Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy speaks to GamesRadar, after the series was named one of the site’s TV Show of 2025, and shares what might tempt him back to Star Wars.
GamesRadar+: We’re very excited to say that Andor season 2 has topped our TV shows of the year list for 2025. How does it feel?
Tony Gilroy: Thank you! I’m working with a core group of people on a film [Behemoth!] now, who are Andor people, and we’re just really proud. To have it land the way it did. Whenever we encounter people who are fans of the show, there’s a level of connection and a level of passion to it that I’ve never experienced before. The show really means a lot to people. So we’re well pleased, we really are.
Were you surprised by the unanimous adulation both seasons of Andor received? The show stands apart from what most people recognize Star Wars to be; did you expect it to be more divisive?
Calibrating surprise over the course of a six-year period would be pretty tough! We felt all different ways. I mean, there were times where I was begging for the show to go away and be canceled and not happen. There were times where I was thinking maybe we had a chance. It’s sort of like flying a plane – at a certain point you’re in the fog, and you hope that the chart is good, and you’ve done everything you can. When we finished season one, we were pleasantly surprised at the critical reaction, for sure, but it’s really tempered with the fact that you have to do it again! So I would say that it’s been an incredible bouquet of feelings that we’ve had all the way through.
Andor is this beautiful whole that’s made up of these distinct arcs across both seasons. Is there a particular arc that stands out to you as Andor at its best?
It’s really hard. The show is so abundant. It’s so full. It took so long to do. We were so deeply involved. It was such an immersive experience. There are times where I remember things that we did in the show, and I have forgotten about them! Of course, we did that. There are things that rose in ways that I never thought they would. The [Narkina 5] prison sequence, I never thought it would rise to the level of what we wanted it to be: a mini revolution within the revolution. That was a pretty odd concept. It seemed a little effete at the time, and a little airy fairy – is that going to work? And I was very pleased to see that that worked out. There were things that were difficult. Episode 10 in season two was a great mystery: how we would pay for it, how we would deliver it, how it would work. Those are the ones. But that’s just because birthing them was very difficult!
In the world where you made five seasons of Andor instead of two, what would you have been most excited to explore further?
I wouldn’t tell the story any differently at all. If we were working on season one and I was 35 and Diego was 35 and we had unlimited time, and if Disney had the money, and someone said, ‘Geez, can you do it in four [seasons]?’ You’d build a frame for four that would work. And you’d love that. But this was so very much designed and intentional by the time we went into it to be exactly what it was. To me, the second season is more exciting because of the compression that it was under and the way we had to do it. It’s really hard to tell people who aren’t writers how exciting it is to work on something in that structure, where we have all that negative space, not having to dump a basket of exposition on the table, and the challenge of that… really exciting. I would not have wanted to miss that experience. So I’m very pleased with what we did. It’s absolutely intentional.
Is there anything that could tempt you back to Star Wars one day?
I really don’t know. I’m certainly not in the front half of the book, so time is an issue for me: what I get to work on, and how much time I have to do it. I worked very hard to get myself into a position where a blank check isn’t going to change my life in any kind of way. It always confuses me when there are people that you correctly assume have enough money to do what they want to do, to live a really pleasant life, and then get greedy and take a shitty job for the money. I would never want to say never. I would say the biggest temptation would be to go back and work in London, if you want to know the truth. I really miss London tremendously. All the people that were there over those six years. London would be the bigger draw than Star Wars. It’s crazy that’s true!
The way that the ideology of Andor has been adopted by real protest movements over the past year has been extraordinary to see. Where do you stand on the lessons and language of Andor having become part of the vocabulary of real-world political protest?
I mean, look, if I had my choice, I would wish that the show was a lot less relevant. I wish the show hadn’t lined up the way it had. I wish that things were different. We had to be very careful when we were releasing the show. It was very tender territory, what was happening, and how the show was rhyming as time went on. We can now speak our minds pretty freely. But it’s pretty tough. The politics of the show are baked into it. We spent six years intensively thinking about the fascist takeover of a galaxy far away. We were trying to explore every part of it: six years studying what happens to ordinary people when an authoritarian regime comes rolling in for the kill. And here we are, living it all over the world. The show kept re-informing us the whole time we’re making it.
Because everybody who worked on the show realizes if you’re not willing to fight for what you love, there are people that are willing to come and take it away from you. We ignited the show that way, as an idea, and we finished the show with something much larger, and certainly something we could not control. It does feel good to be relevant. It feels really good to see ‘I have friends everywhere’ posters. I never used to get recognized in my life before, ever, ever, ever. A couple times a week it’ll happen now, and the people that come up and talk to me, they’ve taken so much from the show. It really matters to them. It is a good feeling to realize that the show is speaking to people who might need to hear some of the things it’s saying. Inadvertently! We didn’t start off with a soapbox, that’s for sure.
Read the interview in full here, and stream Andor on Disney+.
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