Star Wars Celebration gave us the first trailer for ‘Andor’. The series will be overseen by Tony Gilory and follow Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor in the years leading up to the events of ‘Rogue One’. Gilroy, who has looser lips than most Lucasfilm employees, has said the the twelve episode first season will take place five years before the film and the next twelve episodes will cover the following four years with the promise that the final scenes will bridge the series and when we first met Cassian.
We know this will be a spy story about the formation of the Rebel Alliance but the trailer doesn’t deliver much is the way of plot. What it does give us is an idea of the tone of the series and that tone is dark and covered in a layer of grit.
Here’s what we got from the trailer.
5. Coruscant and politics are back
Coruscant, the capital of the Star Wars galaxy, hasn’t been seen in live action, apart from a brief scene in ‘Rogue One’ and a couple of Order 66 flashbacks in the TV shows, since 2005’s ‘Revenge Of The Sith’. This was also the last time that Star Wars tackled politics.
It looks like both will be back in a big way, with this show being as much Mon Mothma’s story as Cassian’s. And if Star Wars is going back to the senate there is a good chance the Emperor isn’t far behind.
4. The advanced is going to be juxtaposed was the primitive.
We see a spaceship crashing onto a primitive world, most likely Cassian’s home world, with the natives looking on. Nature versus technology has always been a massive theme in Star Wars and it looks like that is going to continue here.
3. Lots of different Troopers
Imperial forces are on full display in the trailer and we see various types of troopers. Death Troopers return from ‘Rogue One’, Mud Troopers that we first saw in ‘Solo’, and of course plain old Stormtroopers. But most interestingly, there is also a brief glimpse of Clone Troopers which means we will be getting flashbacks to the Clone Wars or just after.
2. A new planet under Imperial assault
It looks like we are going to see what a full scale Imperial assault looks like. We see LAATs approaching a city and then a droid rolling through the devastated landscape. Could this be a planet with major shipyards that the Empire are desperate to control? This is probably the main setting for Cassian’s part of the story, putting him in a situation that is ripe for espionage.
1. Andor on the run
The trailer gives the impression that Andor is already a wanted man and on the run, a man without hope. Gilroy has promised that we will see the evolution of the character to the spy that he will become. The shot of Cassian on the TIE could be him escaping but it could also be a theft. Spy stories revolve around someone getting information they shouldn’t have – is this TIE the key to some evil plan the Empire is cooking up and Andor’s theft of it the thing that gives him the first spark of hope that his actions can make a difference to the galaxy?
What did you like in the trailer? Comment below.
The first two episodes of ‘Andor’ are released on 31st August.
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