Andor Creator Admits the Show Owes Its Existence to Another Star Wars Series

It’s a bountiful time for Star Wars TV shows right now, and Andor creator Tony Gilroy is happy to credit The Mandalorian for making it all possible. In a new interview on with Empire, Gilroy acknowledged how The Mandalorian proved the viability of a Star Wars story in an hour-long series format, and how its ongoing success “protected” other shows in the franchise from doubters along the way. With Andor poised for a climactic second and final season starting on April 22nd, Gilroy is still grateful to Jon Favreau and his team for establishing firm footing that other shows could build on.

“We were protected all the way down the line,” Gilroy said, referring to both protection from cancellation and protection from creative compromises as well. Kathy [Kennedy] protected us. Lucasfilm protected us. Bob Iger protected us. The audience protected us. The Mandalorian protected us. We had all these people out there backing our play.” From there, he elaborated on The Mandalorian‘s contributions.

“The success of The Mandalorian gave us the platform to jump off,” he said. “Their success is what would fuel the whole thing. I mean, no Baby Yoda, no Andor. Seriously. Don’t think that we don’t know that.” Gilroy felt compelled to share this point particularly because he has seen fandom discussions where people seem to infer issues between himself and other creative minds at Lucasfilm, including Favreau and the studio’s current creative head, Dave Filoni.

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“Online, [people] try to drive a wedge all the time between us, and Favreau and Filoni,” he noted. “It’s horrible what people say; it’s terrible. And the truth is, we don’t have a show without them. They gave us the muscle to go.”

Gilroy went so far as to say that he believes a show like Andor, with all its creative freedom, “will never happen again. Not because we’re so great, but because no-one’s ever gonna start a show on this scale again, and shoot it practically, and have the resources and the protection to do something like this.”

Gilroy was one of the screenwriters on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, starting over a decade ago now. He returned in 2018 when Andor was in development, offering his services as a writer and consultant in the early stages and ultimately rising to become showrunner by the time the series got off the ground. At one point, Gilroy had planned out a five-season arc for the show, but was eventually convinced that it would be better-served with a long and climactic second season.

Andor Season 2 starts on April 22nd, with three episodes dropping on Disney+. The streamer will add three new episodes each week after that for four weeks, amounting to the equivalent of a movie in runtime each week for a month straight. Season 1 is streaming on Disney+ now, along with Rogue One and the rest of the Star Wars franchise.