All the Andor season 2 news we’ve heard so far

Andor’s first season has come to a close with a fantastic finale and a funeral that was simultaneously heartbreaking and inspiring. But with the show’s first 12 episodes now complete, it’s already time to look ahead to season 2. Cassian has joined up with the rebellion in an almost-official way, which means there’s plenty of ground to cover in the show’s last 12 episodes as he grows his role in the Rebel Alliance.

We’ve known for a while that Cassian Andor’s journey from a young thief to a Rebel hero would last for two seasons and 24 episodes, but how those episodes play out has remained a mystery. Thankfully, after the conclusion of season 1, Tony Gilroy sat down with Polygon to offer a few insights into the show’s second season, without giving too much of Cassian’s story away.

[Ed. note: This story contains spoilers for Andor season 1 and hints about the events of season 2.]

Andor’s first season brought Cassian to the brink of the rebellion, committed to throwing his life at the cause. Gilroy wanted this to be the driving force of season 1 as the show examined what could make someone commit their life to a cause like the rebellion.

“This first half was about him becoming a revolutionary and committing to it, and sort of marrying himself to it, and sort of the blood oath,” Gilroy told Polygon in an interview.

But now that Cassian seems to have found his new home with the soon-to-be Rebel Alliance (at least if his meeting with Luthen is any indication), then his next step is to climb the ranks and rise in importance. After all, this entire season is leading up directly to Rogue One, in which Cassian is a trusted and important member of the rebellion.

“Cassian’s commitment to the cause is not in doubt. If it was about him becoming a revolutionary, then the second half is about him becoming a leader,” said Gilroy.

To get him to this point, Gilroy says that Andor season 2 will follow a fairly similar structure to the first season.

“We’re going to skip a whole year. We come back a year later, many things have changed,” Gilroy said. “And we’ll do three episodes, and we’ll jump a year. And we’ll do another three episodes, and we’ll jump a year. And we’ll come back to the final four episodes, and those episodes will be the last three days really before Rogue One, and the final scene of the show will be walking you into Rogue One.”

Now instead of Cassian’s own journey to rebellion, Andor will give us a look at the journey of the Rebel Alliance itself. While the Rebels have always been Star Wars’ stock-standard version of the good guys — brave people willing to stand up to the fascist regime of the Empire — the series has rarely taken the time to look at what the actual human cost of rebellion on a galaxy-wide scale might look like. And while Andor’s first season has already scratched the surface of that topic, Gilroy says the second season will dive all the way in.

“So what we’re doing is, we’re showing in a very different way now — it’s not about becoming a revolutionary. It’s watching how the Alliance itself is going to put pressure on people,” Gilroy explained. “Are you in? Or are you out? What happens to the original gangsters, the Saw Gerreras and Luthen Raels? How hard it is to build a coalition? How much betrayal there is, how much failure there is — there’s some canonical material that we have the opportunity to play with. So it’s still a show about regular people making incredible decisions in difficult times.”