Last month, Disney+ released the final three episodes of Andor: A Star Wars Story. The political thriller served as a prequel to the 2016 sequel film, Rogue One, pre-dating the events leading to George Lucas’ first film in the original trilogy, Star Wars: A New Hope. After the 2023 writers’ strike delayed the season one Andor panel at the ATX TV Festival, mxdwn sat with showrunner Tony Gilroy and writer Beau Willimon at this year’s festival, which took place from May 28 to June 1. Here they discussed the impact of this tonal shift for the franchise, its real-world implications, and their favorite moments from the series.

mxdwn: Alright, so I’m just gonna jump in here. I’m here with Tony Gilroy and Beau Willimon behind the Disney Plus series, Andor: A Star Wars Story. The second season just wrapped up, phenomenal, just have to say I’m a fan of your other work as well. Fans are overjoyed with the quality of Andor. Has there been any consideration or discussion of taking your creative team to other threads of the Star Wars saga?

Tony Gilroy: No, I mean we kind of, it’s really hard to overemphasize the amount of energy and treasure and calories that went into doing this. It’s really, the scale is, it’s like building a pyramid really. And I think, one of the things, one of the reasons that it works and works as well as it does is A, we knew the ending and B, we knew that if we could just get to the ending and survive and get everybody there — it’s 2,500 people — and the money and everything else. There was never, I mean maybe now there’ll be some conversations about, free conversations about characters and different things. It’s Lucasfilm and Disney [that] own the project. But no, nothing specific whatsoever.

mxdwn: And it would be nice to have that variety in Star Wars, where everything doesn’t have to be that spectacular. It’s kind of an off-street question here, but we didn’t see a lot of B2EMO in the second season. Was there a reason behind that? It seemed like he just wanted to be with Cassian the whole time.

Gilroy: You know the droids are complicated to tell stories with. A close watching of Rogue, I know a lot of people are watching Rogue again, I don’t want to like, I don’t want to tip over anybody’s viewing of Rogue, but if you watch Rogue with an idea of what K2 can do in the film and what he can’t do. You see a microcosm [of] how difficult it is. There’s about three or four places in the film where it’s like, “I’m gonna stay on the truck while you go do this,” or “Why do I have to stay here?” Droids are very difficult to bring around with you. They’re not mobile. They attract a lot of attention. I love B2EMO. I got to create a droid, and he’s, I mean, it was a very much a personal project for me in the beginning. But if there was a way to keep him along for the ride, I would have, but it seemed better to go back as we did.

mxdwn: Tonally, Andor sits at such a serious and urgent place that drives a lot of the tempo of the story. Do you think that other attempts at Star Wars fiction handle material too softly or too family-friendly, or do you think that’s needed within the Star Wars franchise?

Beau Willimon: There’s room for everything. I mean, Tony said before, there is, he’s absolutely right, there would be no Andor if there wasn’t a Mandalorian, you know. It is such a massive franchise, it’s almost 50 years old. It’s as big as a galaxy that you should have stuff that’s completely kids-oriented. You should have stuff, finally, that is more adult-oriented, and you should have stuff in the middle. I mean, stuff on a big sweeping canvas that stretches 24 episodes, and stuff that’s a tight two-hour story. If Star Wars can’t bear that, I don’t know what is. It’s the last thing you want to do is start saying, you know, “It should be this or it should be that.” If anything, you want to be saying it should be, “Let’s try this thing that we haven’t done before and open it up even more” in my humble [opinion].

mxdwn: I think I agree. And speaking of that, where was your guys’ entry point to the Star Wars franchise as fans or just followers of the films?

Gilroy: I mean, in ’77 I went to the Charles Cinema in Boston and saw it. It was a huge event. It was really not even like going to the movies. It was an event. I saw some films after that. It was never an obsession of mine. I was never a big follower. My reintroduction came on Rogue One when I came back into work on it. Then I came back in. And I came back sort of as a clinician on that, as a mechanic. But that was my entry point to come back in. That’s where I learned about Star Wars.

Willimon: I was born the same year that A New Hope came out, so I’m exactly as old as Star Wars itself. And one of my earliest memories was seeing Empire Strikes Back. Obviously, I didn’t see New Hope in the theater because I was [a] little infant. But no, I grew up with it. I had all the action figures. I wish I held on to some of those. That would be a good retirement. We would hold them up, we would like hold, Darth Vader, up to a light bulb to watch his leg melt, and now I’m like, man, that’s, you know, there’s a tiny five-figure sum if I kept that in mint condition.

But, no, like Tony, I was never a super fan. It was just part of the fabric of life, you know, if you were living in this world. And it was fun and it was adventurous and I always loved it. I think maybe one of the reasons Andor is able to focus so much on a human story and feel a little different from everything else is because, as Tony said from the beginning, our focus [is] on the human story, the people that make this revolution happen. It’s not about the Force, it’s not about the droids, even though you know you created a pretty great one, it’s about humans. And so, not being too overwhelmed by the canon or lore liberated us. Of course, you know, ultimately, [we] did our homework and knew what we’re talking about. But I think that we use that as an asset feature, not a bug.

Gilroy: And one of the things that we’re out selling so hard, the reason we’re selling is to try to get people who are Star Wars averse. Even staffing the show, I mean, half the people that are there are obsessed with [Star Wars], department heads, and the core creative team. Half of them are full-fledged nerds and in deep and all the way. The other half are people that have either no involvement with it at all or really had to be convinced to come on the show because they didn’t want to do that. And there’s a part of the audience that doesn’t want to engage. So the show is built with a purpose that you don’t have to know anything about Star Wars at all to buy in, to sit down and have the meal. That was really important to us, and so I think that, that’s another lane for Lucasfilm and for Star Wars to try to bring people in.

mxdwn: So I was going to ask just as a follow-up, when entering this project, how much leeway did you have to bring, like, your own creative vision? Did you have to mold that around the Star Wars mythos, or was it the other way around?

Gilroy: I get a five-year piece of the calendar. My pitch for the show was if Cassian Andor in Rogue One, who will basically die along with everyone else as a sort of Star Wars Messiah, war fighter, brilliant leader of the mission, [is] this incredible all-singing, all-dancing character. You want to do the five years that lead up to that. My concept was I’d like to see him on the worst day of his life. I’d like to make him a roach. I’d like to make him somebody that nobody wants to see coming down the street. And I want to watch that turn into a butterfly over five years. And that was the concept of the show.

I want to see him become a revolutionary in the first season, and then I want to see that, watch the revolution take place all around him for the next four years. Well, my expertise needs to be about those five years. So the calendar is very important. Mon Mothma leaves the Senate, and the Gorman Massacre happens here, and there’s certain canonical events. That’s a limitation for me. And then the rules of Star Wars, I learned on Rogue and one learns along the way, and there’s a lot of people that can advise you and they’ve changed over time in ways that people may not even be aware of.

mxdwn: Now that the series is complete…I’ve heard different, various viewpoints from fans and reactors. I look all that stuff up to get different perspectives. And there’s been a lot of conversations around two specific characters and how the story wrapped up for them. First, Syril Karn. Were people, were viewers, supposed to expect him to possibly turncoat if he had survived? Or was he gonna be a company man through and through with the Empire? Because a lot of folks were feeling that he could possibly join the rebellion as he found out the truth behind—

Gilroy: I think the conversation that people are having is the conversation that he only has, what, an hour or two to consider in his own internal monologue on that last day in Gorman, right? That conversation that people are having, of all the characters in the show, I think the one who probably has the loudest internal monologue is Syril. I think he’s a romantic, I think he’s a fantasist, and I think that tension and that…dissonance is what happens to him on the last day in Gorman as he realizes the entire cathedral that he’s built inside his mind of what is about to happen and what’s happening has comes crashing down. So I think you’re watching a character who just doesn’t have time to even answer those questions.

Willimon: I’ll say as a fan, I was in the room when the proto version of those episodes were being broken, but more just watching myself. That final moment, the ambiguity of what could he, is he redeemable or would he have pulled the trigger, is one of the most difficult things to pull off in cinema where there’s no dialogue. It’s the look on an actor’s face. It can only happen when great writing and the sweep of a season and a half of television storytelling and a great actor, a couple of great actors, allow for a moment where just a face can open up a whole sea of questions. And they’re really interesting questions, you know? We tend to think of Star Wars [is] very black and white: Empire bad, Rebels good. I think that Tony was constantly sort of poking around the edges of the gray area, right?

There are things about Luthen that are pretty insidious, right? There’s things about Syril and Dedra humanized, their relationship. And even the question, could an empire company man be redeemable? Can a fascist be redeemed? Is a potent question, one that is not answered, but that is expertly asked. And so the fact that you’re asking this question is precisely the whole point.

Gilroy: And I mean, the musket has to be really packed. That’s episode eight in the second season. So we’ve been building, establishing that. When people say, “It’s a slow burn,” it’s not, it’s an investment. You’re going to the bank, you’re putting money in the bank. All of that pays off in that moment. And also, it’s not that you’re writing from an agenda, but when you’re writing well, when you step back, the thing appears that you’re talking about in fascism so often. Not often always, [that] when it’s done crushing and eating the oppressed it comes after its own proponents. It eventually eats its own community. And there they are. There’s Cyril and Dedra being consumed by the system they’ve chained themselves to.

mxdwn: And the second character, which I was happy to see this happen, but some folks felt differently, was Bix’s ending. I heard some conversations where they felt if she had perished, it would have motivated Cassian more. And I was like, that seems like too fridgey…

Gilroy: I’ve seen that. I’ve seen those comments. It’s really interesting. I actually feel that Adria [Arjona] has a better answer to that than I ever do. Because it looks [like], there’s always going to be some element of manipulation or puppeteering on my part. I think what she feels, I mean, go back and look at Bix on day one. She owns her own business. She sleeps with who she wants to. She is absolutely completely empowered, non-subservient, she is her own person completely. The sledgehammer to her life and to her head and to her soul that she takes along the way puts her through some paces, but to me at the end that’s mother courage stepping out there. That is not some patriarchy exerting itself. I mean, Adria’s answer to this is much more intense than mine can ever be. Does that make sense? Yeah. I’ve seen those comments, though.

mxdwn: So, was it important in the construction of this story to foster a sense of importance for the viewer to preserve freedom and democratic norms, given the climate we are in today? Was that something you were planning to discuss, or did it just come up because of the original material? Does that make sense?

Gilroy: The material drives you to this. It’s the Empire versus… the rebellion is happening. As I said before, it’s on the calendar. We’re just changing the perspective and taking you from the penthouse down to the sweatshop. That’s what we’re doing.

Willimon: I will say in this five-year period, you see the O.G. Star Wars, you come in on A New Hope, the Empire is the Empire. But it didn’t just happen overnight. There’s a lot, and five years can go by really quickly. We as humans in our lives, five years, to us though, can feel things creep up on you as you live those five years. So it’s things like the P.O.R.D., the Resentencing Directive, where they start incarcerating tons of people and doubling and tripling sentencing period lengths. Like the ways that you see the Senate begin to sort of crumble or kind of implode as people are driven more by fear than they are their own sense of ideology or agenda. I think it’s really interesting. We haven’t seen that in Star Wars before, which is how do you go from democratic norms to a Palpatine? And it’s certainly something we talked about but, but how do you dramatize that? But, but yeah, I mean more than anything, Tony had to account for how do we get to a Rogue One and A New Hope, because that’s the world the characters are living in.

mxdwn: Given the series is now complete. What are some of your favorite moments from both seasons?

Gilroy: Wow, I mean… look man, it’s 1500 pages. It’s literally like I was a short story writer for my whole life. For like 40 years, I was a short story writer and now a novelist. Not only a novelist, but like go write a big one. Go try a big one. I’m going to hijack the question and say that the thing that’s most surprising to me, the thing that’s unanticipated and the thing that you would think would be in the front of your mind as you’re doing this that only is revealed at the end, when we finally came to mix the show, when we’re finally mixing. We’re with the same people. We’ve been mixing all the way through the whole five years. So it’s the same group of people, the same bunch of people. And we’ve been interrupted by strikes and COVID, stalled out, all these different things. We finally got to the end and started putting the final episodes out.

And when we get to the end of episode 12 of season two and the results are in. Who’s lived and who’s died, and who sacrificed what, and what has cost them and where they are. The people in the room as we were mixing, you’re going there for technical reasons. The emotional power of watching what has happened to our people that we’ve invested all this time with over time, really hit all of us in the room. I’m more blown back by what you get when you have 24 hours and really great actors and really pay attention all the way through. The cumulative effect of emotional power is the most surprising thing to me. It’s not something you start off and say, “My God, if I can get to the end, I’m gonna break everyone’s back with this. It’s just gonna be the most,” you know? You’re just doing teaspoon by teaspoon and hammer and hammer and hammer. You’re trying to figure out [the] path. So I know that’s not the answer to your question, but the thing that just really surprises me is how the cumulative effect of something really arrives. It’s not a conscious… It’s not. It just sweeps… It swept over the people that are making the show as much as the viewer. I know that sounds weird, but you don’t think about it while you’re doing it.

Willimon: I mean, I have a ton of answers, but I have to say the one that I just keep thinking about from this season. The Gorman Massacre has the word “massacre” in it. But before the massacre happens, you see all these people coming together, entering the square, singing this song. There’s a [person] that both Tony and I are mentees of–Tony was much closer with him than I was–the great screenwriter, legendary screenwriter, William Goldman. He’d often talk about a thing called stupid courage or dumb courage, how it is actually the most noble thing that you can dramatize. It’s Butch and Sundance at the end of the movie, knowing the Bolivian army’s going to shoot them and they’re still like, “Well, how’s Australia look?” It’s in A Bridge Too Far when Robert Redford’s about to lead a platoon across a river in inflatable boats, knowing that they’re going to get ripped to shreds by machine guns. It’s doing the thing, filled with fear, filled with trepidation, that you know is going to kill you. Yeah, you’re doing it anyway. That’s the stupid part of it, right? Which is that the smart person runs away, hides, let’s game this out. The stupid courage person goes, “Has to be done.”

And it’s not so stupid as it is facetious. It’s really noble, the most noble form of courage. You see that all throughout this series in many ways, large and small. But the culmination of that where all the characters collide and where we feel real epic cost, where it’s a collective courage. I get tingles every time I think about it. I have tingles right now. It’s special. You don’t see that on TV ever. And so that’s up there for me, I’ve got to say.

Both seasons of Andor are available to stream on Disney+.

Photo credit: ATV TV Festival