While “Star Wars” fans are now accustomed to an overload of fan service and legacy characters showing up left and right in the modern era of streaming shows set in a galaxy far far away, “Andor” showrunner and creator Tony Gilroy has revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that trying to get established characters can be difficult, expensive, and potentially a scheduling nightmare.
“Legacy characters are really tricky to bring back. They’re very, very expensive. A lot of times, their schedules don’t work out,” Gilroy shares. “There’s probably a couple people that we wanted to have in Yavin at the end, who are in the beginning of [‘Rogue One’], but we just couldn’t get them because they were busy,” Gilroy told THR.
READ MORE: ‘Andor’: Tony Gilroy Teases More Romance, Season 2 Guests, Additional ‘Rogue One’ Characters & More [Interview]
The showrunner credits both Disney and Lucasfilm on not pressuring him to cram a bunch of storied characters that “On the creative side, I will never have an experience like this ever again,” Gilroy a. “It’s just amazing that they trusted us, and they backed our play all the way through.”
It’s hard to imagine that Jimmy Smits would be a problem to get back as he had recently appeared as Senator Bail Organa of Alderaan (another prominent legacy character that showed up on Yavin in “Rogue One”) in “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Then again, if someone is busy, they’re busy.
One truly expensive “legacy character” to put on screen is Alan Tudyk‘s K-2SO (a pricey combination of CGI, motion-capture, and puppeteering), an Imperial droid character introduced in “Rogue One” that had been originally announced as being part of Season 1, only for a stand-in droid briefly appearing but not being the version we came to root for in the film but is expected to be showing up this time.
Another option of whom Gilroy might be referencing is how “Rogue One” saw Chopper and “Star Wars: Rebels” ship The Ghost, cameoing on Yavin. With that said, trying to get that live-action cast of Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Natasha Liu Bordizzo, Eman Esfandi, and potentially Rosario Dawson back after making the jump in “Ahsoka” might have been a troublesome/expensive ordeal (even if Dave Filoni tried to work his magic) as their contracts might be limited to follow-up seasons to that specific show, scheduling issues, and two actors need heavy makeup to play their characters.
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Speaking of legacy characters, without spoiling anything or naming names, there is a recasting in Season 2, and we’ll have to wait to see how die-hard fans react to that one.
We’re beyond stoked to see how Gilroy and his team have finished up the final run of episodes for “Andor” as the streaming series debuts April 22 exclusively on Disney+.