“Andor” Showrunner Talks Vader, Emperor

Tony Gilroy’s “Andor” series has scored high praise from plenty of critics, in part because it avoids something that all the other Disney+ series indulge in often – fan service.

There’s no talk of Sith here, nor much of Jedi, and while important figures like Emperor Palpatine are named it is often in passing – the focus remaining very much on figures on the ground fighting against (or for) the Empire.

It doesn’t shy entirely away from the lore, key characters from “Rogue One” like Senator Mon Mothma and Director Krennic play major roles in this, but it remains very much in its ‘lane’ with the focus entirely on its story and characters as opposed to setting up something else in the “Star Wars” universe or throwing in a cameo that could derail viewer attention.

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Gilroy was asked if, at any time, either Darth Vader or The Emperor were considered to be included on screen within the series.

When it comes to Vader, who did appear in Gilroy’s “Rogue One,” he says: “No, that was never on my agenda. Writing for Darth Vader is really limiting. I’ve done it. He doesn’t have a lot to say.”

As for The Emperor, Gilroy says he did consider it at one point but rejected the idea: “He was too big a piece of meat for me to introduce. It was too heavy a lift. I thought about it at one point, but it was too heavy a lift.”

Part of the issue is that much of “Star Wars” until now has had a relatively tight focus on the Jedi, Sith and Skywalkers – Gilroy wanted to shift that focus:

“One of the fascinating things that I realized when I started the show in the very beginning is how many billions of beings are in the galaxy. Nobody knows about the Jedi, nobody knows about the Sith. It’s just a tiny percentage of people that have any notion of it at all. It’s not in the culture. And I remember being really surprised as it was explained. I thought it was something that everyone knew about, but no, it’s very secretive and small.”

Gilroy adds that he’s keen to see the franchise diversify itself to tell stories different from what’s come before. He says his very first conversation with Lucasfilm chief Kathleen Kennedy involved involved the idea of taking the property into different genres and explore this vast universe from new perspectives:

“I literally was like, ‘Could you do ‘Inherit the Wind’? Could you do a courtroom drama in ‘Star Wars’?’ Why couldn’t you? It’d be fascinating… They are doing a horror movie, I think, now. I think that Jim Mangold and Beau Willimon are working on an origin story for the Force, like a 25,000-year-B.C. thing. Anything that works is gonna work. The stuff that’s gonna be lame is gonna be lame. But there’s no reason not to play with this… there’s a lot of real estate there. There’s a lot of beings in the universe.”

The next three episodes of the second season of “Andor” air on Tuesday.

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