The Long Winding Road To 'Andor', And The Promise Of Its Trailer
It's taken a while to get here, but the trailer for the next live-action Star Wars series shows why it will (hopefully) be worth the wait...
It’s been a long time coming, but Andor is finally just around the corner. The Rogue One prequel series starring Diego Luna, reprising his role from the film as Cassian Andor, hits screens in just under two months and a new trailer for the series was dropped on Monday.
I remember when Andor was first announced. It was an announcement that lacked almost any fanfare, which in hindsight seems strange since it was just the second ever live-action Star Wars series to be announced.
And yet, I was immediately struck with the feeling of being given something I had no idea I wanted until that very moment. The possibilities of fleshing out Cassian’s dark and dramatic backstory only hinted at in the film seemed to be exactly the sort of thing streaming series’ were made to tackle.
It’s been a long, winding road since then to the series release (and one that keeps getting longer as, along with the trailer, came the news this week that the premiere had been pushed back by three weeks). Rather than be the second Star Wars show to hit Disney+, it was the fourth—sixth if you count the two animated series. At one point Alan Tudyk was set to return in season one. Then he wasn’t. Stephen Schiff was supposed to be the showrunner. Now he’s credited with writing one episode and Tony Gilroy is billed as the genius behind the series. It was supposed to be 3-5 seasons. We learned at Star Wars Celebration that it’s just going to be two.
Hell, at one point the series was nearly canceled before it ever got off the ground.
And then there was a pandemic.
But as 2021 began, so too did filming. Based in the UK, the production has touted its use of “classic” filmmaking techniques like massive sets, location shoots, and a huge number of extras and creatures. All of which stands in stark contrast to the groundbreaking techniques used by other galaxy far, far away-based shows like The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The other Disney+ Star Wars shows have celebrated their use of “The Volume”, the 360-degree space, surrounded on all sides by LED screens that can create the illusion of being literally anywhere. But not Andor.
“We’re old-school,” Tony Gilroy recently told Empire, while claiming they, “didn’t use StageCraft (aka The Volume) at all.”
It’s one of several ways the series feels like an outlier from the current slate of Star Wars productions. A vestige of an earlier age, before Baby Yoda dominated the world.
None of this is a bad thing, of course.
In fact, it gives Andor an edge that even The Mandalorian doesn’t have. Where The Mandalorian and its spin-offs are busy making exploring a fresh-new era with brand new technology, Andor is taking a throw-back in approach to tackling one of the oldest features of the Star Wars franchise. Rather than break new ground, Andor is getting into the nitty-gritty of what already exists.
Rebellions Are Built On Cooperation
Rogue One was billed as the crawl for A New Hope (1977) come to life. Andor has the challenge of laying the groundwork for that. It’s the prequel to a beloved film that in itself is a prequel to one of the most beloved films of all time. A prequel to a prequel. Legacy upon legacy.
No pressure.
While exploring Cassian’s backstory remains central to the series, it’s been interesting to see how the marketing for the series has evolved our understanding of it. The biggest reveal has been the elevation of Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), once a bit-player in Return of the Jedi with a handful of deleted scenes in Revenge of the Sith, to the status of co-lead.
At first glance, this would appear to be a contradiction in tone. Where Cassian comes from the gritty world of revolution, a fight he’s been in since he was a child, Mon Mothma is a creature of the senate. She’s a politician who tries working within the existing structures to enact change, all while living a comfortable life on Coruscant.
It’s a contradiction that has long existed within the Rebel Alliance. In a way, it’s a variation on Han Solo and Princess Leia. Leia was a creature of polite society, with an upper-class upbringing, who chose to fight for ideals. Han was raised in the galaxy’s seedy underbelly, joining the fight less out of choice and more out of necessity. And yet without both of them, the Death Star would not have been destroyed.
It’s not a one-to-one parallel, of course. Neither Cassian nor Mon needs to be coaxed into the fight by the promise of reward, and a love story between the two seems unlikely. Still a successful coalition, or alliance if you will, needs people who otherwise wouldn’t be in the same room to come together for something bigger.
It’s a theme that is central to Star Wars and nowhere is that more evident that the Rebel Alliance. The only way to overthrow a galaxy-wide Empire is to bring together all those who would oppose it. That doesn’t mean it’s always easy. And, the conflict amongst factions within the Rebel Alliance is a concept Star Wars has only recently begun exploring.
Saw Gerrera: The Extremist
We were first introduced to Saw Gerrera in the fifth season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars as a freedom fighter who received training from Anakin Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Ahsoka Tano to overthrow the Separatist occupation of his homeworld. This band of warriors trained by our heroes, we were told by the creatives at the time, would go on to form the basis for the Rebel Alliance one day. The irony, of course, being that the future Darth Vader was training the very people who would one day oppose him.
The next time we met Saw was in Rogue One, where we saw the toll, both physically and mentally, over two decades of war had taken on him. He was now the leader of The Partisans, a group of rebels too extreme for the likes of Mon Mothma. He dies in the film without much fanfare. A sad, old man, killed by the Death Star. His final act, and saving grace, was to show Jyn Erso the message from her father that revealed the battle station’s hidden weakness.
Since then, we’ve seen the intervening years of his life fleshed out in other stories like The Bad Batch, Star Wars Rebels, Jedi: Fallen Order, and the criminally under-rated YA novel Rebel Rising by Beth Revis. All of which trace his evolution from the headstrong would-be leader of Onderon to the broken man that feared the return of his adopted daughter (granted, who he abandoned) could only be a trap.
Saw very much represents one extreme of the Rebellion. He sees the Empire as an enemy that must be stopped, no matter the cost. If that means innocent people are killed, then it’s worth it. He has given everything to the fight and sees no issue with taking extreme measures to get what he wants.
But if Saw is one end of the spectrum, Mon Mothma is the other.
Mon Mothma: Rebel With A Cause
It’s telling that in the new trailer for Andor, Mon Mothma is the one hero character never seen in any sort of combat fatigues. She’s always dressed for the Senate, or the nightlife open to an Imperial Senator on Coruscant. She’s no ally of Palpatine, but she’s not in the trenches, so to speak, with those who are already at war with him. Not yet anyway (although she is clearly working on something).
Mon Mothma’s objection to the Empire is ideological, rather than practical. She hasn’t experienced an army arriving on her world, occupying it, and enslaving the population, the way Saw and Cassian have. They may have had no choice but to fight back or suffer their fates. Mon Mothma, on the other hand, could have lived a very comfortable life under the Empire. As Bail Organa’s annoying in-laws point out in Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Empire is “finally lining some pockets” if you’re willing to look past all the slavery.
This is something Mon Mothma is unwilling to do.
It speaks to the strength of her character that she could have lived the good life but chose not to. While most of us like to believe that we would stand up and fight back against tyranny, the dirty little secret of the human race is just how easy it is to turn a blind eye to suffering others if we ourselves are comfortable.
Mon Mothma doesn’t simply want to destroy the Empire, she wants to build something new in its place. The end goal isn’t simply to defeat the Empire, it’s to fulfill the promise of the Republic. She’s fighting for peace and prosperity. Freedom and liberty. For light and life.
“The Empire Considers Us Both Criminals…”
Andor isn’t the first time Mothma and Gerrera have represented the extremes of the Rebellion. The characters first shared a scene together in the fourth season of Star Wars Rebels. Although Gerrera had been introduced a season earlier as an agent of the larger Rebel Alliance, some offscreen conflict had led to him parting ways from the effort led by Mothma.
In the scene, Gererra taunts Mothma for not being strong enough to stand up to the Empire in a way that will matter, for believing a peaceful solution is still possible, and for a perceived lack of action.
He mocks her choices, saying, “I hope, Senator, after you’ve lost, and the Empire reigns over the galaxy unopposed, you will find some comfort in the knowledge that you fought according to the rules.”
Ouch.
For her part, Mothma hits back, decrying Saw’s ways of targeting civilians and killing those who surrender in service of his fight. “If we degrade ourselves to the Empire’s level,” she asks with a fury, “what will we become?”
The scene truly is one of the great moments of Star Wars Rebels (a series that had many great moments, it’s worth noting), in part because neither side is inherently wrong in what they are saying. Mon Mothma is right that if in fighting the Empire you become no better than it, then you’ve accomplished nothing. But Saw is also right that Mon Mothma, Bail Organa, and the rest of the rebel leadership in the senate are fooling themselves if they think Emperor Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious) will agree to a peaceful solution.
So where does that leave us? How do we breach the gap between the idealists and the extremists? Enter the ones in the middle. Enter Cassian Andor.
“I’ve been in this fight since I was six years old.”
Let’s be clear about one thing, I’m not saying Cassian Andor is a centrist. He doesn’t see both sides or think the Empire and the Rebellion both have some good ideas. Far from it. The man has picked a side he believes in and is willing to do whatever it takes to fight for it. But he still exists in a space between Mon Mothma and Saw Gerrera.
The first thing we see him do is kill an ally because they might be captured. Then he was willing to kill Galen Erso sight unseen. And later he admits that he’s done other “terrible things” in the name of the Rebellion. His backstory even mirrors that of Gerrera’s, with an invading army coming to his world and occupying it, enslaving the people who live there (something the trailers strongly hint we’ll see).
At first glance, you might think he would fit right in at Saw Gerrera’s Partisan table. And yet there he is, standing next to Mon Mothma on Yavin IV.
What sets Cassian apart from Saw, and aligns him with Mon Mothma, is that he wants to play a role in the galaxy that comes after the Rebellion. He’s seen the horrors of the Empire, and knows what’s at stake. But he also sees what that galaxy could be in peacetime and wants to make it so. What drives him is hope. Hope that things can get better and that he can help make them better.
And, we all know what rebellions are built on.
“Everything I did, I did it for the Rebellion,” he tells Jyn Erso. “And every time I walked away from something I wanted to forget, I told myself it was for a cause I wanted to believe in. A cause that was worth it.”
We can safely view Rogue One as the final act in Cassian’s story (especially since we’ve learned that Andor will only last two seasons), so we know where his journey ends. We’ve seen how he pulls together his dangerous skills with his idealistic beliefs into a grand gesture that has the direct effect of saving the galaxy. But we also see him at his darkest point in the first half of the film (see above).
His journey to that point is the story of Andor. A potential structure for the series would see him introduced to the idealism of Mon Mothma (and others) and realizing that there is a larger fight he can be a part of in season one. Season two would then see him grapple with what it actually means to be part of a movement, including its limitations, while also being driven to make darker and darker choices in the name of that fight. A contradiction in purpose, not unlike Saw Gerrera.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. We may know the ending of Cassian’s story, but it’s the beginning we’re now focusing on. What does it take for someone who grew up in a warzone, fighting against oppressors, to align himself with an idealist who, on the outside, seems to be living the highlife on a faraway world?
“I Need All The Heroes I Can Get”
One of the most intriguing reveals of Monday’s trailer was that Stellan Skarsgard’s character, Luthen Rael, crosses between the two worlds of the Rebellion. In all the promotional material to this point, we’ve seen him dressed for battle and meeting with the Rebels on the ground. In the hot fight against the Empire.
And the first part of the trailer maintains this façade. We see him meeting with Cassian and then Saw, drawing these two gritty fighters into his network. Bringing the various rebel cells together into something larger (something that was also seen on Rebels, which happens to be set around the same point in the timeline).
But around the midpoint comes a new reveal, Luthen’s home isn’t on the frontlines of war but on Coruscant. We see him dawning his more formal attire and meeting with Mon Mothma. Like her, he is a creature of the Senate. Or, at least, that world. An idealist who believes in something bigger. Something real.
Luthen looks to be the first character to cross the boundaries that separate the likes of Saw and Cassian from Mon Mothma and Bail Organa. The one who will unite the factions in an uneasy alliance.
The coming together of these two worlds appears to be what will drive the story of season one. A story of people coming together during uncertain times, risking it all when their allies’ lives are on the line. But also one about the limitations on those alliances of convenience, and knowing when to cut bait if someone’s values don’t align with your own.
It’s a more mature story for Star Wars, where the conflict is as much between the Rebels themselves as between the Rebellion and the Empire. Gone are the simple days of the Original Trilogy where you knew where someone stood based on what kind of armor they wore. Andor’s been sold to us as a spy story, a genre in which you’re never quite sure who you can trust. That extends to your friends as well as your enemies.
There are rocky waters ahead for Cassian, Mon, Saw, Luthen, and the entire Rebel Alliance. And while we may know the destination, that doesn’t mean it will be an easy path to get there.
Andor debuts on September 21st with a three-part premiere on Disney+.