The following contains spoilers for Andor Season 1, now streaming on Disney+.
Andor star Diego Luna recently attributed the Disney+ show's willingness to break the Star Wars mold to its big screen predecessor, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Luna discussed Rogue One's impact on Andor in a recent episode of The Playlist's The Rogue Ones: A Star Wars Andor Podcast. "I think we can blame Rogue One for this," he said. "Rogue One was meant to be different. It was the first standalone Star Wars story; they found many ways to say 'This is supposed to be different.' The first big difference is it had a beginning and an end… You meet a character and then goodbye. And Rogue One had an opportunity to be different, to have a different tone, to be acted by different people that you might not expect to see in the Star Wars universe, it was more violent, darker and we got away with that. Audiences liked it, they liked it a lot, and that’s why we're doing Andor."
While Luna's comments align with the consensus among critics and fans alike that Andor's tone sets it apart from other entries in the Star Wars saga, the show isn't quite as dark as some believe it to be. Notably, showrunner Tony Gilroy recently debunked a rumor regarding the Narkina 5 Imperial Prison Complex, which he described as "totally nihilistic." According to this theory, Cassian Andor (Luna) and his fellow prisoners were taking apart machinery that was previously assembled by inmates in an adjacent factory, making the entire exercise pointless. "We're not that dark," Gilroy said, of the theory.
Andor Boss Wants Star Wars To Take More Risks
Andor is also more closely tied to wider Star Wars canon than originally advertised, although Gilroy insists that many of the show's Easter eggs were inserted without his knowledge. Although the showrunner was keen to avoid including callbacks to the saga's continuity that didn't directly drive the story, he credited Andor's art department with sneaking several past him. "I was reading online about the antiquities in Luthen's gallery, and the provenance of some of those antiquities was news to me, so it was fantastic that the art department snuck those things in there," he said.
Even so, Gilroy remains adamant that those who work on future Star Wars film and TV projects should follow Andor's lead and put a fresh spin on the franchise. "The coolest thing would be for other people to come along and start taking the next level, or the next road," he said. "There's all kinds of things you can do with this."
The Andor Season 1 finale arrives on Disney+ on Nov. 24.
Source: The Playlist