When Rogue One: A Star Wars Story released back in 2016, due to the nature of the film’s story, no one ever expected to see the film’s star characters popping up again in any future media. That all changed when Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy announced a number of new Star Wars live-action television series for the Disney+ streaming service, including a spin-off series for Rogue One starring the Rebel Alliance spy Cassian Andor. Out of ten all-new Star Wars television series that are in various stages of development or production for Disney+, the show is simply titled Andor.
Andor is set as a precursor to the Rogue One film (which explains how Cassian is still alive) and would follow the exploits of Diego Luna‘s Cassian Andor and his sassy reprogrammed Imperial droid companion, K-2SO. Actor Alan Tudyk provided both motion capture and voice work for K-2SO, which required him to perform on stilts in order to properly portray that towering 7-foot-plus droid.
When the show was first announced, Kathleen Kennedy brought both Diego Luna and Alan Tudyk out on stage to talk to Star Wars fans about the newly announced series and their return to the franchise. People were delighted to hear that both Luna and Tudyk would be back in their fan favorite roles from Rogue One to give us more adventures of Cassian and K-2SO throughout the galaxy.
While more news about the Andor series has come out in recent months, people have noticed that we haven’t seen Alan Tudyk in any of the early behind the scenes footage or heard anything about his involvement with the series since it was first announced. As Cassian and K-2SO were quite the pair in Rogue One, the return of the duo would likely be one of the series biggest draws. Sadly, as many had already feared, Alan Tudyk has recently confirmed the terribly disappointing news that both he and K-2SO will not actually be involved in Andor; at least not right now.
In a recent interview with Collider for his new series Resident Alien, Tudyk was quite candid about his non-involvement with Andor. The actor said he is not appearing in the show as of now, but that he is still open to return later in the series when it makes sense for him to do so. When asked about Andor, Tudyk said:
They’re shooting it right now, I’m not in it. But, if it stays on the air, stories keep getting told, I’ll end up in there… I’m going to be in the show. It’s just that the story that Tony (showrunner Tony Gilroy) is telling doesn’t involve K-2SO until later on. I can’t be too specific, but I can definitely say that I’m not going to be in the first season.
So while Tudyk isn’t involved with the series at the moment, he seems fairly adamant that his time will come to return to those massive robotic boots of K-2SO. His biggest concern is one that weighs on many of us; the passage of time. Performing the motion-capture work for his role as K-2SO is exhausting and very physically demanding as he is walking around on stilts for hours at a time while also supporting the weight of a large motion-capture rig.
As Tudyk gets older he fears that he may no longer be physically capable to carry on performing the role, and he absolutely refuses to just voice the character while someone else fills in on the motion-capture work. When asked when he was hoping to return to the role of K-2SO Tudyk said:
I do know this: I have to be on stilts for it, because the character is 7’1″, and I’m not one of those guys that says, ‘somebody else do the motion capture, and I’ll voice it later’. I’ll have to do the motion capture, and I turn 50 in March! So I hope they get to it soon, because I’m not going to be on stilts in, like, five years. I’m not doing it!
Perhaps the biggest news to come from this interview is that Tudyk seems to confirm that Andor is planned as an ongoing series with multiple seasons, similar to The Mandalorian. After it was first announced, Andor was believed by many to be a limited run series with a planned beginning and ending like the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series starring Ewan McGregor.
Rogue One co-writer Tony Gilroy, who created the show, apparently has plans for the show and for K-2SO’s eventual return. With Gilroy acting as showrunner on the series, there are certainly high expectations for the show. Gilroy was instrumental to the success of Rogue One following its infamously difficult post-production, and fans are hoping that he will be keeping Andor similar in style and tone to Rogue One.
Andor stars Diego Luna reprising his role as Cassian Andor from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. He will be joined by an A-list cast including Stellan Skarsgard (Thor), Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter And The Sorcerers Stone), Adria Arjona (Pacific Rim: Uprising), Kyle Soller (Monsters: Dark Continent), Denise Gough (The Kid Who Would Be King), and Genevieve O’Reilly (who is returning as Mon Mothma, who she portrayed previously in Rogue One, Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith, and Star Wars: Rebels)
The series is expected to have twelve episodes in what is now being viewed as Season 1 of the show. Andor is tentatively planned to stream on the Disney+ streaming service some time in 2022.
Are you sad that we won’t be seeing K-2SO on screen in the first season of Andor? Or are you glad he’s taking a break so we have something to look forward to later? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below and be sure to stick around Geek Anything for more great Star Wars updates!
