‘Andor’ creator Tony Gilroy teases ‘hellacious’ season 2 for Mon Mothma

Andor is returning with a full-throated rebel yell.

The series, which premieres its second season April 22 on Disney+, thrusts viewers back into the heart of the galactic rebellion. It picks back up with mercenary thief-turned-revolutionary Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and fills in the remaining four years between the first season of Andor and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, in which Andor leads a team to steal the plans for the Death Star.

That’s an awful lot of ground to cover, considering that season 1 took place over only the span of a year. But that’s just how creator Tony Gilroy likes it. “If time was unlimited and money was unlimited, and we could have done the 5 seasons that we planned on in the beginning, I don’t think it would be better at all,” he tells Entertainment Weekly. “I can’t think of a better way to lay it out than what we lucked into. Because the idea that it takes a year and 12 episodes for him to evolve into a revolutionary, it really needed all of that room for that.”

“But as we go forward,” he continues, “it’s emotionally powerful; it’s narratively powerful; it adds to the adventure of the story; it intensifies all the romantic entanglements to have these year-long negative gaps in between and to land for just a very specific moment. It’s three or four days each time we land. That has an intensification factor on all of those things in a way that I never anticipated. I’ve never worked on anything like that. When we brought it into the room, everyone was very suspicious. But it was really exciting to do. It’s like cooking a sauce down where you just get down to the roux.”

For those who’ve watched the season 2 trailer, many familiar faces pop up, including season 1’s major players Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård), Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona), and imperial officers, Dedra Meero (Denise Gough) and Syril Karn (Kyle Soller). But there’s also a host of characters from Rogue One — Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who appeared briefly in season 1, weapons developer Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), and reprogrammed Imperial droid, K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk).

If all of this has your head reeling faster than the jump to hyperspace, you’re in luck. Disney has put together a helpful 14-minute recap of season 1, which you can now watch on YouTube. Season 1 of Andor is also now available on Hulu, and the first three episodes of the series can be watched on Disney+’s YouTube channel. Plus, Gilroy and members of the cast are set to reunite on March 13 to discuss season 1 for a rewatch event — and the conversation will be available across Disney+, Hulu, and Star Wars YouTube and social channels.

For those hungry for some intel on what’s to come next on the critically acclaimed series, Gilroy teased season 2 for us, discussing Luthen’s struggle to control something that has grown beyond him, the weird sexual tension between Dedra and Syril, and what lies ahead for Mon Mothma, who has risked everything for the rebellion.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: In the trailer for season 2, we see Orson Krennic and Jyn. Are they going to be in season 2, or is that just teasing the run-up to Rogue One?

TONY GILROY:  I’m not gonna answer that question fully. We’re not really teasers in our show, are we? We don’t really tease very much. Everything that we’re gonna bring in to get to Rogue is going to be organic. There’s nothing we’re bringing in for fun. Or just because somebody wants to see it. It has to be germane to the story.

We did see a bit of Saw Gerrera in season 1. Will he have an expanded role in season 2?

Yes, I’ll say yes.

With Syril and Dedra, audiences really responded to that strange sexual tension between them. Can you tell us anything about where that might go?

I responded to that too.  I don’t want to spoil anything. But they’re unresolved when we leave them in Ferrix, aren’t they? Is that goodbye? I doubt it. Why would I leave two fascinating characters like that behind? There’s a lot of varieties of romance in this second season, because it’s over five years. People are going to do what they do. It’s also just fascinating — not just the varieties of romance, or varieties of love, or varieties of relationships. But then, what does this incoming tsunami of revolution and war do to people’s relationships?

Maarva clearly cast a long shadow from beyond the grave in the season 1 finale. How much will her memory loom large this season?

She’s always with him. Ferrix is always with Bix, Wilmon, Cassian, and Brasso. It’s with them all the time. [Maarva] carries forward as a fundamental piece of who he is and what he’s become. It’s after listening to her speech that leads him to go to Luthen and say, “Look, man, either kill me or take me in.” So, she’s ever present.

Fans were so excited to see K-2SO back in action in the trailer. What can you tease about his return?

I fully know how how long you’ve waited for this. I know how long you’ve waited. I have my reasons for doing it. They were really good narrative reasons, and I know that everybody’s been waiting. So, we’ve done our best to make the most of it. I hope it passes muster.

Mon Mothma had to walk this incredible delicate line in season 1. Obviously, by A New Hope she’s gone public, so what might we see from her?

Canonically, there’s the moment where she leaves the Senate, and that’s in our timeline. So we’re definitely dealing with that, but I would say, of all the characters in the show, of all the hellacious things that people go through, and all of the difficulties and hardships, I don’t think anybody has a harder road than she does. Because she has to do everything that everybody else does with all the tension, fear, and anxiety and she has to do it in public.

She has nowhere to hide, and this season just ramps that up to an almost unbearable point. What Genevieve is going to do in this second season — we realized in the first season what a brilliant actress she was and that we hadn’t found the limits of what she could do. We still haven’t found them. But he opportunity to write for her and write her story large was very important to me in the second season.

Luthen’s very committed to the rebellion, but he is also a slippery character. How much should we trust him going into season 2?

I think of him as a start-up CEO. Some guy who built a business in his garage. For 15 years, he built the revolution in his garage. He and Kelya. Then, in Aldhani in season 1, they went public, and now they’re out there. Now, for the next four years, how do you scale your company up? It’s multinational. How do you scale your little business that was so successful in your garage and build it out? And if your business is based on on secrecy and paranoia, how hard is that to do, and how well are you going to play with others? And how welcoming are you going to be to new ideas? Those are all those are all going to be the friction for him in this second half. He has one speed, and that is to make this all happen. He’d do anything for the revolution. Anything.

Syril has this give and take between his all consuming desire to prove himself and advance within the Empire, and his very real experience of seeing the human impact of his actions. Is that going to continue throughout season 2? Or will we see him swing more in one direction?

He’s a fascinating character because he knows what the rules are, and he wants the rules to be followed. He wants to belong in the worst way. So, what happens when the first embrace comes from the fascists? Is that where you go? Or what if you’re embraced by somebody else? Where do you go? He’s going to be buffeted by all of the things that were in the first part of that question.

There’s also the influence of his mother which is practically Shakespearean. Will she continue to exert that control?

There will be some Eedy here. That’s all I’m gonna say. I happen to be a big Eedy fan.

Bix was a big part of this without even fully understanding what she was involved with. What lies ahead for her? Does she have a greater understanding now of what’s at stake?

It’s another huge epic journey for her huge epic journey. We talked about sacrifice. What do you sacrifice on the altar of something that’s grown to be really important. What if two really important things come to you at the same time? What if love and revolution come to you at the same time? And they don’t play well together. What do you do? That’ll be the friction for her.

Last season, we saw Cassian transform from a complete mercenary to a rebel. How will that evolution continue?

He speaks the truth there at the end when he says, “Take me in.” So when we meet him, it’s a year later, and he’s all in. Luthen is a really great talent scout, a great agent and teacher as well. Cassian’s utility, how far can he go? We know how far he’s going to go in Rogue. By the time he gets to Rogue he can do anything. He’s a master. So, there’ll be espionage. There’ll be leadership. There’ll be all kinds of new educational tests for him along the way, and that will also challenge his relationship with Luthen and everyone else.

He has a lot of things to learn to be the guy that we’re going to see in Rogue, who’s the all singing, all dancing, ultimate warfighter. The person that the Council on Yavin is willing to send on the most important mission they have. To get to that point, he still has a lot to learn.