An episode “like a horror movie” involving an abandoned space ship was cut from Andor season 2 due to budget constraints, creator Tony Gilroy reveals.
NB: The following contains a mild spoiler for Andor season 2 episode 8.
The Star Wars franchise has contained a few grotesque and disturbing moments over its long history. But what about an entire hour-long space horror story? In different circumstances, that’s exactly what we would have got in Andor season 2.
As episodes seven, eight and nine emerged on Disney+ this week, showrunner Tony Gilroy spoke to Entertainment Weekly about the making of Andor season 2, and the concessions that had to be made to bring it to the screen.
One of those concessions involved episode nine, and the arrival of a character fans of Rogue One will have been anticipating for a while: the lofty, cuttingly sarcastic droid, K-2SO, voiced by Alan Tudyk. Reprogrammed and thoroughly tamed by the events of that 2016 movie, K2 units were originally deadly war machines used like berserkers by the Empire.
According to Gilroy, he and his screenwriter brother Dan originally envisioned episode nine as being “a self-contained episode… that was like a horror movie.”
The episode would have seen Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) and his band of rebels target an abandoned spaceship, which they attempt to confiscate as part of the war against the Empire. The only trouble is, there’s a formidable threat onboard.
“It was the K2 story,” Gilroy said. “They had to bring this huge ugly tanker ship to Yavin, and there was a KX unit that was trapped inside there hunting. It was sort of like a monster movie with K2 on it. It was really cool.”
Read more: Andor season 2 speaks to a hunger for a deeper, more resonant Star Wars
The idea was eventually scrapped, however, due to budgetary constraints. Where Andor season 1 was made as Disney was investing aggressively in its then-new streaming platform, season 2 was conceived amid an atmosphere of belt-tightening. As a result, the Space Hulk-esque episode of Andor went, and K-2SO was given a rather different introduction that we won’t spoil here.
“We could not afford to do it,” Gilroy said. “It was made clear that it was out of the range, so we had to abandon that and consolidate things.”
The latest trio of Andor episodes have been some of the most gripping so far. All the same, we can’t help but wish the Gilroys could have gotten to make their miniature space horror movie.
Andor season 2’s final installments – episodes 10, 11 and 12 – will stream on Disney+ from the 14th May 2025.
