On Wednesday, November 23, the last episode of Andor season 1 arrived on Disney Plus. The Rogue One prequel series follows Rebel captain Cassian Andor long before he actually joined the Rebellion, filling in the blanks of his backstory while introducing a sprawling new cast of characters from many corners of the Star Wars universe.
The season finale of Andor does a brilliant job of tying together all the disparate plot threads, but there is still more story left to tell. Below, we will share everything we know about Andor season 2 so far. And be warned: There will be spoilers for season 1.
Andor season 2 release date
Let’s start with the bad news: You’re going to be waiting a while for Andor season 2.
Collider reports that filming on the second season began this week and will continue through August 2023. It took the team three years to film and finish post-production on season 1, but as Collider notes, that included pandemic-induced delays. Barring any additional pandemics, the turnaround should be faster, but not by much.
“If past is predicate, and we do the same thing we did before, it’ll be on the same schedule,” creator Tony Gilroy told Collider. “It will come out two years later.”
He added that there is one way to speed up the process, but it would be pricey:
“The only place you can accelerate the processes is in post, and the only way you can accelerate in post is with money, and money is tight. So, I don’t really know, there would have to be some serious motivation next May or June or something. Someone would have to say, “Wow, we really need this, and we’re willing to pay X.” Rogue One [which Tony Gilroy wrote the screenplay for] proved, if you throw money at it, you can do post really, really fast. It’s just very, very, very expensive.”
With all of that said, the most likely scenario is that Andor season 2 arrives in 2024.
How many episodes will be in season 2?
Long before Andor season 1 began streaming on Disney Plus, Gilroy announced the plans for the entire series. There will be two seasons consisting of 12 episodes each. The first season reintroduces Cassian Andor and shows us why he decided to dedicate his life to the Rebellion. The second season will jump forward in time, showing us the events leading up to Rogue One following Andor’s induction into the Rebellion.
Here’s how Gilroy described it during the TCA press tour earlier this year (via Syfy):
We are covering one year in our first 12 episodes that we’ve completed. We are going to do another 12 episodes starting this November. Last year, we were looking at the difficulty of doing five years. It seemed like it would take the next 30 years, so we were like, ‘What are we going to do?’ And the answer just elegantly presented itself in front of us; each block of three is going to represent another year closer. We built it up and we’re very excited about it. We get to take the formative forging of of Cassian Andor in the first 12 episodes. And then we get to take that organism that we built up, and we get to run it through the next four years in a really exciting narrative fashion. Our last scene of the show, our 24th episode, will walk the audience directly into Rogue One and walk you directly into the first scenes of Rogue One.
Gilroy also recently revealed that Andor season 2 will pick up a year after the season 1 finale. Here’s what he told Polygon, slightly amending the above plans:
We’re going to skip a whole year. We come back a year later, many things have changed. 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.
Which cast members are returning?
A number of key players didn’t make it through the finale, but the ones that did should all be back for season 2. That obviously includes Cassian Andor himself (Diego Luna), as well as Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), Syril Karn (Kyle Soller), Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), and, of course, B2EMO.
We should see more characters from Rogue One in season 2. Bodhi Rook (Riz Ahmed), Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) are all candidates. We might even get a glimpse of Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) and Jen Erso (Felicity Jones).
