As you might remember, we initially heard that the plan for Andor was for the show to run for five seasons. That seemed terribly ambitious for a tale about just one of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story's leads, especially when we all know how Cassian Andor's story ends.
Following initial reports about each season being devoted to a year of the Rebel's life, Lucasfilm's approach suddenly seemed to change, and it went from being five seasons to two. It was clearly a decision made relatively late in the game, as it came following the news that season one would explore only a year of Cassian's life.
Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy later said that this was always the plan, with the second twelve episode season devoting three episodes to the next four years. That's an unorthodox approach, and one we now know wasn't the original plan thanks to comments from the show's cast.
Denise Gough - who plays Dedra Meero - explains (via SFFGazette.com), "We sort of signed up for five years. We thought they were gonna be five seasons of this and then thankfully Diego [Luna] was like, 'I’ll die if I do five seasons.'"
"So they condensed it into this amazing - I don’t know how he’s done it, but he has condensed...Tony Gilroy has managed to do one more season and you’re gonna have told the whole story." A change this big is bound to affect the series and leads us to wonder how much story has been cut from the next four years in the character's life.
Why Lucasfilm thought fans would want 60 episodes of television devoted to Cassian is hard to say, though we will give them credit for changing tact before committing to that bonkers idea.
As for Gilroy, he wasn't fazed. "There’s a new dial on everybody’s console, which is, ‘How long should my story be? Is it three episodes? Is it seven? Is it twelve? What is it?’ You gotta pick the right number," he says. "It’s really fantastic to be able to stretch out to have just have a Dickensian amount of characters that interact and tell a massive story."
"You don’t wanna waste time, you wanna keep...your compression skills but...it’s very liberating."
We're intrigued to see how this one comes together, particularly after those glowing social media reactions. Hopefully, they can stick the landing with season 2 and we'd argue that it's better to head down this route than starting the story and never getting to finish it due to a premature cancellation!
Andor premieres on Disney+ with its first three episodes on September 21.