Andor’s Creator Shares Which Star Wars Character Will Have A ‘Hellacious’ Time In Season 2, And I Sympathize So Much
It’s been a long wait for Andor Season 2, with Season 1 wrapping back in November 2022. Fortunately, that wait won’t last too much longer, as the upcoming Star Wars TV show is finally set to arrive on the 2025 TV schedule in late April. Mom Mothma is among the many characters fans who have a Disney+ subscription will reunite with, but if you thought things were doing to get easier for Genevieve O'Reilly’s character in this next season, think again. In fact, Andor creator Tony Gilroy describes what’s ahead for her in Season 2 as “hellacious,” as if I wasn’t already sympathizing with Mothma enough.
During Andor Season 1, Mon Mothma was still serving as the senator from Chandrila, but she was also secretly raising funds for the Rebel Alliance, with Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael being one of her main contacts. But as Tony Gilroy, who helmed the Rogue One reshoots and is the mastermind behind Andor, explained to EW, we’re coming up to the period of Star Wars history where she’s forced to leave the Senate and become one of the Rebellion’s public figures:
Canonically, there's the moment where she leaves the Senate, and that's in our timeline. So we're definitely dealing with that, but I would say, of all the characters in the show, of all the hellacious things that people go through, and all of the difficulties and hardships, I don't think anybody has a harder road than she does. Because she has to do everything that everybody else does with all the tension, fear, and anxiety and she has to do it in public.
Those who watched Star Wars Rebels will remember in Season 3 that the main characters were tasked with transporting Mon Mothma to safety after the Empire started hunting for her when she spoke out publicly against Emperor Palpatine. Andor Season 2 will show the lead-up to that, though that’s far from the only problem on her plate. Let’s also not forget that in Season 1, Mothma had to contend with strained relationships with both her husband and daughter. While O'Reilly’s character has already made arrangements for her husband to take the fall if the Empire discovers discrepancies in her financial accounts, her daughter showing an interest in Chandrilan courtship tradition isn’t as easily handled.
Going back to Mon Mothma getting on the Empire’s bad side in Andor Season 2, Tony Gilroy also had the following kind words to say about Genevieve’s O'Reilly’s performance in this Disney+ Star Wars show:
She has nowhere to hide, and this season just ramps that up to an almost unbearable point. What Genevieve is going to do in this second season — we realized in the first season what a brilliant actress she was and that we hadn't found the limits of what she could do. We still haven't found them. But he opportunity to write for her and write her story large was very important to me in the second season.
Because Andor Season 2 will jump forward a year every three episodes, by the time the show is done, Mon Mothma will be where we find her shortly before the events of Rogue One and A New Hope. Meaning, her political career in the Empire has long since concluded and now she’s one of the Rebellion’s leading figureheads. We know she’ll make it through to the end of the Galactica Civil War and become Chancellor of the New Republic, as seen in Ahsoka, but I know it’ll be rough watching her endure even more hardship during this final batch of Andor episodes.
Andor Season 2 premieres April 22 on Disney+, with three episodes being released weekly until May 13. On Star Wars’ film side of things, The Mandalorian & Grogu opens in theaters on May 22, 2026.
Advertising by Adpathway
