The trailer for Andor Season 2, which will be available to stream on Disney+ starting on April 22, is incredible. We witness explosions, flames, gunfights, ships rushing through space, stormtroopers on the march, lasers shooting everything in sight, and Diego Luna using a detonator to blow up something as he leaves, too cool to even turn around and look back. This is set against the strains of Steve Earle’s 2004 folky hit “The Revolution Starts Now.”
Yes, it’s sweet, but this is still Andor. We won’t be seeing Guardians of the Friggin’ Galaxy, but I’m not against some action. The main thing we want to see is well-developed characters conversing with one another. That’s still in Andor Season 2.
Watch the trailer and let’s dig in:
Cassian Andor’s Many Lives
The witty opener intercuts multiple images of Cassian’s back and isolated acts of defiance, which appears to reference the larger framework of season two. As we already know, the 12-episode season will be divided into four “chapters” of three episodes each.
Each story will skip approximately a year between 4BBY and 0BBY, terminating Andor a few days before Rogue One opens.
Andor season 2 will include 12 episodes, much like season 1. Before Rogue One is released, three episodes will be released every week, with each block of episodes taking place in a separate timeframe.
In an interview with EW, Gilroy disclosed that the season would span five years overall, with a few one-year time jumps inserted in between episodes. The events of the season 1 finale will take place a year after the start of the season 2 premiere.
Cassian in a sleek, fancy disguise. An even moodier interior of a more cramped, dim corridor that appears to correspond with some of the shots we see later with Saw Gerrera (which cuts to Cassian, seemingly again, as he casually executes an Imperial guard in a Spartan facility); Cassian wearing a more Andor-esque leather jacket in a moody interior (which cuts to him disabling some large cargo transport sled). After that, it cuts to…
Rogue One’s Beginning
The Rebel Alliance is on the verge of a full-scale galactic civil war. Cassian’s an agent of the group and is in the Massassi Temple. This is most likely the show’s last arc, which we know will come to a head a few days before Rogue One and A New Hope starts.
Apart from the apparent fact that Cassian is on Yavin IV, how can we know that? He is wearing a portion of his Rogue One costume: the undershirt he wears throughout the film—until the very end—and the jacket we see Cassian wearing in the opening scene when he meets his contract at a station in the Rings of Kafrene.
Side note. If you look in his pocket, you will see he’s carrying an Imperial Code Cylinder. So he’s using security clearance codes. But why does he have them at the Rebel Base?
Want to Win or Fight?
Cassian snarls over a barrage of gunfire, “We’re in a war. You want to win or fight?” He appears to be juggling both of these; they both seem to stem from the same storyline and are based on previously hinted-at elements: an agri-world with oceans of crops that we witness Stormtroopers shooting at an unidentified person fleeing across.
The last element of this short montage is a prototype TIE Fighter, from which Cassian unloads a salvo of rockets to blow up a vehicle in those previously mentioned crop fields. We can see who Cassian is speaking to because he is wearing an Imperial disguise that we had seen in earlier promotional photos of him.
Although it hasn’t been given a formal name yet, that prototype TIE is considered the standard design for the TIE Avenger. The Star Wars Expanded Universe’s (EU) version of Darth Vader’s TIE Advance, an experimental prototype that symbolized the possible future of space superiority fighter craft in the Imperial Navy, was first seen in the classic simulation game TIE Fighter in 1994.
It was a capable ship-to-ship dogfighter that combined high speed, an enhanced arsenal of blaster and heavy payload armaments, and deflector shielding in one package.
The Three Sides of the Rebellion
The following three images are pretty intriguing. We briefly see Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), who appears to be much more like he looks in Rogue One than in Andor’s first season. This suggests that we will see Saw again after some significant events in the chronology of season two (more on that later).
The following picture shows Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) at a party (more on that later), surrounded by groups of similarly finely dressed dancers. She is wearing a beautiful gown. In the final image, Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) appears to have returned to his foppish disguise as an antiquities merchant. There is more on that now, as this is the only real shot of him in the trailer.
Luthen was an essential character in season one, but that’s not the only reason this is fascinating. However, he is also the character about whom we know the least in this context. The original trilogy tells us where Mon Mothma winds up. Like Cassian, we understand where Saw ends up, for better or worse. Although Luthen is a free radical in many respects, observing what he does to help the Alliance become known as a political and revolutionary organization will be exciting. Andor isn’t giving us many hints at the moment.
The Revolution Begins Now
Explosions don’t appeal to cool insurrectionists. Tropes aside, however, this is intriguing proof that Bix Caleen (Adria Arjona) would eventually work directly with Cassian due to his rebellious activities. He saved her from Imperial interrogation at the end of season one, and she and Brasso (Joplin Sibtain)—who we also see in this trailer later—were taken away from Ferrix. However, season two will show us how she is transformed into a rebel agent.
In general, Andor season 2 is about the Rebel Alliance’s growing pains after we saw it come to life in season one. Speaking at Disney’s D3 event last summer, Luna described season 2 thusly: “This second part of our story will follow Cassian over the period of four years as he grows into the rebel hero we see fulfill his destiny with the ultimate sacrifice in Rogue One. Every slice of time charts Cassian’s evolution into our revolution, but in this season, the stakes are greater, the enemy is more organized, and the clock is ticking. As the imperial threat grows and the lines have become more dangerous, Cassian is fueled by a sense of high purpose: to fight for freedom and a better tomorrow.”
What a Swell Party This is
We get some gratifyingly arrogant glimpses of Andor’s most significant “cameo” so far, Ben Mendelsohn’s reappearance as Orson Krennic, to remind us of where this is all finally going again. Although it is evident from past indications that Krennic and Dedra will clash this season, we will also undoubtedly witness some of the early phases of Krennic’s work on the Death Star, which is far closer to operational than at the end of season one.
Notice that the Death Star is missing its primary weapon, the Concave Dish Composite Beam Superlaser, which is installed in Rogue One.
The Partisan War
With a corpse in the foreground and X-Wings and another spacecraft in the distance, the following image has a somber tone. That ship enters hyperspace a little later in another image. Although it’s difficult to tell precisely what it is, it looks like the Aurore-class freighter, which was initially used by the Zygerrian empire in Clone Wars.
But the thing to note here is that the X-Wings carry the distinctive black-and-white livery of the Partisans, Saw Gerrera’s guerrilla faction. Given that when we met Saw in Andor‘s first season, he was struggling to acquire material and needed convincing to work on operations with other disparate rebel cells, it seems like when we meet him in season two, the Partisan front is going to be much more readily established—and, presumably at this point, already distanced mainly from the broader Rebel Alliance as it pushed its own, more aggressive path to resistance against the Empire.
Coming of the Massacre
Throughout this trailer, Cassian, the port city, is frequently shown to descend into complete pandemonium eventually. There is total carnage, bodies all over the place, and stormtroopers firing randomly. The Ghorman Massacre, a pivotal event in the Rebellion’s history, may be shown on screen for the first time because of the date of Andor’s second season and perhaps some possible teases from the first.
Following years of conflict over Imperial control of transportation lanes worldwide, the Ghorman Massacre occurred in 2BBY, when Imperial soldiers massacred groups of civilians participating in nonviolent protest on the planet Ghorman. As demonstrated in Rebels‘ third season, the slaughter led to Mon Mothma’s public resignation from the Imperial Senate and the official founding of the Alliance to Restore the Republic, which publicly brought together several rebel cells throughout the galaxy in an organized uprising against the Empire.
The Rage of Kleya
Even though Luthen doesn’t appear in this trailer often, this fascinating image of his coworker and assistant, Kleya Marki (Elizabeth Dulau), may help us understand his ultimate destiny. Something terrible has happened, and she appears unhappy and angry to see Cassian.
Brasso’s Back!
Even though he is severely beaten here, we are eager to watch a fight between four Stormtroopers and one Brasso (Joplin Sibtain). Unfortunately, he has no brick to bash them up with this time. Due to the agricultural setting, Brasso appears to be situated on whatever planet Cassian utilizes the TIE Avenger.
After the disturbances on Ferrix, is this the universe Cassian sent him and Bix to? Is it possible that Wilmon Paak, the child of the Ferrix salvage shop owner, is the young person being pursued by troopers earlier in the trailer?
Almost a Stormtrooper
This intriguing scene is similar to the narrow passageway Cassian was seen walking through in the first montage of shots. Still, it is viewed from a completely different angle: Imperial soldiers, who are dressed in an intriguing combination of Imperial army uniforms (such as those on Aldhani and the riot officers sent to Ferrix) and the white plastoid armor plating of Stormtroopers.
We also see similarly clothed soldiers in the background of another shot shortly; are they a sort of transitional force between the Stormtrooper Corps and the regular troops of the Imperial ground army? This doesn’t seem to be a spontaneous get-up out of necessity. It’s noteworthy that, while being very few in Andor season one, Stormtroopers are far more common in all of this footage, demonstrating how the Imperial response to the insurgency will intensify over time.
Dedra’s Very Annoyed
That other shot, huh? Another of these hybrid troopers may be seen meandering about in the background of another well-known face that we have only seen once before: Dedra Meero’s (Denise Gough) homecoming. Something has irritated her in typical Dedra fashion. It’s kind of like wondering if water is wet.
Is Cassian slipping from her grasp? Krennic is irritating her. Is Syril feeling okay? We will need to wait and find out.
The Curious Orbit of Krennic
Speaking of the talented director, the fascinating thing about this following shot of him in a somewhat fancier outfit is not so much him as it is the person in the hazy background. Later in the video, we’ll get a much better look, though no less quick.
This seems like Davos Sculden (Richard Dillane) in the blue robes, the shady Chandrilan mobster Mon Mothma has to deal with to find covert means to transfer funds to the Rebellion. Mon is on the picture’s left side, resembling her roles from Rogue One and Return of the Jedi. Classy!
Chandrila Revealed?
A few pictures of Mon Mothma wildly dancing at the party we saw her at early in the trailer follow a brief scene of the TIE Avenger wreaking havoc in an Imperial facility (presumably at Cassian’s hands) as it shoots down a group of Stormtroopers.
The clothing fits the style we frequently saw Mon and Perrin Fertha (Alastair Mackenzie) drape themselves in throughout season one. Thus, this may be our first glimpse of her homeworld, Chandrila, on TV. Could we travel the world to witness the customs leading to the marriage of Sculden’s son Stekan and Mon’s daughter, Lieda?
The Revolution Will Be Televised
Speaking of Sculden and Mon, we appear to be back on Coruscant at this point, and the event that Krennic is seen at gives us a better view of Sculden greeting Mon and Perrin. It is also evident that Mon has undergone some physical alteration compared to what we just saw on her homeworld.
It appears that Mon will wear the pixie cut from Rogue One for the duration of the Galactic Civil War, and this is the first time it has appeared. Fashion icon!
K2 is Back Too!
Yes, Cassian’s former Imperial droid best friend is back! We knew he was coming this season and quickly saw him at our first public preview of season two a few months ago. This season, we should expect to see how Cassian and K-2SO (Alan Tudyk) worked together; I’m sure there won’t be any trauma related to Cassian’s violent arrest of Niamos at the hands of another KX security droid.
Syril Too…
Our first and only glimpse of Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) in this trailer is appropriately dweeby as he arrogantly scuttles through a gathering of Imperial technicians. He is another one-shot wonder. Since rescuing Dedra from Ferrix, he has risen in the world.
But given his formal clothing and the setting, which hints at a port city that might be Ghorman based on the other images in the teaser, we question if he would have genuinely wanted to. Is that where everyone’s least favorite little freak will meet his premature demise?
Melshi Joins the Rebellion
Another quick look, another well-known face: Ruescott Melshi from Rogue One, freed from Narkina Five last season with Cassian’s assistance. It appears that Melshi will still be entangled in the mayhem here, even though we last saw him and Cassian parting ways on Niamos after successfully escaping the Imperial jail. This makes sense given that, like Cassian, we know he will join the Rebellion.
You’re Here, Right Here
Another quick montage of action scenes marks the trailer’s climax, featuring more of the TIE Avenger going insane, the mayhem on Maybe-Ghorman, and Cassian being flung around. At the same time, he collides with walls and tumbles over surfaces, and Bix engages in hand-to-hand combat with an Imperial commander. There’s even a picture of the most chaotic force in the galaxy, Syril’s mother, Eedy!
However, Saw speaks briefly as the trailer ends, shaking one of his partisans as he gives an inspirational speech. “You’re here, right here, and you’re ready to fight!” This teaser indicates that Saw’s journey this season will occur after he has severed chiefly his links with the larger Rebel Alliance, a moment we witnessed come together in Rebels. It will be intriguing to observe how Saw convinces his troops that his approach is the best, particularly in light of the awful outcome for the partisans indicated by Rogue One.
There are still many mysteries in Andor. For example, we know Benjamin Bratt will appear, but we don’t know who he plays.
What do you think about the upcoming season of Andor?
