How Tony Gilroy Made 'Andor' One of the Best Series on TV
A breakdown of the three challenges screenwriter Gilroy had to overcome when developing the 'Star Wars' series
When “ANDOR” was announced, it’s fair to say it was greeted with a generally unenthusiastic shrug even by the STAR WARS fans (such as myself) who believe ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY is one of the best films the franchise has ever produced. Andor, played by Diego Luna, was an intriguing and darker-than-usual character for this galaxy far, far away, but nothing about him cried out, “Breakaway fan favorite — give this man a TV series of his own!” Even fewer of us — including those who recognize creator Tony Gilroy as one of the finest screenwriters working today (this number again includes me) — imagined “ANDOR” would become the most sophisticated and narratively successful of all the STAR WARS TV series.
Let’s take a look at the challenges creating a TV prequel around the character of Andor would’ve posed for Gilroy and how he solved them so brilliantly, which might help you as you interrogate/develop your own ideas for television or, if you’re so lucky, one day get to pitch a take on a well-known piece of intellectual property (IP).
Let’s begin by considering the challenges of creating a dramatically interesting TV prequel to ROGUE ONE.
1. The obvious one: it’s hard to create life-and-death stakes for a character like Andor when the audience knows that said character won’t come to serious harm since he’s fated to be atomized in the film that introduced him.
2. Almost as obvious, but perhaps even more problematic: how do you create a story that stands apart from ROGUE ONE, but also informs it and maybe even helps audiences re-evaluate events in the film?
3. Most importantly: how do you justify the prequel’s existence in a busy, arguably oversaturated IP space — between STAR WARS: EPISODE 3 and EPISODE 4 — which has already been extensively covered in films, TV, novels and comic books?
Now, let’s break how Gilroy solved these challenges one by one:
1. The stakes problem: we know Andor isn’t going to die…at least not yet.
The solution here is graceful, despite the title of the series. The life-and-death stakes are given to every other character in the story (with the exception of Mon Mothma, played by Genevieve O’Reilly, whom we know will survive even THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY).
It’s not just as simple as saying, “Oh, the other characters can live and die” either. Gilroy is intent to make you care about them, slowly, methodically providing audiences a mosaic of characters, full of despair and ambitions, and, most importantly, conflicts we deeply care about. Even corpo Deputy Inspector Syril Karn (Kyle Soller) and ISB Supervisor Dedra Meero (Denise Gough), both villains, engender endless interest from the audience — especially Meero, whom you root for despite what her success would mean for our “hero” characters.
None of this is to say Andor himself doesn’t have stakes. His are split into two categories:
The first, his soul. We know Andor is going to lose himself in the Rebellion, only to find redemption on Scarif. How he “breaks bad” and who dies because of him promises existential rather than physical peril.
The second, those he loves. Andor has a family, from an adopted mother, to an ex-girlfriend, to a best friend, to a missing sister I am just going to suggest right now is ISB Supervisor Meero (I’m going to be wrong, but I like the symmetry of that idea). His story is going to put them all in profound danger. It already has. No doubt, they will die one by one. But maybe, just maybe he can save some of them from dying because of his mistakes/decisions before he sacrifices himself on Scarif.
2. The ROGUE ONE problem: how do you make “ANDOR” its own thing while simultaneously enriching the experience of rewatching ROGUE ONE?
Gilroy accomplishes this in two significant ways:
The first, as much as “ANDOR” is about the secret origin of the titular rebel agent we met in ROGUE ONE, it’s also about the secret origin of the Rebel Alliance — something we’ve never seen on-screen before.
The second, ROGUE ONE featured “heroes” who had done many, many horrific things for freedom. It asked uncomfortable questions about how you win against superior powers like the Empire or, allegorically, Earth’s own imperial powers past and present. Sacrifices of personal character and morality are always necessary.
THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY focused on a noble Jedi’s journey to save his father’s soul and defeat Emperor Palpatine, but it doesn’t ask a single question about how the Rebellion could’ve ever rallied enough support and accumulated enough man and firepower to take on the Emperor. “ANDOR” is going to do just that, providing a gritty, ugly reality that will now exist alongside the operatic myth-making of George Lucas’s THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY.
Gilroy appears determined to flesh out every idea in ROGUE ONE, provide entirely new perspectives on characters we met there but didn’t know enough about (such as Andor, Mon Mothma, and almost certainly others), and leave that film feeling more like a final chapter in a “Rebel saga” that begins here.
3. How do you justify the prequel’s existence in a busy STAR WARS landscape?
Gilroy’s approach here is simple: he’s not making a STAR WARS TV series.
There’s no ‘space opera’. No Skywalkers or Jedi. No fantasy.
It’s just a gritty, grounded TV series about living inside an all-powerful fascist state where freedom only exists in your imagination.
It’s also executed as a tremendously slow burn, a daring creative decision that contravenes all of STAR WARS history. Whereas “OBI-WAN KENOBI” sees Kenobi break into an imperial facility and rescue a young Princess Leia in half an episode’s running time, “ANDOR” takes a similar plot challenge and spends three, much-longer episodes accomplishing essentially the same thing. Because of this determination to mine conflict from character rather than generating endless plot twists, every scene vibrates with dangerous, sometimes even violent tension that isn’t found elsewhere on STAR WARS TV.
This essay is not meant to be a comprehensive list of reasons why “ANDOR” is such excellent television — I mean, I don’t even get into how well-written every character is or how beautifully directed each episode is — but I do believe it helps illustrates the kind of emotional and narrative interrogation and mathematics that must be executed when constructing successful TV series, especially ones built from much-explored IP. In such cases, you’re not just telling a story to your audience, but also having a conversation with the source material that your audience is incredibly conscious of. With “ANDOR”, Gilroy has arguably accomplished this better than any other IP-driven series in television history.
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Freaking love Andor!
100% agree!