Is <em>Andor</em> Coming Back for Season 3?

There is only one way out for Cassian Andor, and it's headfirst into the Death Star. Andor, the acclaimed prequel series to 2016's Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is nearing the end of its second season. But is this actually the end? Or might there be hope yet for season 3?

In 2016, Cassian Andor, played by Diego Luna, surfaced in the Star Wars universe as a key member of the Rebel Alliance who helped recruit Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) into the fight against the Empire. Though "Rogue One" was successful in stealing the plans to the Death Star—thus giving the Rebel Alliance intel on how to destroy it, which Luke Skywalker famously did in A New Hope—it came at a grave cost. For all of them.

In 2022, the series Andor premiered on Disney+ to gave audiences a glimpse at Cassian's life before the rebellion. Prior to recruiting Jyn Erso, Cassian was just a loner in search of his family. But constant run-ins with the Galactic Empire, and the death of many friends, radicalized Cassian into the man we meet in Rogue One—a staunch, anti-Imperial outlaw.

Andor, created by Rogue One co-writer Tony Gilroy, has won acclaim as one of the greatest Star Wars shows to come out of the current Disney+ experiment. Its long-awaited second season, which premiered on April 22, has cemented its status as one of the TV's must-watch shows. That's impressive, considering some of the stiff competition out there.

Needless to say, people can't get enough of Luna's scrappy antihero. But will the end of season 2 be the last of Andor? Here's what we know about a possible season 3 of Andor.

Officially, there are no plans for a third season of Andor. Series creator and writer Tony Gilroy has gone on record multiple times stating that season 2 is the last hurrah for Andor, and that the final episode—streaming May 13 on Disney+—will be the series finale.

In a March 26 interview with SFX (via GamesRadar+), Gilroy said that the experience of producing season 1 and "the monumental size of the show" overall inspired condensing what was a five-season plan into two. "We were halfway through shooting season 1, coming through Covid, and the monumental size of the show, the effort, and everything else was just dawning on us," Gilroy recalls. "We realized that I didn't have enough calories to do it, and Diego's face couldn't take the timing, because it just takes too long to make it. We were saved by Disney saying, 'Okay, if you guys can figure out a way to do it, we're into it.'"

In the beginning, Andor was envisioned as a five-season show—one that would end by segueing right into the story of Rogue One—before shortening during development. Gilroy said as much in a May 2022 interview with ComicBook.com.

"Originally we thought 'oh, maybe we’ll do five seasons,' but it’s just the scale of the show," Gilroy said at the time. "I think when the show comes out everybody will forgive us for not doing that. The show is huge and it’s just physically impossible. So then we were like, 'What are we going to do?' And then the answer turned out to be incredibly elegant and perfect because we knew where we wanted to go. Every now and then you get really lucky and the solution turned out to be really fortunate for us."

In April 2022, Andor cinematographer Adriano Goldman confirmed in a Brazilian television interview the show was shortened from five seasons to three; that number later reduced to two. In another interview published August 2022 on Variety, Gilroy elaborated how the prolonged production timetables of streaming-era TV prohibited going five seasons. "You just couldn’t possibly physically make five years of the show,” Gilroy told Variety. "I mean, Diego would be, like, 65. I’d be in a nursing home ... We can’t sign on to this forever."

Shortly after Andor season 2 premiered, Diego Luna told Men's Health that the abbreviated structure of the season, where each "block" of three episodes represent a year leading up to Rogue One, was born out of "the logistics" of committing to their intended vision.

"We already shot season 1 in blocks [of episodes], so Tony said, 'What if we take this to the next level?' That’s how we came up with the idea behind this season," Luna explained. "We were able to get to the end in the way we pitched at the beginning, and with respect not just to the story overall, but to all the characters you got to meet in that first season who need closure and need an end to their own stories."

Added Luna, "To me, this is the end. And not just the end, but a very graceful way to get to the end."

While Andor fans may be upset that season 3 isn't in the cards, there's a strange comfort in knowing the end is at hand. And lest we forget, we've already seen the end. It's Rogue One. The story is over, but the saga continues.