Character descriptions for the Rogue One prequel show on Disney+ suggest the Star Wars series will explore Cassian Andor’s origin story. Following the success of The Mandalorian’s first season, Lucasfilm is moving full-speed ahead with additional live-action Star Wars series for Disney’s streaming service. Along with an Obi-Wan Kenobi show featuring Ewan McGregor back in his prequel trilogy role, the studio is working on a series about Diega Luna’s pilot and Rebel Alliance officer Cassian Andor prior to his fateful mission with the Rogue One team. Stephen Schiff (The Americans) is serving as showrunner on the project, with filming slated to get underway in 2020.
The Cassian Andor series was reportedly is danger of being cancelled before filmmaker Tony Gilroy signed on to write and direct the show this fall. It’s not the first time Gilroy has come to Lucasfilm’s rescue either, after he previously oversaw the reshoots on Rogue One’s third act. Now, some potential character details are painting a (slightly) clearer picture of what Gilroy has in mind for the series.
The Illuminerdi has gotten ahold of breakdowns for two characters on the Rogue One prequel series. The first of them, “Mundo”, will be portrayed at thirteen and nine years old on the show, and is described as a Latinx male who’s “wild and unruly [with] a head full of brown hair and big, passionate eyes”. Meanwhile, the latter is being referred to as “Cinta” and is described as a 5-7 year old Latinx female with an appearance and attitude virtually identical to Mundo’s.
Reading between the lines, “Mundo” appears to be a younger version of Cassian, with “Cinta” being his younger sister. Cassian told Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) he’d been fighting the Empire since he was six years old in Rogue One, so it makes sense for the prequel show to function as a full-blown origin story for the character and explore all the way back to his days as a kid. It’s obvious Cassian’s childhood was rocked by tragedy, so showing what happened to him and his family when he was very young should only lend a greater sense of poignance to his actions as a grown man played by Luna. He’s far from the only one who suffered at the Empire’s hands as a boy, either; The Mandalorian’s namesake also lost his parents during an Imperial attack when he was a kid, so there’s already a precedent for live-action Star Wars TV series that address this type of tough emotional subject matter.
As with any prequel, there’s a risk the Cassian Andor series will be more preoccupied with filling in the blanks in its protagonist’s backstory than telling an engaging standalone narrative (see also: the common criticism of Solo: A Star Wars Story). However, by diving deep into his past and the traumas that shaped him, the show has a better shot at succeeding as a character study by way of a Star Wars adventure, much like The Mandalorian does during its strongest episodes. There are also some genuinely fascinating questions about Cassian’s life before Rogue One (for example, what prompted him to reprogram Alan Tudyk’s Imperial enforcer droid K-2SO in the first place) that remain unanswered for the time being, but are worth addressing on the series. Hopefully, Gilroy will find a smart way of doing exactly that.
More on the (for now, untitled) Rogue One prequel series as it develops.
Source: The Illuminerdi
