<figure id="attachment_3041191" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-3041191" style="width: 1600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" class="size-full wp-image-3041191" src="https://media.freemalaysiatoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/ad30d4a4-lifestyle-andor-emel-pic-230425.webp" alt="andor " width="1600" height="1000" /><figcaption id="caption-attachment-3041191" class="wp-caption-text">For Disney, the success of ‘Andor’ stands out as a new hope for a franchise that has become hit-or-miss with audiences in recent years. (Disney pic)</figcaption></figure>
PARIS: If &#8220;Andor&#8221; &#8211; which returns from Tuesday for its second and final season &#8211; has been received as one of the very best &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; TV series, that is largely thanks to the grittier, more adult approach taken by its creator Tony Gilroy.
That standpoint &#8211; far, far away from the family-pleasing tone often encountered in the &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; universe run by the Disney empire &#8211; should be of no surprise to those who watched the 2002 action thriller &#8220;The Bourne Identity&#8221;, written by Gilroy.
Its genesis was already evident in the 2016 &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; movie &#8220;Rogue One&#8221;, which Gilroy co-wrote &#8211; and which serves as the climax to &#8220;Andor&#8221;, which recounts the rebellion leading up to that film&#8217;s events.
&#8220;Everything is emotionally charged&#8221; because &#8220;we&#8217;re getting close to &#8216;Rogue One&#8217;,&#8221; Diego Luna, the actor who plays the protagonist Cassian Andor, told AFP.
For Disney, the success of &#8220;Andor&#8221; stands out as a new hope for a franchise that has become hit-or-miss with audiences in recent years.
That is why it has banked heavily on the 12-episode story, which cost a staggering US$645 million to make, according to Forbes magazine.
Where &#8220;Rogue One&#8221; was about a rebel suicide mission to steal the plans for the Death Star, with &#8220;characters that sacrifice everything for a cause&#8221;, &#8220;Andor&#8221; is about how one of those characters &#8220;gets there&#8221;, Luna said.
Unlike in a typical hero&#8217;s journey, the series explores the motives and dark sides of both camps: the rebels and the Empire. It spends time with figures such as a rebel alliance operative played by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard.
Gilroy, speaking to AFP with Luna during a Paris visit, said the original plan was for five seasons of &#8220;Andor&#8221;, but he came to realise &#8220;there&#8217;s no physical way to do it&#8221; given &#8220;the volume of work&#8221; required.
The result was two seasons, but with episodes that were &#8220;more intense, more complex in every possible way&#8221;, Luna said.
With season one finishing in late 2022 with a stunning 96% rating on the critic aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes, season two has star billing on the Disney+ streaming platform.
That season hits the small screen from Tuesday in the United States, or from Wednesday in France, Germany, Italy and other territories.
Revolutionary reading
&#8220;Andor&#8221; is not the only hit &#8220;Star Wars&#8221; television series.
&#8220;The Mandalorian&#8221;, which preceded it, excited audiences for the first two seasons before interest waned in its third. That story will move to the cinemas, with a film scheduled for release next year.
But &#8220;Andor&#8221; has impressed fans and critics with its darker vibe, greater political themes and more realistic tone.
Gilroy said his approach to the series was informed by a decades-long reading obsession about uprisings &#8211; &#8220;all this crazy stuff I&#8217;ve learnt about&#8230; the Russian Revolution and&#8230; the French Revolution, and Thomas Paine and Oliver Cromwell and the Haitian Revolution and the Roman Revolution and Zapata.&#8221;
&#8220;I mean, it&#8217;s all in there,&#8221; he said.
The second season focuses on the use of propaganda, looking at the tragic destiny of a planet called Ghorman, for which Gilroy and his team embarked on serious world-building, imagining its economy, language, culture and dress.
Part of the inspiration came from a French TV series about a village living under German occupation in World War II, &#8220;A French Village&#8221;.
&#8220;I loved that show&#8230; I had some of those actors in my head&#8221; while writing about Ghorman&#8217;s inhabitants, he said.
Even if some people might see some echoes of today&#8217;s Earth in aspects of &#8220;Andor&#8221;, Gilroy said a writer&#8217;s horizon, stretching years ahead, did not allow him to anticipate current events.
But, he said, &#8220;the sad truth is that history is&#8230; rinse and repeat,&#8221; adding: &#8220;We so commonly feel, narcissistically, that we live in unique times.&#8221;
Technology might change, the rhetoric might alter, &#8220;but the dynamic of oppression and resistance are a Catherine wheel. It just keeps going. I think it&#8217;s timeless, sadly.&#8221;

MatchPoint Times

Star Wars series ‘Andor’ back for final season

The television series has impressed fans and critics with its darker vibe, greater political themes and more realistic tone.

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