There Will Never Be Another ‘Andor’

The series finale of Andor aired last night, the last batch of four weeks of three episodes each, a 12 episode season 2 matching a 12 episode season 1. It is widely considered to be some of the best Star Wars content ever created perhaps only short of the original trilogy itself. And perhaps not short of a movie or two even in that trilogy.

Andor is an amazing work of art, not just as a Star Wars show but as an overall series with incredible writing, acting, production values and a relevant take on the rise of fascism. The problem? It seems unlikely we will ever see something like Andor again coming out of Disney and Star Wars. And there are many, many reasons for that.

• The development time. We just past the tenth anniversary of the announcement that Diego Luna would be cast in the series, which at the time seemed like a somewhat random concept, a prequel spin-off of a supporting character in Rogue One, but obviously the rest is history. But in Star Wars’ current form, it seems Disney is far less likely to develop and air a show start to finish over the course of an entire decade with scrapped movies and cancelled series left and right in the present day.
• The cost. Estimates indicate that for two seasons, Andor had a budget of $645 million in total, wildly beyond almost any other series on television, and it was paired with viewership that couldn’t justify that. Before The Acolyte and Skeleton Key, season 1 of Andor was the least-watched Disney+ Star Wars show. Season 2 seems to be performing better, but it’s unclear if Disney thinks the prestige of the show was worth spending two-thirds of a billion dollars. Maybe it was, but it’s exceedingly unlikely they’d do that again.
• A guaranteed two seasons. It’s very rare for Disney to greenlight a show for two seasons ahead of time, which for Andor, was already down from five seasons those making the show wanted. In the current state of Disney’s strategy, with Andor’s cost and season 1 viewership, had that not happened, it would have probably been cancelled after season 1, no matter how it was received.

• 12 episode seasons. In the modern streaming era, this is a true rarity. And for Disney? We’re getting no more than eight episodes a season with either Star Wars or Marvel shows, with many even six episodes. The result is between 24, 45+ minute episodes of Andor plus Rogue One that makes up more total content than any other corner of the Star Wars universe and it’s impossible to imagine Disney is going to do another 12 episode series any time soon, if ever.
• Disney’s re-focus on movies. Disney is starting to move away from Star Wars shows at the same volume they’ve been producing. The only series confirmed for a new season right now is Ahsoka, where that gap will be about three years between seasons. Rather, Disney has greenlit a bunch of new movies that allegedly will not be cancelled like so many others as the series heads back mainly to theaters.
• Tony Gilroy. Fans believe Andor’s showrunner should take on a Kevin Feige-like role overseeing the Star Wars universe. He’s not doing that. He’s spent a decade with Star Wars and we know he’s moving on to other projects from here. So you’re not going to rope him into trying to produce something else of Andor quality, probably at any price.
• Kathleen Kennedy. The president of Lucasfilm is expected to step down later in 2025, and while fans bemoan her tenure and even believe Andor was so good because it “escaped” her touch, Gilroy says the opposite is true:

“She has protected the show and protected me … When we started challenging Kathy, Kathy just kept saying yes. ‘Oh, I’m going to put the first scene in a brothel.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘I’m going to have them kill two cops.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘We want the production designer from Chernobyl.’ ‘Okay, good idea.'”

“She backed our play and got everything that we were doing. We’ve been through everything, she and I, on this— all the good and all the bad. There’s no show without her.”

“For all the shit that she takes online, it’s just insane. This show exists because she forced it to happen. What a tough job she has, man.”

Andor isn’t going to happen again. But thank god we got it in the first place.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.