Andor is a strange animal, because it’s the prequel of a prequel. Rogue One filled in the blanks before A New Hope, and Andor is filling in some of Cassian Andor’s life before that.
While Season 1 is focusing on the first year that Cassian spends getting tangled up with the Rebellion, Season 2 will jump through four years as it leads right up to the events of Rogue One. Showrunner Tony Gilroy has said that a classic Star Wars planet will play a big role in Season 2, and it could answer a huge question about the Rebellion’s past.
In conversation with Collider, Gilroy spoke about the writing process for Season 2 of Andor. “We’re going to Yavin, and then we’re going into places where we eventually need to really weave our way back to the source,” he said.
This is the first time we’ve seen Yavin mentioned in connection with Andor. Its inclusion makes sense — Yavin is where the Rebellion’s first big victory takes place. But its presence would also answer a question fans have long had about the planet. Why was Yavin chosen as the gathering place for the Rebellion?
The Battle of Yavin, which makes up the center of the Star Wars timeline, happened because the Death Star was near the moon of Yavin 4. But why was the Death Star there? The earliest we saw the planet was in Rogue One, when it was already established as a major Rebellion base. Did it have strategic significance, or was it just a good hiding spot?
Andor Season 2 has the opportunity to show us why Yavin was chosen as the heart of the Rebellion. In Season 1, the Rebellion is just a shared secret between a few activists and politicians. Because Season 2 will cover a far greater timespan, it will have the range to show how the Rebellion grows, and how it ended up on that fateful planet.
The fact that Yavin was mentioned so prominently in a discussion of Season 2 bodes well for fans waiting for Andor to provide more context to the original trilogy. While it has to cram four years of grassroots political action into 12 episodes, it looks like some of that time will establish how this little moon became the powder keg that ignites the Galactic Civil War.
Andor is now streaming on Disney+.
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