Release date, cast, and what’s next for Cassian

The Star Wars franchise is in rough shape these days, but nearly everyone can agree that one of its high points in the Disney era is Andor, Tony Gilroy’s series prequel to 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.

This week, Disney+ dropped the first trailer for season 2, which is confirmed to be the series’ last. In the action-packed clip, which is set to Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now,” we see an older, more confident Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as the carnage between the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire heats up.

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly last summer, Luna said the final season of Andor will majorly impact how people view Rogue One, the events of which will directly follow the Andor season 2 finale.

“I think people watching Rogue One, after watching season 2, are going to see a different film,” he said. “It’s going to make you witness the journey of Rogue One in a different way, I think.”

Ahead of the series premiere, here’s everything we know about Andor season 2, including its release date, episode count, cast, and story.

When does Andor season 2 come out?

Andor season 2 premieres on Disney+ on April 22, 2025.

As Gilroy revealed when we interviewed him following season 1, production on season 2 began way back in November 2022. It halted in the summer of 2023 due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, resuming in January of 2024. As we’ve previously reported, the season was originally meant to drop in August 2024.

How many episodes are in Andor season 2?

Like season 1, Andor season 2 will include 12 episodes. Three episodes will drop each week, with each block of episodes unfolding in different timelines leading up to the release of Rogue One.

Speaking with EW, Gilroy revealed the season will cover five years in total, with a handful of one-year time jumps occurring every few episodes. In fact, the season 2 premiere will begin a year after the events of the season 1 finale. The key to pulling this off, Gilroy told us, is making those leaps “without doing any of the awkward exposition.”

“That’s the bar we set, and that’s the game we’re playing,” he continued. “We think we figured out how to do it. [We have] a responsibility to the characters we’ve set up and launched into this world and their trajectories. Our responsibility is to bring it home efficiently. But mostly, it’s to pay off emotionally and stick the landing.”

As previously reported, the season 2 finale will lead directly into the events of Rogue One.

Who’s in the Andor season 2 cast?

On the rebel side, returning cast members include Luna’s Cassian Andor, Adria Arjona’s Bix Caleen, Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael, Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma, and Forest Whitaker’s bellowing Saw Gerrera. They’ll square off against Imperial antagonists like Kyle Soller’s Syril Karn and Denise Gough’s Dedra Meero.

The latter two will get a hand from Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic, the Empire stooge that served as one of Rogue One‘s villains. This will be the character’s first appearance on Andor.

Speaking with Empire, Mendelsohn made it clear that he’ll be battling more than just the Rebels. “If they didn’t see eye to eye, to me, it’s cute,” he said of Krennic’s relationship with Dedra. “Dedra versus Krennic? I think it’s a bit of a mismatch. They’re all underlings to Krennic,” he said. “The Empire, if you speak your mind, there are differences of opinion.”

Another Rogue One favorite making his Andor debut this season is K-2SO, the security droid voiced by Alan Tudyk. “It was delicious to get to work with Alan again and be on the same set with him. It just helps fulfill the full circle,” Luna told EW last summer. “You’re going to see why K-2 is so important in Rogue One, and how does he get to be such an important character for the Rebellion.”

Fans of the series, meanwhile, may be wondering about Andy Serkis’ Kino Loy, the prison factory foreman who helped Andor and his fellow prisoners break out of their confinement. His fate was left ambiguous, but Serkis assured EW his character is very much alive.

“Well, there weren’t really many discussions about the afterlife of Kino,” he said. “All that we do know is that he survives. I mean, we don’t see him die. We see him left for a further life of the character. But prior to that, there were no discussions at all about [what] might happen afterwards. I was just excited enough about the arc that I had to play, which was a really beautifully crafted illustration of a man who has a belief system that gets broken that then has nothing to believe in, that then gets kind of reignited by someone who inspires him to find himself again, and then self-sacrifices.”

Just because he lives, though, doesn’t mean he’ll return for season 2. (Though, c’mon, he probably will.)

A neat wrinkle offered by season 2’s time-jumping structure is that the actors get to explore their characters at wildly different times of their lives.

“Throughout the season, all of our characters evolve because there’s so much time,” Arjona told EW. “There’s a time gap in between every couple of episodes. So this season, for me, is super interesting because I get to grow with Bix. And it continues to happen throughout the entire season. So you get to meet, like, three different versions of Bix.”

Nodding to the torture she experienced at the hands of Dedra, she added, “There’s an anger that I hope builds in Bix. Whether it’s revenge or whether it’s a closeness with Cassian because he saved her — of course she has to lean in. She’s always been a part of it, and I think by episode 9 of season 1, it was obvious someone must do something.”

Soller and Gough, meanwhile, chatted with EW about the key moment when Syril saved Dedra during a riot on the planet of Ferrix. “The repercussions of what happened at the riot, she’s going to have to figure out what happens to her after that,” Gough told us. “Because you see her at her weakest at the end of season 1.”

What happened at the end of Andor season 1?

Season 1 of Andor saw Luna’s Cassian Andor transform from a confused, purposeless mercenary to a determined Rebel with an axe to grind against the Empire.

The season finale centers around the funeral of Maarva (Fiona Shaw), Cassian’s adoptive mother, on his home planet of Ferrix. Cassian arrives on the planet, as do Imperial forces that hope to use the funeral as a means of capturing him. Luthen, wary of Cassian revealing Rebel secrets to the Empire, plans to have him killed. Cassian, meanwhile, learns that Bix has been imprisoned on the planet.

During the funeral, Andor family droid B2EMO projects a video of Maarva rallying the planet’s residents to fight back against the Empire, igniting a riot. In the chaos, Cassian manages to save Bix, who’s been tortured at the hands of Meero. Meero nearly dies during the riot, but is saved by Syril.

Cassian convinces B2EMO and his friend, Brasso (Joplin Sibtain), to shepherd Bix off the planet to somewhere safe. Knowing that Luthen wanted him killed, he gives the Rebel leader the chance to either recruit him or kill him. Luthen chooses the former, setting the stage for the Rebel Alliance’s next act.

“And there at the end, it’s Maarva [who inspires him], which I think is really strong and a beautiful way of closing that character,” Luna told EW while breaking down the Andor season 1 finale. “This last episode is so powerful and incredible. That reference was always there, and he wasn’t ready to understand. He had it there in front of him all the time, but he wasn’t ready. He needed to go out and witness everything he witnessed in order to go back home and say, ‘S—. It was all here.'”

What is Andor season 2 about?

Broadly, Andor season 2 is about the growing pains of the Rebel Alliance after we watched it come to fruition in season 1.

Speaking at Disney’s D3 event last summer, Luna described season 2 thusly: “This second part of our story will follow Cassian over the period of four years as he grows into the rebel hero we see fulfill his destiny with the ultimate sacrifice in Rogue One. Every slice of time charts Cassian’s evolution into our revolution, but in this season, the stakes are greater, the enemy is more organized, and the clock is ticking. As the imperial threat grows and the lines have become more dangerous, Cassian is fueled by a sense of high purpose: to fight for freedom and a better tomorrow.”

Gilroy elaborated while speaking with EW following the season 1 finale:

In 2023, Gilroy told Empire that the final three episodes of the season will cover “the last three days before Rogue One,” with the finale leading right into the events of the film.

Is there an Andor season 2 trailer?

There sure is.

Set to Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now,” the Andor season 2 trailer highlights several of our lead characters — Cassian, Mon Mothma, Luthen Rael, and Saw Gerrera, among others — against a number of air assaults, blaster battles, and explosive attacks.

It also offers the series’ first look at Mendelsohn’s Krennic. “What a swell party this is,” he observes with a wry grin. We concur.

Watch the trailer in full above.

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