REBEL SPY CASSIAN ANDOR IS BACK FROM THE DEAD FOR HIS OWN “MESSY, COMPLEX” PREQUEL SERIES. THE CAST AND CREW OF ANDOR EXPLAIN HOW THEIR SHOW IS PUTTING THE GRIT INTO THE STAR WARS GALAXY

WORDS TOM ELLEN

Diego Luna in the title role.

As first impressions go, Cassian Andor’s was certainly memorable.

When we meet the rebel spy (played by Mexican actor Diego Luna) ten minutes into 2016’s Rogue One, he’s collecting vital intelligence from a fellow anti-Imperial informant.

Within seconds, the pair are surrounded by stormtroopers, and the informant's broken arm means escape will prove doubly difficult. But this is — as the film’s subtitle says — A Star Wars Story. So, surely, Cassian will do what all Star Wars heroes do: conjure a cunning plan to spirit him and his injured teammate to safety.

Not so much.

Without even blinking, our protagonist raises his blaster and coolly executes his companion, before fleeing to transmit the intel. Alone. The casual murder of colleagues is something we might expect from the Empire. But from a member of the Rebel Alliance? What kind of ‘good guy’ nonchalantly bumps off one of his own?

“The kind who understands that the cause is more important than anything!” declares Luna, passionately. “This is a complex man, who has done nasty stuff for the cause. He has no commitments except to the Rebellion. What needs to happen to someone, what do they have to have witnessed, to be willing to sacrifice everything the way he does?”

Rogue One (which ultimately saw Cassian and friends lay down their lives to pinpoint the Death Star’s Achilles’ heel) barely scratched the surface of these questions. Andor, the latest live-action Star Wars series to arrive on Disney+, aims to answer them in precise detail. Predominantly set five years before the events of Rogue One (and thus five years before Episode IV: A New Hope), the show will track Luna’s maverick intelligence officer from childhood to discover why his hatred for the Galactic Empire burns so deep.

Show-run by Tony Gilroy (the screenwriter of the Bourne films), and featuring a sprawling ensemble cast that includes Fiona Shaw, Stellan Skarsgård, Adria Arjona, Genevieve O’Reilly and Forest Whitaker (reprising his Rogue One role as grizzled extremist Saw Gerrera), Andor promises to be even darker and gnarlier than the film that spawned it. Here, its motley crew of rogues tell us why this is the gutsiest Star Wars outing yet.