In the latest episode of The Rogue Ones podcast, our podcast dedicated to the “Star Wars” prequel series, “Andor,” I sat down once again with Dan Gilroy, the brother of series creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy, and one of the leading writers on the series.
Like Tony, Dan came up in the industry as crack-shot screenwriter. Still, in recent years, thanks to his stellar directorial debut, “Nightcrawler” starring Jake Gyllenhaal, the younger Gilroy sibling has become known as a super writer director working with heavyweights like Denzel Washington and Colin Farrell (“Roman J. Israel, Esq.”) and once more with Gyllenhaal (“Velvet Buzzsaw”).
READ MORE: ‘Andor’: Tony Gilroy Digs Into Andor Season 2 Spoilers, The Final Shot, A Horror-Inspired K-2SO Ep That Never Was & Much More [The Rogue Ones Podcast]
For “Andor,” Gilroy was recruited by his older brother, who rewrote on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” and was instrumental in reconceiving the reshoots, which he directed, edited and oversaw. Gilroy’s pitch to his younger brother Dan was essentially looking at the nuts-and-bolts of what it takes to put on a revolution, a rebellion, and the granular, messy, human cost of it all.
Gilroy is unabashedly concerned with the fragile state of democracy in the country right now and will be attending the anti-Donald Trump “No Kings” protests in Los Angeles this weekend. In just the last few days, given the the L.A. protests, and the National Guard’s response, “Andor” is seemingly receiving yet another second or third life and is all over social media— many of the show’s arcs about manipulatively provoking protestors into violence as a means to justify occupation and further tyranny are chillingly relevant in this very moment.
While not very online, Gilroy said he’s been made aware of the recent occurrence with friends constantly texting him links, memes and posts.
“I’m aware of it, it’s quite a phenomenon,” he said. “And it seems to be building, no question about it.”
Gilroy wrote some of the best three episode arcs of “Andor,” the Aldhani heist in season one that helped further radicalize Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and the key episodes of the infamous Ghorman massacre, a pivotal moment in “Star Wars” lore where thousands of peaceful protestors were killed at the hands of the Imperial regime as part of the Galactic Empire’s escalating crackdown on rebel activity in the galaxy.
For Aldhani, in season one, Gilroy helped write the now, oft-quoted manifesto written by the young idealist dissident rebel Nemic (Alex Lawther) and how it rouses Andor out of his apathetic self-interest (“The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear.”)
It’s an outstanding monologue, one of the show’s many mic-drop soliloquies, but the modest Gilroy always pushed credit towards his brother Tony.
“Tony had the character of Nemic in the outline and had the idea of [that character] penning a pamphlet that was going to have relevance to people who heard it afterwards,” he explained. “So anytime, I had to write a Nemic line, my God, I would spend days on it because this has to sound like something that’s going to resonate over centuries, throughout the galaxy.”
“I felt like I was writing the Declaration of Independence,” he continued. “You’re going back through history and thinking, what did people say about liberty? What do people say about truth?”
“With Nemic, you’re presenting it as a homegrown auto didactic genius when it comes to liberty,” Gilroy explained about the character Alex Lawther brought to life. “His stuff is just inspired on every level. I’m sure Tony took what I wrote and changed it or rewrote it, but I might have had a couple of lines that survived.”

Gilroy said his favorite character on the show was Genevieve O’Reilly’s Imperial senator Mon Mothma. He also had the privilege of writing her already-classic, epic monologue in the turning point episode nine, “Welcome to the Rebellion.”
‘Andor’ Season 2: Genevieve O’Reilly On Mon Mothma’s Masks, Loss & Legacy, & Finally Getting Her Moment [The Rogue Ones Podcast]
“I wrote a draft of it. Tony rewrote it, but the thrust, theme, and ideas are definitely all in there,” he explained, “Tony and I are on the same page. There are people who believe that things are worth dying for, and then there are people who don’t.”
“There are people who hear Mon Mothma’s speech and [think], ‘I would never risk my life to do something like that, I’ll never do that,’” he continued. “But I believe there are things worth dying for, so when we’re working on Mon’s speech we’re coming from a place of, ‘This is real shit’ and she’s putting herself in mortal jeopardy, and it’s a miracle she gets out [alive]. And when you say that about a character—there are things worth dying for—you’re coming from a real place, it gets very real, very quickly.”
Gilroy explained that the fiery context of Mothma’s speeches was years spent as a member of the Galactic Senate, upholding the values of democracy only to see it slowly erode in front of her through cowardice, apathy and fear.
“In her world, the Senate was guided by democratic principles for ages,” he explained. “And in [episodes] 208 and 209, we’re watching its capitulation to the Emperor completely. During her speech, looking out at her contemporaries, Mothma sees political colleagues who have “completely retreated from their beliefs out of laziness and expediency and cowardice.”
Gilroy said the layered and impassioned speech had two intended audiences. “The first group is these craven elected officials who’ve abandoned their posts and left the people who voted for them at the mercy of true evil,” he clarified.
“The second group she’s speaking to is the countless inhabitants of the galaxy,” he continued. “It’s in her speech that the goal of unbridled authority is to make people feel helpless, to break them down so they think resistance is futile and has no chance of success. And that’s why the Empire so desperately tries to shut her mic off. And through her self-immolation, she becomes an example of defiance, an inspiration for others to follow. The death of the truth is the ultimate evil, and she’s going against it. It’s terrifying to the Empire, and it’s certainly historically accurate for our world.”

*Spoilers for the series ahead if you haven’t seen it.*
Like “Rogue One,” where characters made the ultimate sacrifice, characters in “Andor” make all kinds of sacrifices of all shapes and sizes. Mon Mothma gives up everything, her life, her family, her status, for the cause, but Bix Caleen, played by Adria Arjona.
In the series, Bix leaves her romantic partner, Cassian Andor, and it’s revealed in the last shot of the series that she’s had Cassian’s baby, though the Rebel Alliance Captain didn’t even know she was expecting. This has led many audiences to believe that Bix left Cassian because she was pregnant and did not want the child to burden the insurgent hero and his greater purpose rebellion cause.
But Gilroy said that Bix leaves him and sacrifices that relationship because of the Force Healer that spots Cassian and can fatefully understand his higher-calling purpose—the events of which we know thanks to “Rogue One.”
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For great clarity and context, in the series, a Force Healer touches one of Andor’s wounds and can feel that he’s destined for something important in the larger story against the Empire. Andor, a skeptic, of course, wants nothing to do with what he believes is space mumbo jumbo, but the Force Healer’s words land with Bix and she suddenly feels like all this is true: Cassian is destined for a higher purpose in defeating the Empire, thus she must leave him so he won’t abandon his post for her—something the rebel fighter attempts to do at one point.
“Tony always knew that the Force was going to [enter] obliquely in the second season,” Gilroy explained about the connection they made to the spiritual side of “Star Wars.”
“Bix is watching this, and it’s really landing [with her],” he continued. “She thinks, ‘This is true. Cassian [will] play an enormous part in saving the galaxy so when [Cassian] comes back from Ghorman and says, ‘There’s nothing more important than us, I’m leaving the rebellion,’ he’s signing his death warrant for this relationship, because she’s going to take what the Force Healer said. She will think, ‘I cannot, in any way, be a part of stopping him.’ So, I never saw the pregnancy as the prime motive.”

All episodes of “Andor” are now available to stream on Disney+. Listen to the entire interview with Dan Gilroy below:

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