If there were ever any doubts about Andor being right up there with House of the Dragon and Rings of Power in terms of top-tier genre television, then yesterday’s episode all but decimated them. It delivered a transcendentally rousing prison break combined with Stellan Skarsgård’s entry for monologue of the year, leaving one salivating at the thought of what could be next in store for Cassian and his fellow Rebels.
The cast delivered in every scene, whether it was Robert Emms’ anxious disposition as Lonni Jung or Genevieve O’Reilly’s steely bartering as Mon Mothma, so there’s no question that Andor has an emphasis on team effort in front of the camera.
But the ensemble cast doesn’t seem to extend to species. Indeed, compared to Andor‘s fellow Star Wars properties, there’s a distinct lack of alien characters and for lifelong fans of the franchise this is somewhat disappointing.
As it turns out, Andor‘s focus on human characters was an intentional decision from showrunner Tony Gilroy, who explained in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter that throwing aliens into the mix would have presented a whole new slew of political nuances that would have distracted from the political nuances driving the story.
“There’s already so much politics in the show to begin with, and we’re trying to tell an adventure story, really. So adding strong alien characters means that all of a sudden, there’s a whole bunch of new issues that we have to deal with that I don’t really understand that well or I just couldn’t think of a way to bake them into what we’re doing.”
He went on to say that there will be more alien characters in upcoming episodes, though the human supremacist Empire means any plotlines revolving around them will by necessity lack aliens:
“You’ll see more as we go along, but it’s a legit question and one we’ll be answering as we go along. There is a more human-centric side of the story and the politics of it. There’s certainly no aliens working for the Empire, so that kind of tips it one way, automatically.”
Andor is currently streaming on Disney Plus, with new episodes releasing every Wednesday until the first season’s conclusion on Nov. 23. The second and final season is currently in development.