Andor: Rogue One prequel series will only run two seasons

Andor, the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story prequel series, will only last two seasons on Disney Plus. Some were expecting it to run five years, due to the fact that show runner Tony Gilroy told the crowd at Star Wars Celebration that the show would cover the five years leading up to Rogue One. While that’s still the plan, the second season will differ in its approach from season one to cover a longer period. The first season’s twelve episodes will cover one year in the life of Andor, while the second twelve-episode season will cover the next four years. Gilroy envisions three episode blocks for this season, which will cover a year each. This is precisely what Gilroy outlined at Star Wars Celebration, but people seemed to miss that detail in all the excitement over the new trailer.

As Gilroy tells Deadline, “we are covering one year in our first 12 episodes, that we’ve completed, in fact we’re finishing our final mix on [episode] 12 tomorrow. We are going to do another 12 episodes starting in November and the organizing principle for shooting is that we do blocks of three, so last year we were looking at the difficulty of doing five years, which seemed like it would take us the next 30 years.”

According to Gilroy, the final scene of the last episode will lead right into the start of Rogue One. At the end of that generally well-regarded Star Wars prequel the character memorably sacrificed himself for the greater good. With this series, we’ll no doubt learn how Andor came to make that fateful decision, with this tracking his formative years in the Rebellion.

The series is set to debut on Disney Plus on September 21st, with a three-episode premiere. Gilroy, who helped write (and possibly direct) Rogue One, will be the showrunner. Toby Haynes (Black Mirror’s USS Callister), Ben Caron (The Crown) and Susanna White (Generation Kill, Our Kind of Traitor) are the show directors.