Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy has revealed that, while he enjoyed The Mandalorian, he never actually finished watching it.
"It was very disorienting for me to step outside my five year period. If I went backwards and looked at stuff, if I went forward and looked at stuff. I started watching Mandalorian in the beginning, but then I couldn't watch anymore, because, as cool as it was, I loved it, it made me – I lost my frequency," Gilroy told The Ringer-Verse podcast back in June, in quotes that have since resurfaced. "I didn't find it helpful to know what was gonna happen after so much… I definitely siloed my period off to make it work, as a defence mechanism I suppose, as much as anything."
The Mandalorian takes place many years after Andor on the Star Wars timeline, so it makes sense that Gilroy might have found that sort of foreknowledge unhelpful while he was working on his own show.
Andor has ended up being the most critically acclaimed live-action Star Wars show ever, though it missed out on multiple acting Emmy nominations.
"It's driven us crazy on the show, every time people, the clickbait, trying to draw controversy between us and the other shows," Gilroy said recently. "By the same token, it would be very wrong to come in and try to slavishly reproduce [Andor]." He added that Lucasfilm has some "really unusual" projects in the works.
Next up for Star Wars is The Mandalorian & Grogu, which will be the duo's first big screen adventure. After that, the next theatrical movie will be Star Wars: Starfighter, which stars Ryan Gosling, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, and Amy Adams, and is directed by Shawn Levy. The film recently began production in the UK. We can also expect Ahsoka season 2 soon, though it doesn't have a release date just yet.
You can keep up to date with everything the galaxy far, far away has in store with our guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies and shows.
