Skip to main content

Diego Luna’s Cassian rebels in new Andor preview scene

Disney+’s next trip to the Star Wars universe will begin next month when Andor finally makes its debut. Diego Luna is reprising his role as the doomed Rebel operative Cassian Andor in this Rogue One prequel. While fans know how Cassian met his end, this series will shed some light on who he was beforehand, as well as how he became one of the Rebellion’s go-to spies. In a new preview scene from the Andor series premiere, Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael presses Cassian for details about how he infiltrated an Imperial stronghold.

Andor | Official Clip | Disney+

One of the key takeaways here is that Cassian isn’t a Rebel at heart and it takes a significant bribe for Luthen to get the truth out of him. It’s also clear that Cassian’s actions against the Empire come from a place of anger rather than fealty to any cause. He despises the Imperial forces so much that he willingly endangered himself, only to realize that the Empire is so complacent that it had no safeguards to keep someone like him out.

Diego Luna in Andor.

Luthen is one of the main characters on the show, and the previous trailers have revealed that he has significant influence within the Empire. But his Imperial contacts don’t realize that Luthen is putting together a loose alliance of Rebels. Unlike Cassian, Luthen is truly devoted to bringing the Empire down. And his quest may affect Cassian’s worldview as the series goes forward.

Recommended Videos

Genevieve O’Reilly also reprises her role as Mon Mothma from Rogue One and Revenge of the Sith. She will be joined on the series by Adria Arjona as Bix Caleen, Denise Gough as Dedra Meero, Kyle Soller as Syril, Fiona Shaw as Maarva, and Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrera.

Andor will premiere on Disney+ on September 21 with the first three episodes of the series. The nine remaining episodes of season 1 will be released weekly thereafter.

Blair Marnell
Blair Marnell has been an entertainment journalist for over 15 years. His bylines have appeared in Wizard Magazine, Geek…
James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi movie can save Star Wars
Cover art for the Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi comic book series by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema.

This year's Star Wars Celebration brought exciting new looks into upcoming projects ranging from TV to movies, as well as the announcement that James Mangold (Logan, Ford v Ferrari) will helm an origin story of sorts set during the Dawn of the Jedi. And while this film will be looking back to the past, being set a whopping 25,000 years before the Battle of Yavin depicted in Star Wars: Episode IV -- New Hope, it is already poised to be one of the boldest theatrical premises for the franchise.

Star Wars has always been a universe characterized by great potential that's gone surprisingly untapped, with virtually endless storytelling possibilities in the distant past and far future. To address the elephant in the room, Lucasfilm also has a shoddy track record of late in axing or shelving announced and reported projects more than actually developing others, but Mangold's deft direction could break tired conventions and pave the way for the exciting Old Republic era on the big and small screens.
Breaking away from the Skywalker formula

Read more
5 questions we have after The Mandalorian season 3 episode 7
Bo-Katan stands near her fellow Mandalorians in The Mandalorian season 3 episode 7.

The Mandalorian really didn’t hold back this week.

The penultimate episode of the Disney+ series' third season, titled The Spies, takes more than a few shocking turns. Not only does it open with the long-awaited return of Moff Gideon (Giancarlo Esposito), but it also ends with the Imperial warlord taking Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) hostage and launching a deadly ambush on Bo-Katan (Katee Sackhoff) and her Mandalorian followers. In case that wasn’t bad enough, it’s also revealed in the episode that Moff Gideon has been hiding out on Mandalore all along — mining its precious resources and building a secret Imperial base.

Read more
What the hell happened to The Mandalorian?
Bo-Katan holds the Darksaber while standing next to Din Djarin in The Mandalorian season 3 episode 6.

The Mandalorian has always wanted to have its cake and eat it, too. Across its first two seasons, the series attempted to blend sidequest-heavy, episodic storytelling with one longform, serialized story. While the show never found the perfect balance between those two modes, its first two seasons both came together well in the end. Unfortunately, The Mandalorian season 3 hasn’t been quite as effective.

Over the course of its first six episodes, The Mandalorian’s latest season has struggled to maintain any kind of singular, serialized story. Instead, it has delivered a handful of sidequests and one-note villains that so far haven’t amounted to much. Along the way, the series has loosely threaded together its latest batch of adventures with a story about Bo-Katan Kryze (Katee Sackhoff) and Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) setting out to retake Mandalore, which has progressed at a frustratingly uneven pace.

Read more