That’s a heck of a badass trailer for Andor Season 2, which streams starting April 22 on Disney+. To the strains of Steve Earle we see explosions, fires, gunfights, ships hurtling through space, stormtroopers on the march, lasers blasting everything in sight, and Diego Luna blowing up something with a detonator while he walks away, simply too cool to even look back at it.
Sweet, yeah, but, like… this is still Andor, right? I’m not opposed to some action, but we’re not tuning in to see Guardians of the Friggin’ Galaxy. We mostly want to see well-crafted characters having meaningful conversations with each other. Andor Season 2 still has that, too, right… right?
Despite the action-packed trailer, I’d say chances are good Andor Season 2 will still have scene after scene of complex characters just talking to each other. The first three episodes are written by Tony Gilroy (co-writer of Rogue One and Andor Season 1), and Dan Gillroy and Beau Williamson, who both wrote episodes in Season 1, have also returned for this season. Another three episodes were written by Tom Bissell, writer of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, several Gears of Wars and the book Extra Lives: Why Games Matter.
Along with Diego Luna, Adria Arjona returns as Bix Caleen, Stellan Skarsgård is back as Luthen Rael, and Kyle Soller reprises his role as Imperial middle-manager Syril Karn, who I would not mind watching an entire spinoff about because he’s the most believable and complex character ever created in the Star Wars universe.
We won’t have to wait all that long once the season starts: the 12 episodes of Andor Season 2 are going to be parcelled up in “four weekly chapters of three episodes each,” according to starwars.com. The season will span four years, leading up to the events of Rogue One, so I think it’s safe to say—unfortunately—the second season of Andor will be its last.
