Editor’s note: The below recap contains spoilers for Andor Season 2
Thanks toAndor’s new release model that sees the show release three episodes at a time, the hit Star Wars series will conclude with its final batch of installments next week. One of the more beloved scenes from the first few episodes came fromMon Motha (Genevieve O’Reilly)dancing at her daughter’s wedding. This is much more than a few simple moves, as Mon is dancing to mask her pain, anxiety, and fears. The scene represents so much of what Mon Mothma and other members of the rebellion deal with regularly, and during a recent interview with Collider’sSteve Weintraub, creatorTony Gilroyspoke about how it came to be:
“We built the song with Nick [Britell] last season, and then it was a sort of intergalactic hit. Then we were like,‘I’m going to do the wedding. That song’s got to be in it.Let’s do a really big EDM mix on it. Let’s have that be the song of the wedding.’ We do one of these crescendos.”
Gilroy also called back toAndorSeason 1, Episode 3, “Reckoning,” when Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) was on Ferrix for the first time, taking Cassian (Diego Luna) away to begin his work with the Rebellion. Gilroy spoke about how it was“a big wraparound that sort of ties everything together,”which led him back to wanting to do more with the music:
“Well, I want to use that. Let’s go totally nuts, and let’s use this EDM song. That’s a big challenge. Emotionally, how is that going to work with saving the day and almost being raped, and everything and an Eedy coming to the house? How is it going to work?"
It’s hard to quantify from an outside perspective just how much goes into making a TV show, but one listen to Gilroy talk about how he and the team brought this scene to life adds a new perspective:“Johnny and I, and Ari [Kleiman] and his team. I mean, you tinker-toy it together. You build it in sketches, you build it on paper, you build it with iPhones.“I don’t think many of us expected phones were used when makingAndor.“You time out the song and time out the beats, and you make sure that the rhythm of everything, when you’re dropping the song, when you come back, you’re actually on rhythm that people actually follow. They’ll see that the BPM is going to be constant all the way through.“Gilroy described all this as“an incredible amount of carpentry,”and you won’t find us lining up to disagree with him. However, making thehighest-rated project inStar Warshistorydoesn’t make you immune to doubt:
“And then people have to have faith that it’s going to work becauseit doesn’t really work at all until it gets right.It’s like a soufflé — is it going to rise or not? Johnny and I are like, ‘Yeah, it’s going to work. It’s going to work. It’s going to work. It’s gonna work.’ Other people are like, ‘I don’t know.’ You always think, ‘Okay, maybe in the end, if it fails, we’ll do something symphonic.’ But they’re really construction projects that come from a lot of experience and a lot of tricks of things that you’ve done before.”
Ultimately, all the work that went into creating this scene proved to be worth it. It was such a fan favorite that Star Wars even releaseda one-hour cut of Mon Mothma dancing, but it hasn’t stopped there. Gilroy is campaigning for the stems (separated audio files) to be released so that fans can remix them and make their own versions. He went on to say, “Actually, over the weekend, I’m trying to have them release the stems. We’re trying to have them release the stems so that people can remix it.I’m trying to get permission to do that.”
Why Isn’t Jimmy Smits in ‘Andor’ Season 2?
Many fans were stunned not only to seeBail Organa inAndorSeason 2, Episode 6, but to also see he had been recast asBenjamin Bratttakes over the role fromJimmy Smits. Gilroy recently sat down for an interview with Collider’sMaggie Lovitt, who asked him why Smits isn’t in the show. The answer isn’t as complicated as it might seem, as it was onlyscheduling conflicts that kept him from appearing in the series. Smits first played the character inAttack of the Clones(2002), and he most recently suited up as the Senator of Alderaan in 2022’sObi-Wan Kenobi.
AndorSeason 2 is now streaming. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates on the series and all things Star Wars and watchAndoronDisney+. Look for more from our exclusive interview with Tony Gilroy soon.
