and imagining the heroic characters they met.
Now, with Andor, it looks like Lucasfilm and Disney+ are actually going to feed that Rogue One fandom with an expansive look at that corner of the Star Wars Universe!
"We got to invent and create and dream about all the answers you don't find in Rogue One," Luna told Vanity Fair. "I thought that character was gone for me. And suddenly when they asked me if I would be willing to do this, my straight answer was, 'Yes, of course,' because I also have questions I would love to answer."
As stated, Rogue One's story threw fans right into the midst of the early Rebellion's desperate covert mission to uncover the Empire's plot to build a superweapon (the Death Star). That race against the clock didn't allow for a whole lot of deep backstory for anyone in the ensemble. Even the biggest Rogue One fan can admit: there were a lot of unanswered questions. Tony Gilroy wrote Rogue One and was largely uncredited for handling the reshoots that actually got the film in the can. So Gilroy knows better than anyone exactly which plotholes need filling:
"You know he's been fighting since he was a child, right? He says that. You know he's been a guerrilla fighter. You certainly know he's been an assassin. He kills an ally in the very first scene," Gilroy recalls. "That was a big gulp on Rogue One, to see who would swallow that. He's morally complicated in a really dark way."
Gilroy remembers one particular scene of Rogue One that seems to have inspired what Andor will explore:
"Felicity [Jyn Orso] comes out of the council meeting in Yavin and says, 'They don't want to do it. They don't have the guts to do it.' And he's standing there with this murderers row of guys, and he says, 'Man, if we don't go do this, then all these terrible things that we did, all the crap that we've done, it'll be useless. And all the moral, all the blood on our hands will be useless.'"
As Luna says in conclusion, seeing the darkness that was part of the light the Rebel Alliance would bring back to the galaxy is a big appeal of this series:
"He's someone surviving in dark times," Luna says. "If you know the Star Wars universe and story, these are the darkest times."
As the Star Wars Universe continues to expand in all directions of its timeline, many new doors and windows are opening for us not only to do backfill on key breakout characters but make cross-connections to all kinds of other series and films. Andor is just the beginning of where we could see Rogue One characters pop-up again – a lot of fans are wondering if the Obi-Wan series might be another.