See the darker facet of the Rebel Alliance as we have a look at every thing we find out about Andor, the Star Wars prequel sequence now accessible to stream on Disney+.
Rebel agent Cassian Andor returns to screens September 21 with the premiere of the brand new Star Wars TV present, merely named ‘Andor’, with the promise of filling in a number of the lacking years of the Star Wars saga and exhibiting what occurred within the run-up to the Rebels stealing the plans for the Death Star. You can see the place Rogue One suits into the Star Wars timeline in our information to watching the Star Wars movies in order.
Spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story forward!
Things ended fairly bleakly for Cassian Andor (performed by actor Diego Luna) on the finish of Rogue One, as he was killed alongside Jyn Erso when the Death Star fired upon the planet Scarif. His new sequence rewinds 5 years; once we meet him, Andor is a thief with out a trigger, a refugee from his dwelling planet invaded and conquered by the Empire. Survival is his intention, and placing a blow in opposition to the Empire is the furthest factor from his thoughts.
With The Mandalorian season three, The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi all that includes fan favorites and mainstays of the franchise, Star Wars: Andor is probably the one present Star Wars followers know least about. There is an intriguing trailer, which begins with a tribe of kids watching a burning ship plummet from the sky, then reveals flashbacks to the Clone Wars, adopted by a lot of motion and suspense.
Beyond what we’ve seen within the trailer, plot particulars have been sparse. So let’s collect collectively every thing that we do know, in anticipation of Star Wars: Andor’s long-awaited premiere.
Star Wars: Andor launch date
Andor is offered to stream on Disney+ as of September 21 (opens in new tab) with a double episode, and can proceed weekly after that for an preliminary 12-episode season. A second, concluding, season has already been confirmed (opens in new tab) and can enter manufacturing in November 2022. Andor was initially scheduled to premiere on August 31, however was delayed (presumably to space out the discharge from She-Hulk, one other massive franchise launch for Disney).
Andor has been in gestation a very long time. It was initially introduced by Disney and Lucasfilm again in 2018, with Stephen Schiff because the show-runner. The present underwent some revisions, with Schiff being changed by Tony Gilroy, who co-wrote the screenplay to Rogue One, and the present ultimately entered manufacturing in November 2020 at Pinewood Studios within the UK, having been delayed by the worldwide pandemic. There had been a number of location shoots, together with at an oil refinery in Essex, at a dam in Oban in Scotland, and at quarries in Derbyshire and Dorset. Principle images was concluded in September 2021.
The soundtrack rating consists by Nicholas Britell and is described as “orchestral-plus (opens in new tab)”.
How to look at Star Wars: Andor
Star Wars: Andor is now accessible to stream and the one place to look at it’s on Disney Plus (opens in new tab), the house of all issues Star Wars. Of course, you do not simply get entry to the Star Wars universe with a Disney Plus subscription as there is a host of superior sci-fi content material on the streaming platform. You can try our spherical up of the best sci-fi movies and TV shows to stream on Disney Plus for a extra detailed look.
What is the plot of Andor?
Gilroy has spoken at size to Empire Magazine (opens in new tab) concerning the two-season construction of Andor, with the primary season chronicling a yr in Star Wars historical past, and the second 12-episode season will inform the story of what occurred to Cassian Andor and the Rebels within the following 4 years, with annually taking over a 3-episode block in season 2.
At the start of the present Andor is a cynic, however as he’s drawn right into a deeper story that ends in the rise of the Rebellion he turns into a revolutionary, and the Rebels’ go-to agent when there’s a unclean job that wants doing. As we noticed in Rogue One, he killed an informant in chilly blood fairly than be captured and provides away the Rebels. As such he turns into a James Bond-esque agent, however with out the suave. Indeed, Star Wars: Andor has been described as a spy thriller, whereas Diego Luna himself has mentioned that Star Wars: Andor is the story of a migrant looking for his place, one thing very related to the actual world.
We do know that on the finish of season 2, the story will in the end take Andor to his fateful assembly with Jyn Erso and his loss of life, however little else is thought about what occurs earlier than that.
Andor trailers
Which characters are returning?
Mexican actor Diego Luna returns within the title position, having beforehand performed Cassian Andor in Rogue One. Joining him is Genevieve O’Reilly, taking part in senator and secret Rebel chief Mon Mothma. O’Reilly beforehand performed Mon Mothma (who was first seen in Return of the Jedi, the place the character was performed by Caroline Blakiston) in Rogue One, and likewise voiced the character within the animated sequence Star Wars: Rebels, however the trailer for Andor guarantees O’Reilly a a lot meatier position this time, as we see her secretly conspiring in opposition to the Empire and he or she intones darkly, “They’re everywhere. They’re watching me now.”
Stellan Skarsgård (Pirates of the Caribbean, The Avengers, Dune) is taking part in a personality known as Luthen, who within the trailer seems as if he could also be a Rebel chief and a potential affiliate of Andor’s.
Like Luna and O’Reilly, Forest Whitaker additionally returns from Rogue One taking part in his character Saw Gerrera, and he can have not less than one scene with Luthen, based on Skarsgård.
Other actors collaborating embrace Adria Arjona, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller and veteran Irish actress Fiona Shaw, who we see on the finish of the trailer telling somebody off-camera “that’s the sound of a reckoning.”
In the trailer we additionally see actor Anton Lesser (Qyburn from Game of Thrones) taking part in a high-ranking Imperial officer wearing a white uniform.
Lucasfilm have revealed a new droid (opens in new tab), B2EMO (Bee-Two, or simply Bee, for brief), who’s described as an “old and weary groundmech salvage assist unit.” Bee-Two’s physique is scarred and bashed up, and we see the droid briefly within the trailer trundling via what seems like a devastated metropolis or base. We can count on a lot of cantankerous enjoyable from Bee-Two.
Speaking of droids, Andor’s partner-in-crime from Rogue One, Ok-2SO, is not going to be returning within the first season, however the former enforcer droid’s voice actor, Alan Tudyk, has mentioned that discussions have taken place about him being within the second season.
Another character which will return sooner or later within the present, though we’ve had no affirmation as of but, is Alderaan Senator Bail Organa (Jimmy Smits) – a Rebel chief alongside Mon Mothma and the adoptive guardian of Princess Leia. Having performed the character in each Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One, Smits returned to play Bail Organa in Obi-Wan Kenobi, so it’s solely potential that he’ll additionally flip up sooner or later in Andor – maybe with two very acquainted droids in tow?
Intriguingly, Andor runs concurrently with the animated sequence Star Wars: Rebels within the Star Wars chronology. Could it’s potential that we would see some live-action variations of characters resembling Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren? Another character from Rebels that may additionally pop up is Ashoka (Rosario Dawson), who has already made appearances in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett and who shall be getting her personal upcoming Star Wars TV show in 2023. We should wait and see!
For extra Star Wars content material, try our Star Wars movies, ranked from worst to greatest checklist, plus our newest Star Wars Lego assessment, the UCS Lego Star Wars Luke Skywalker’s landspeeder.
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