Andor wasn't exactly "classic" Star Wars (there were no lightsabers, for starters), but it's critically acclaimed and widely considered the best project set in this Galaxy Far, Far Away since Disney acquired Lucasfilm in 2012.
It's previously been reported that Dave Filoni "disliked" the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story prequel. Filoni, who got his start working on The Clone Wars with George Lucas, was a creative driving force behind The Mandalorian alongside Jon Favreau and is the showrunner on Disney+'s Ahsoka TV series.
Oh, and he's just been named the new President of Lucasfilm following Kathleen Kennedy's retirement.
Filoni has publicly praised Andor, but whether it's his idea of Star Wars—the show made a point of avoiding characters like Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader—is another matter altogether. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter (via SFFGazette.com), Andor mastermind Tony Gilroy shared his take on the Filoni rumours.
"We’ve only met a couple times, and we’ve only had a half-a-dozen conversations over the last ten years," he said, denying any creative clashes. "Seriously. I saw Jon Favreau at a scoring session once. We’ve always gotten along with those guys, and we’ve never had anything but high praise for everything that they’ve done."
"We only have our show because of them, and we’ve always said that was true. There’s no Andor without The Mandalorian. It would not exist. So it has never been anything but cordial and pleasant, ever, ever, ever, ever," Gilroy continued. "I don’t know anything that you don’t know. I really don’t."
The rest of the interview is very politically charged, as the filmmaker talks in detail about the perceived parallels between Andor and what's currently happening in the United States. While addressing that, Gilroy talked more about Disney's request that he not use the words "fascism" or "genocide" while promoting the show.
"Diego [Luna] and I had some early, super long-lead press, and we tiptoed out. We were like, 'Oh my God, this is really electric.' So we stepped back, and we had a bunch of people that we were going to put on the road to sell the show. The actors have a broad spectrum of political ideas, and we didn’t want anybody to perjure themselves or violate their conscience."
"So we came up with a legit historical model, and it’s a version of what I’m telling you now. 'We studied history to make the show, and we based it on historical models. We don’t have a crystal ball. There’s comps for everything that we did all through history.' So that was a very, very safe and legitimate place for us to sell the show without ever having to say what I’m free to say now."
"So you get out your Fascism for Dummies book for the 15 things you do, and we tried to include as many of them as we could in the most artful way possible. How were we supposed to know that this clown car in Washington was going to basically use the same book that we used? So I don’t think it’s prescience so much as the sad familiarity of fascism and the karaoke menu of things that you go through to do it."
Original plans called for Andor to be five 12-episode seasons. It's previously been reported that Diego Luna didn't like the idea of being committed to a 60-episode series, which is why Season 1 took place over a year, and the following four years were condensed into Season 2.
Had the series stuck around, comparisons to real-life events would likely continue, and Disney, like many studios, mostly tries to stay out of politics.
Andor Season 1 and Season 2 are now streaming on Disney+.