Star Wars fans went wild on Twitter last night as it was announced that The Mandalorian is not the only live-action Star Wars show in development, with Diego Luna set to return as Cassian Andor for a show that follows his adventures. The full announcement on StarWars.com can be read here.
Though there is not much confirmed at the moment, we know it will be appearing on the Disney streaming service (now known to be called Disney+) and will go into production next year, but there is not currently a release date. The description states that the show will follow Cassian “during the formative years of the Rebellion and prior to the events of Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and “will explore tales filled with espionage and daring missions to restore hope to a galaxy in the grip of a ruthless Empire.”
So before I get into my thoughts on the show itself, I just want to mention what I think this may mean for the movies in the short term. I am a big fan of Collider Videos and many of the shows they put on. On a recent episode of Collider Live, Kristian Harloff mentioned that with Disney distributing the Avatar movies, he could see the Star Wars movies releasing twice a year as we would have The Mandalorian providing yearly content. While I hope that is not the case and I would love an annual Star Wars movie, I think the fact that we now have confirmation of 2 live-action Star Wars shows means that his prediction was likely correct, at least for the foreseeable future.
I’m a big fan of Rogue One and would currently rank it number 3 on my list of all the Star Wars films, though I would not be surprised to see it rise as time goes on. I really enjoyed the character of Cassian and Diego Luna’s portrayal of him and thought the novelisation did a great job of expanding the character, so I am very excited by this news. Both in the film and the novel, it is stated that Cassian did some dark things in the name of the Rebellion and it will be great to see this darker side to the good guys.
What really excites me is the possible links that this could have to the larger canon with regards to characters. A number of characters from Rogue One could appear at least in a cameo form, like Bail Organa, Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly returned to voice the character in Rebels) and Jan Dodonna. As his commanding officer, I would be shocked if General Draven does not appear in the show and (depending on the timeline) it would be great to see Alan Tudyk reprise his role as K-2SO, though that may not be until later in the season or even perhaps later seasons. Beyond this, it would be great to see some of the Special Forces soldiers like Melshi & Pao appear with Cassian on some missions to help establish why these soldiers were willing to join the Rogue One crew on their suicide mission.
While I think these are the more likely links, there are some other ones I think could be done (and would certainly love to see):
- Saw Gerrera and his Partisans were part of the Rebellion, so we could see their arguments with the Alliance Council and their split with the Alliance. Forest Whitaker could reprise his role (as he did in Rebels) and we could see more of Staven, Edrio & Benthic Two-Tubes, Moroff, Weeteef Cyu-Bee and other members of the Partisans
- Imperial officers from canon yet to appear in the films could appear, such as Nils Tenant or (my preference) Rae Sloane. Other officers could also appear like Colonel Yularen
- Cassian was a Fulcrum agent, depending on the exact timeline, we could get cameos from other Fulcrums, like Alexsandr Kallus and Ahsoka Tano
- We could see the mission that brings X-wings into the Alliance starfighter corps
- If Cassian has missions relating to the criminal underworld, we could see a number of the cartels feature like the Hutts, Pykes, Black Sun and Crimson Dawn. We could also get cameos from bounty hunters like Embo, Dengar, Bossk and Boba Fett
- Sticking with the criminal underworld theme and we could get Enfys Nest and the Cloud Riders working alongside Cassian against one or more of the cartels
Do I think all this will happen? Probably not, but I can certainly get excited from this announcement. What are your thoughts on the news? Does a live-action show following Cassian interest you? Who or what would you like to see in the show? Let me know in the comments. Thanks for reading and May the Force be with you…
The Canon Padawan 