section_path: Production/Writing
section_name: Writing
paragraph_text: Writing
  
  In addition to Gilroy and Schiff, writers for the series include Beau Willimon and Gilroy's brother Dan. Gilroy urged his writing team to put aside their personal reverence and nostalgia for Star Wars, fearing that such an attitude could change their behavior and work. Gilroy wanted the series to be accessible to all viewers, not just Star Wars fans, with the hope that those fans would be able to watch the series with their friends and family who are not interested in the rest of the franchise. He had also wanted to ensure the series was grounded in reality and had identified the main "navigational Star Wars piece of information" as being the calendar. During the first writers' room meeting, Gilroy had prepared a 100-page outline for the series, as he had already planned the structure of the series. Willimon and Dan Gilroy were present, in addition to executive producer Sanne Wohlenberg and production designer Luke Hull, calling Hull his "primary creative collaborator on the story". They had discussed the story for five days. Luna expressed his excitement at being able to explore the character of Andor further in the series after making Rogue One, in which he originated the character.
  
  Since Andor is a prequel to the film, Luna said it was "nice to go into a story you already know the ending. Now you can the nuances and the layers. I think it's fun to do something that isn't just about getting to the end. It's about delaying that." Luna was able to suggest elements of the character's backstory that he had thought of during the filming of Rogue One, and was grateful that Gilroy made the character a refugee. He explained, "It's the journey of a migrant, which to me is everything I come from. That feeling of having to move is behind this story very profoundly". Luna felt that because of this, it was "difficult to find out where he comes from", and felt that Andor wanted to "find the opportunities, the freedom, the chances they don't find where they're born". He had also felt that Andor's character was important to members of the Hispanic and Latin American community, and wanted the "energy" of Mexico–United States relations to be represented in Andor's journey. Gilroy wanted to expand upon Andor's backstory, and had used a dialogue said by him in Rogue One, "I've been in this fight since I was six years old!", as a starting point. In the development process, Gilroy had labelled it "The Education of Cassian Andor". From there, he had created the planet Kenari as his childhood home, where he had lived with other children and no adult supervision. Gilroy had compared it to being a " Lord of the Flies (1954)-like tribe", with Andor's separation from the tribe also serving as an introduction to Maarva and Clem Andor, desiring to introduce the audience to the Ferrix culture early on as the writing team had spent time creating its social structure. Towards the beginning, he had described Maarva as loving Andor "as much as she could possibly love him", though in the beginning of the series, she had been disappointed by the direction of Andor's life. As the series had progressed, Gilroy wanted to develop the emotional connection between them.
  
  The first season begins five years before Rogue One and tells one year of Andor's story when he first becomes a revolutionary. The next four years are then covered by the second season, which leads directly into the events of the film. Gilroy approached the two seasons as two-halves of a novel and described the show beginning as "a very simple, almost film noir situation for a thief. A skeevy kind of guy gets in big trouble, tries to sell something he has to save his ass". Luna said the series was about the building of a revolution, and said it was important to explore "the revolutionary we can become to change things, to stop war, to make this world a livable place" which he felt was relevant to real-world issues. Gilroy stated, "This guy gave his life for the galaxy, right? I mean, he consciously, soberly, without vanity or recognition, sacrificed himself. Who does that?" He wanted to explore that idea in the first season, beginning with Andor "being really revolution-averse, and cynical, and lost, and kind of a mess". The season shows the destruction of Andor's homeworld when he was a boy and is then based on Andor's adopted planet, which becomes radicalized against the Empire.
  
  Luna and Gilroy said the series was also about "how the disenfranchised can stand up to effect change". Gilroy had not intentionally written the show to create political commentary and rejected the notion of being influenced by contemporary events, but said that it had come "instinctively", as his primary priority was characterization and serving the story. The writing team had used history as a "catalog" for the story with Gilroy further explaining that people can interpret the characters however they wish, but the main intention was for the audience to connect to them. Co-star Fiona Shaw described Gilroy's political commentary in the scripts as a "great, scurrilous on the Trumpian world", adding that "our world is exploding in different places right now, people's rights are disappearing, and Andor reflects that. the Empire is taking over, and it feels like the same thing is happening in reality, too". Meanwhile, Gough has stated that her character arc in the series deals with gender politics, while Gilroy explained that "We have a very, very, very deep dive into the Imperial side of the story". Gilroy had written Gough's character, Meero, with the intention of making her relatable to the audience as she had been putting genuine effort into doing her job and "fighting her way up in a male environment ". After starting with Andor's story in the first three episodes, the fourth begins to expand the scope of the series to include the rest of its large ensemble cast, such as Rebel leader Mon Mothma, whose path will cross with Andor's in the second season. Gilroy felt Star Wars fans would see Mothma in a new light after watching the series, and added that there were key characters and events in the series that would be different or "more interesting" than fans previously realized: "What you've been told, what's on Wookieepedia... is really all wrong".
  
  Tony Gilroy, Dan Gilroy and Beau Willimon returned to write for the second season, and were joined by Tom Bissell. The final three episodes of the second season cover the three days prior to the start of Rogue One, with Gilroy saying "it'll be, like, four or five days, and then we'll jump a year, and then there'll be another four or five days, and then we jump a year", with the final shot leading into Rogue One. While developing the season, Gilroy briefly considered to include Palpatine, but ultimately felt he was "too heavy to lift" into the plot. Likewise, Gilroy never considered including Darth Vader in the story as he feels that writing the character is "really limiting". For K-2SO's introduction in the season, Dan Gilroy originally wrote an entirely self-contained story for the season's ninth episode that played like a horror film, with a KX unit hunting over a huge tanker ship in Yavin with K-2SO involved in the scenario, but budget issues meant the show's crew couldn't afford its production and consolidated things instead, so they opted to move up Mon Mothma's Senate speech one episode, as it had been originally slated to occur in the tenth episode. Genevieve O'Reilly provided Tony Gilroy with input when writing Mothma's speech denouncing the Empire's role in the Ghorman Massacre in the ninth episode of the second season. While Gilroy had initially only written sections of the monologue which were to be spliced into a bigger montage, O'Reilly convinced him to write an entire speech. According to O'Reilly, filming for the scene occurred in May 2023. Gilroy expressed that after gaining confidence in Dulau's acting abilities from director feedback during the production of the first season, he did not want to leave the relationship between Kleya and Luthen ambiguous or explained by other creators, leading to the creation of the flashback scenes in "Make It Stop", depicting their relationship, which was inspired by the road movie Paper Moon (1973).
  
  In addition to Gilroy and Schiff, writers for the series include Beau Willimon and Gilroy's brother Dan. Gilroy urged his writing team to put aside their personal reverence and nostalgia for Star Wars, fearing that such an attitude could change their behavior and work. Gilroy wanted the series to be accessible to all viewers, not just Star Wars fans, with the hope that those fans would be able to watch the series with their friends and family who are not interested in the rest of the franchise. He had also wanted to ensure the series was grounded in reality and had identified the main "navigational Star Wars piece of information" as being the calendar. During the first writers' room meeting, Gilroy had prepared a 100-page outline for the series, as he had already planned the structure of the series. Willimon and Dan Gilroy were present, in addition to executive producer Sanne Wohlenberg and production designer Luke Hull, calling Hull his "primary creative collaborator on the story". They had discussed the story for five days. Luna expressed his excitement at being able to explore the character of Andor further in the series after making Rogue One, in which he originated the character.
  
  Since Andor is a prequel to the film, Luna said it was "nice to go into a story you already know the ending. Now you can the nuances and the layers. I think it's fun to do something that isn't just about getting to the end. It's about delaying that." Luna was able to suggest elements of the character's backstory that he had thought of during the filming of Rogue One, and was grateful that Gilroy made the character a refugee. He explained, "It's the journey of a migrant, which to me is everything I come from. That feeling of having to move is behind this story very profoundly". Luna felt that because of this, it was "difficult to find out where he comes from", and felt that Andor wanted to "find the opportunities, the freedom, the chances they don't find where they're born". He had also felt that Andor's character was important to members of the Hispanic and Latin American community, and wanted the "energy" of Mexico–United States relations to be represented in Andor's journey. Gilroy wanted to expand upon Andor's backstory, and had used a dialogue said by him in Rogue One, "I've been in this fight since I was six years old!", as a starting point. In the development process, Gilroy had labelled it "The Education of Cassian Andor". From there, he had created the planet Kenari as his childhood home, where he had lived with other children and no adult supervision. Gilroy had compared it to being a " Lord of the Flies (1954)-like tribe", with Andor's separation from the tribe also serving as an introduction to Maarva and Clem Andor, desiring to introduce the audience to the Ferrix culture early on as the writing team had spent time creating its social structure. Towards the beginning, he had described Maarva as loving Andor "as much as she could possibly love him", though in the beginning of the series, she had been disappointed by the direction of Andor's life. As the series had progressed, Gilroy wanted to develop the emotional connection between them.
  
  The first season begins five years before Rogue One and tells one year of Andor's story when he first becomes a revolutionary. The next four years are then covered by the second season, which leads directly into the events of the film. Gilroy approached the two seasons as two-halves of a novel and described the show beginning as "a very simple, almost film noir situation for a thief. A skeevy kind of guy gets in big trouble, tries to sell something he has to save his ass". Luna said the series was about the building of a revolution, and said it was important to explore "the revolutionary we can become to change things, to stop war, to make this world a livable place" which he felt was relevant to real-world issues. Gilroy stated, "This guy gave his life for the galaxy, right? I mean, he consciously, soberly, without vanity or recognition, sacrificed himself. Who does that?" He wanted to explore that idea in the first season, beginning with Andor "being really revolution-averse, and cynical, and lost, and kind of a mess". The season shows the destruction of Andor's homeworld when he was a boy and is then based on Andor's adopted planet, which becomes radicalized against the Empire.
  
  Luna and Gilroy said the series was also about "how the disenfranchised can stand up to effect change". Gilroy had not intentionally written the show to create political commentary and rejected the notion of being influenced by contemporary events, but said that it had come "instinctively", as his primary priority was characterization and serving the story. The writing team had used history as a "catalog" for the story with Gilroy further explaining that people can interpret the characters however they wish, but the main intention was for the audience to connect to them. Co-star Fiona Shaw described Gilroy's political commentary in the scripts as a "great, scurrilous on the Trumpian world", adding that "our world is exploding in different places right now, people's rights are disappearing, and Andor reflects that. the Empire is taking over, and it feels like the same thing is happening in reality, too". Meanwhile, Gough has stated that her character arc in the series deals with gender politics, while Gilroy explained that "We have a very, very, very deep dive into the Imperial side of the story". Gilroy had written Gough's character, Meero, with the intention of making her relatable to the audience as she had been putting genuine effort into doing her job and "fighting her way up in a male environment ". After starting with Andor's story in the first three episodes, the fourth begins to expand the scope of the series to include the rest of its large ensemble cast, such as Rebel leader Mon Mothma, whose path will cross with Andor's in the second season. Gilroy felt Star Wars fans would see Mothma in a new light after watching the series, and added that there were key characters and events in the series that would be different or "more interesting" than fans previously realized: "What you've been told, what's on Wookieepedia... is really all wrong".
  
  Tony Gilroy, Dan Gilroy and Beau Willimon returned to write for the second season, and were joined by Tom Bissell. The final three episodes of the second season cover the three days prior to the start of Rogue One, with Gilroy saying "it'll be, like, four or five days, and then we'll jump a year, and then there'll be another four or five days, and then we jump a year", with the final shot leading into Rogue One. While developing the season, Gilroy briefly considered to include Palpatine, but ultimately felt he was "too heavy to lift" into the plot. Likewise, Gilroy never considered including Darth Vader in the story as he feels that writing the character is "really limiting". For K-2SO's introduction in the season, Dan Gilroy originally wrote an entirely self-contained story for the season's ninth episode that played like a horror film, with a KX unit hunting over a huge tanker ship in Yavin with K-2SO involved in the scenario, but budget issues meant the show's crew couldn't afford its production and consolidated things instead, so they opted to move up Mon Mothma's Senate speech one episode, as it had been originally slated to occur in the tenth episode. Genevieve O'Reilly provided Tony Gilroy with input when writing Mothma's speech denouncing the Empire's role in the Ghorman Massacre in the ninth episode of the second season. While Gilroy had initially only written sections of the monologue which were to be spliced into a bigger montage, O'Reilly convinced him to write an entire speech. According to O'Reilly, filming for the scene occurred in May 2023. Gilroy expressed that after gaining confidence in Dulau's acting abilities from director feedback during the production of the first season, he did not want to leave the relationship between Kleya and Luthen ambiguous or explained by other creators, leading to the creation of the flashback scenes in "Make It Stop", depicting their relationship, which was inspired by the road movie Paper Moon (1973).