The Andor season finale is finally here and we couldn’t be happier with it. We won’t get bogged down with unnecessary spoilers, but Tony Gilroy and his amazing team have capped off their critically acclaimed first season with a closer that’s both deeply satisfying and leaves us ravenous for more. Despite some initial reservations about a prequel show starring a Rogue One side character, Andor has gone on to be regarded as the best thing to happen to Star Wars in years.
In other news, a Star Wars insider with a proven track record is teasing a stacked slate of movies on the horizon, and the writer of Solo: A Star Wars Story wants to see Han Solo’s backstory continue to be fleshed out. Let’s get stuck in.
Andor fans left dazzled by a brilliant season finale
After eleven great episodes, the weight of expectations was high for the Andor season finale, but the show effortlessly hit another home run. Multiple plot strands came to a satisfying conclusion, the parade for Maarva’s funeral and the eventual eruption of violence was amazing, we got some juicy insight into Nemik’s manifesto for Rebellion, the most gruesome twosome in Star Wars to date, and finally a reveal of what the prisoners were building on Narkina 5.
This fan neatly summarizes how the episode is going down on social media:
Sadly, we now face a two-year wait for Andor to return. The second season is currently shooting in the U.K. and showrunner Tony Gilroy estimates it’ll wrap in August 2023 and air in mid-2024. The finale leaves a lot of cards on the table, though we really want to see Syril bringing Dedra home to meet his awful mom, the other Rebels being suspicious of Luthen’s decision to bring Cassian fully into the group, and some resolution to the many teases that Luthen might be a Jedi.
It’s been a wild ride, Andor, see you in 2024!
The future of big screen Star Wars is looking bright
Hollywood scoopster Jeff Sneider has a good track record of what’s going on behind the scenes at Lucasfilm. He recently broke the bombshell news that Lost‘s Damon Lindelof is working on a sequel to The Rise of Skywalker, and is now reporting that Star Wars is coming back to the silver screen in force (pun intended). After all, it’s now been three years since the last movie, and Patty Jenkins’ Rogue Squadron is now on indefinite hiatus.
But, speaking on John Rocha’s The Hot Mic podcast, Sneider said big plans are afoot:
“I think there’s a lot of stuff coming down the pipe on the features side at Lucasfilm to be excited about. I think it was a conscious decision to pivot to television for a while and really establish Disney Plus and tell some different stories. Fans have to be patient because we’re not seeing any of this stuff until 2025 but from what I understand Kathleen has the next five years planned out. They have a 2026/2027 slate and we just don’t know what they have planned yet.”
Lindelof’s movie will likely be the first to arrive in December 2025, and beyond that, we have Taika Waititi, Kevin Feige, and Shawn Levy’s Star Wars projects, Rian Johnson’s long-awaited trilogy, and potentially the resurrection of Rogue Squadron. Some of those projects may never make it in front of the cameras, but at least we know that there are a lot of irons in the fire over at Lucasfilm.
Here’s hoping for some concrete announcements in the near(ish) future. It’d be great to see a roadmap of where Star Wars might be going at the next big Disney presentation.
Jon Kasdan still wants Solo 2 to happen
Solo: A Star Wars Story looks set to go down in history as a vestigial appendix to the Star Wars story. After it unexpectedly flopped at the box office in 2018, Disney and Lucasfilm canceled their plans to release a new movie each year and, after The Rise of Skywalker, focused on expanding the franchise on Disney Plus. The dangling plot threads left over from Solo, like the surprise reappearance of Darth Maul, have been all but abandoned and there doesn’t appear to be any interest in picking them back up again.
But Solo screenwriter Jon Kasdan wants to see Alden Ehrenreich back in the Millennium Falcon for his story to continue. Speaking with ComicBookMovie.com, he admitted he still thinks about all the abandoned Solo 2 plans and the ongoing #MakeSolo2Happen campaign:
“…I feel that too, I’m certainly one of those people, and when that time of year rolls around I immediately…my imagination goes to all of the things we intended to do.”
Kasdan went on to say it’s a shame Ehrenreich only got to show Han Solo in the process of becoming the iconic character and didn’t spend much time enjoying him in full A New Hope mode:
“The reason for a Solo 2 is if there’s a great reason and certainly, I’d be game if there was…there were so many great characters we were able to establish, and for me, the strongest argument for a Solo 2 is the movie was Alden’s journey to owning that mantle, and by the end of it I thought he really did, and he didn’t get the fun of getting to just inhabit it for a movie, so I’d love to see him back.”
At this point, it’s unlikely that Solo 2 will ever happen, though we may see what would have been its story play out in comic books or novels. It’s a shame, because while Solo: A Star Wars Story is definitely a lower-tier entry in the movie franchise, it’s far from an outright disaster, and a sequel probably wouldn’t have to deal with a high-profile production nightmare.
In the meantime, with Andor now wrapped up, we’re looking forward to The Bad Batch on Jan. 4, 2023 and the third season of The Mandalorian in February 2023. After Andor, other Star Wars media can look a bit shallow, but we’re confident Din Djarin and Grogu can deliver when it counts.