By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
Andor has been an amazingly successful Star Wars TV show, and it achieved this success without Dave Filoni, the man many fans consider the creative heir to George Lucas. As for Filoni, he basically shot to fame as the man behind the immensely successful The Clone Wars cartoon which introduced the fan-favorite character Ahsoka. Despite the man not working on Andor himself, however, it’s clear that this show learned a crucial lesson from The Clone Wars: namely, that fans are all too ready for a deep dive into characters that this sci-fi franchise failed to previously flesh out.
What Andor Learned Fro Dave Filoni
To understand how Andor was influenced by Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars, it’s important to remember what made that cartoon popular in the first place. The show greatly fleshed out characters like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker that weren’t really developed much in the Star Wars prequels while adding depth to things like Order 66 and Chancellor Palpatine’s machinations. Almost a decade and a half after The Clone Wars premiered, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy used this same formula in his show to flesh out the Cassian Andor character who previously appeared in Rogue One.
Previously, that character came across as very one-dimensional…a pragmatic soldier who made the kind of hard calls that heroes like Luke Skywalker would never have to make. But he didn’t get much of an arc in Rogue One. He’s basically a gruff guy with a heart of gold from his first scene until his last. Oh, and in his last scene (spoilers, sweetie!), he dies, so there was never any chance of getting a sequel to flesh out his character.
Fortunately, Andor did for its title character what Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars did for the heroes of the prequel trilogy: added dimensionality to characters by expanding on their backgrounds and motivations. For example, many fans have noted how the final duel of Revenge of the Sith becomes much more meaningful after watching all of The Clone Wars and seeing how the relationship between Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker developed. The prequels never really developed that relationship thanks to their time jumps between each film and relatively short running time; the cartoon, however, had 133 episodes which covered years of these Jedi bonding as battle brothers.
Andor will end after the second season, so it won’t have nearly as many episodes as Dave Filoni’s classic cartoon. Nonetheless, it is using the earlier show’s formula to flesh out how someone as brutally pragmatic as Cassian Andor ended up with the idealistic Rebels…specifically, a simple quest to find his sister ultimately landed him in the cogs of an Imperial machine he will now stop at nothing to destroy. He’s portrayed as a character motivated by spite, which means he may have the most realistic motivation of any hero in a galaxy far, far away.
While Andor’s second season hasn’t aired yet (though the trailer looks phenomenal), it’s a safe bet that it will follow Dave Filoni’s The Clone Wars in another important way: dramatically recontextualizing the noble death of Cassian Andor. Sure, his final scene in Rogue One is already moving, but the blunt truth remains that the death of a brand-new character who was just one part of a large ensemble cast can only have so much emotional impact. But after watching a couple dozen episodes of Andor, chances are that his final scene in Rogue One will move fans to tears when they see the culmination of his long journey.
None of this means that Andor would have been a better show with Dave Filoni’s involvement, though. Showrunner Tony Gilroy has made a career out of telling more realistic Star Wars stories, and Filoni’s particular brand of fannish mythmaking would be out of place in Andor. Still, it’s fair to say that Andor would never even have been made if Gilroy didn’t realize how wise Filoni was to create a prequel TV show that fleshed out some one-dimensional characters into startling life.
And considering the failure of wholly original Disney+ shows like The Acolyte, the House of Mouse would be very wise to invest in prequel TV shows built around other underdeveloped characters, like a Finn and Poe Dameron buddy comedy would be that leaned into fans’ endless speculation about whether these two would hook up. Making the sequels retroactively better while leaning into the smuttiness of BookTok? I’ll take cash or check for this idea, Disney!
