Andor will be the next Star Wars show after Obi-Wan Kenobi, and it could pay off a forgotten Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith deleted scene. While even Lucasfilm admits that Star Wars must move beyond the Skywalker Saga, the Disney+ Star Wars series are still exploring some well-known eras. That will also be the case for Andor, which like Obi-Wan Kenobi, will help fill the gaps between Revenge of the Sith and the original trilogy’s timeline.
The upcoming Star Wars show will see Diego Luna reprise his Rogue One: A Star Wars Story role in a story set five years before the events of the 2016 film. The spin-off series was first announced in December 2020, and now Lucasfilm has confirmed that Andor will have two seasons of 12 episodes each. Luna will not be the only Star Wars actor reprising his role in Andor, as Genevieve O’Reilly, who played the republic senator Mon Mothma in Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One, will also star in the show.
However, Genevieve O’Reilly’s role in Revenge of Sith was limited to a scene that never made it to the final cut. In the deleted Revenge of the Sith scene, Mon Mothma, Padmé, Bail Organa, and other senators discuss the state of the galaxy following Palpatine’s takeover. Bail mentions that he and Mon Mothma are taking actions to oppose Palpatine outside the official channels, which could be seen as the birth of the rebellion that would lead to the Galactic Civil War. Considering that it was a deleted scene, Star Wars never really explored the early stages of the rebellion through the eyes of its leaders, something that Andor can now deliver on by having Mon Mothma as a central character. The Andor trailer shows Mon Mothma in the Imperial Senate as well as in a social event in what could be Coruscant, which suggests the show will follow Mothma’s secret plans and arrangements for what would eventually become the Rebel Alliance.
Andor‘s time period is the same as Star Wars Rebels season one, but the animated series almost exclusively focused on the perspective of the small rebel cell in Lothal instead of the high rankings of the movement. Despite characters like Bail Organa and Mon Mothma appearing in Rebels, the series never showed how exactly they were crafting the rebellion in terms of resources and alliances, not in the way the Revenge of the Sith deleted scene suggests they did. Therefore, instead of the usual military perspective, Andor can show the beginning of the rebellion through a more political lenses. How the Imperial Senate worked and how exactly Palpatine ruled before the first Death Star destroyed Alderaan is something still not explored in live-action, which makes Andor even more exciting.
The final minutes of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith were dedicated to setting up the main plot points of the original trilogy, but nothing would have connected the fall of the Republic to the Rebel Alliance better than the deleted senators’ meeting scene. Fortunately, Andor will see the return of Mon Mothma and perhaps of Bail Organa as well, thus being able to continue the story initiated in the prequel film. By doing so, Andor will continue Star Wars‘ recent tradition of better connecting the prequels to the original trilogy.
Key Release Dates
Rogue Squadron
Release Date:2023-12-22
