The Rebel Alliance continues to battle the Empire as Star Wars series Andor returns for a second season

Ever since its 2012 acquisition of the Star Wars franchise, Disney’s stewardship of the beloved sci-fi franchise has been under heavy scrutiny. Unlike Disney’s massive success with the Marvel Cinematic Universe — especially during the later phases of the Infinity Saga — the House of Mouse has struggled to consistently deliver with its various Star Wars projects across the realms of film and television.

For every hit — like 2017’s The Force Awakens and the first two seasons of The Mandalorian — there have been clunkers, ranging from 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker to the first (and now only) season of The Acolyte. Even the nearly untouchable Mandalorian faced stern criticism from critics and fans alike during its third season.

Meanwhile, Disney’s penchant to announce projects so far in advance with little insurance that they’ll ever come to fruition — such as the long-gestating Rogue Squadron movie from Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins and the scrapped movie trilogy from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss — has left fans with little to no enthusiasm for the franchise’s future.

A bright spot during this troubled time was the first season of Andor. From Rogue One: A Star Wars Story writer Tony Gilroy, Andor followed the titular Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) as he began his journey to become a Rebel hero five years prior to the events of Rogue One.

Lauded for its gritty tone, grounded story and heavy use of practical effects, Andor’s first season went on to receive universal praise and multiple Emmy nominations. Despite low viewership upon its initial release, the buzz surrounding Andor eventually led to it becoming 2022’s ninth-most-streamed series on Disney+, according to streaming analytics firm FlixPatrol.

Now, just over two years later, Andor is back for its second and final season, with Cassian becoming an increasingly important player in the Rebel Alliance as war with the Empire draws ever closer, while the dreaded Death Star nears completion. While Star Wars fans are well aware of where the Galactic Rebellion eventually leads, how exactly it gets to the events of Rogue One and beyond takes the franchise into uncharted territory.

“It was just a really cool canonical opportunity to show what was a part of Star Wars history, which is the nationalization of corporations — which also is a really traditionally fascist playbook,” Gilroy said in an interview with Gizmodo, explaining how Cassian’s first encounter with authoritarianism wasn’t in the form of Imperial Stormtroopers, but a corporate police force. “It was a great opportunity to get a different look and get a different thing,” he added.

The second season will consist of 12 episodes, broken into four three-episode chapters, with each of these chapters covering a year in Cassian’s life leading up to the events of Rogue One. Each chapter is handled by a different writer, starting with showrunner Gilroy, before handing things off to Beau Willimon (The Ides of March), Dan Gilroy (Nightcrawler) and Tom Bissell (The Disaster Artist), respectively. Directing duties aren’t split as evenly, as Ariel Kleiman (Partisan) directs the first six episodes while Janus Metz (Borg vs. McEnroe) and Alonso Ruizpalacios (La Cocina) handle the back half of the season.

As Andor draws closer to the events of Rogue One, fans should expect the appearance of some familiar faces from that Star Wars spinoff. So far, Alan Tudyk and Ben Mendelsohn are confirmed to return, as witty security droid K-2SO and Imperial Director Orson Krennic, respectively. In addition to these returning characters, Stellan Skarsgård, Genevieve O’Reilly, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Adria Arjona, Faye Marsay, Varada Sethu, Elizabeth Dulau, James McArdle and Forest Whitaker will all reprise their roles from the first season.

While Andor was initially planned as five seasons, Disney’s subsequent decision to scale back to just two ultimately forced Gilroy to tell the story in a leaner, meaner fashion.

“Once we got hit in the head with that, I actually think, and it sounds a little cheesy, but it’s the truth: if I was going to design this in a perfect world, I would spend one year on [Cassian’s] education and the transformation into a revolutionary. I think that one season really fits that way, and I would stick with what we did on the way out, because it just, energy-wise, it just, I don’t really have anything else to say about it,” he said. “You’ll see how much we have to say about it. The narrative, I don’t want to say fun, but the narrative opportunity of telling a story where you drop in a year later, you leave all the negative space and you just hit like a Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, and then you drop a year and come back for another three days, is so exciting.”

The season premiere of Andor begins streaming Tuesday, April 22, on Disney+