After reprising his role as Star Wars villain Director Orson Krennic last year in The Bad Batch, it looks like Rogue One actor Ben Mendelsohn is eyeing a return to that galaxy far, far away for Andor Season 2. Just last weekend, Diego Luna — who plays the eponymous rebel in both Gareth Edwards' film and Tony Gilroy's series — teased to fans at ACE Superhero Comic Con that "there will be characters that you recognise" in the Peabody award-winning show's second series. And now, in an interview with The Playlist, Mexican filmmaker Alonso Ruizpalacios — director of the last three episodes of Andor's upcoming series — has let slip that Mendelsohn is among the recognisable characters fans can expect to see when the show returns.
Whilst singing the praises of his experience working on Andor, Ruizpalacios paid tribute to the heavyweight actors he'd had chance to direct on the show, specifically naming “Stellan Skarsgård, Forest Whitaker, and Ben Mendelsohn” among them. And whilst Skarsgård and Whitaker are familiar faces in the world of Andor, having played Luthen Rael and Saw Gerrera in Season 1, Mendelsohn's Krennic has yet to make an appearance in the series thus far. But with showrunner Gilroy having told Empire last year that the final three episodes of Andor S2 will cover the three days before Rogue One, and with Ruizpalacios directing said episodes, the return of the Death Star's architect at this pivotal point in the story makes perfect sense.
Having brought a grittier, more grounded, and more politically and morally complex take on the Star Wars universe to Andor's first series, the second season of Gilroy's intergalactic espionage thriller — which boasts episodes written by Gilroy, brother Dan Gilroy, Beau Willimon, and Tom Bissell — is set to span a five-year period as Cassian Andor rises through the Rebellion's ranks. We'll find out exactly how Andor reaches the moment Cassian goes to pull the trigger on Daniel Mays' Tivik — and who else's paths he may cross along the way (fingers crossed for K-2SO!) — when Andor Season 2 hits our screens (hopefully) early next year. In the meantime, we've still got mysteries to solve in this week's The Acolyte. Our bet's still on it being Qimir in the mask, just sayin'!