‘Andor’ Season 2 trailer Easter eggs recommend a Star Wars revolution

If there have been an award for taking a sequence of grim clips from a grim present and making them appear completely joyous, then the trailer for Andor season 2 — coming to Disney+ on April 22 — can be a lock to win this yr.

As followers of season 1 know, Andor may be many issues (jail break drama, political intrigue, pulse-pounding spy thriller), however mild and fluffy IT ain’t. In keeping with creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy, Andor is mostly a Charles Dickens-like story: an orphan tries to flee his circumstances, discovering buddies and foes who expose the darkish coronary heart of a merciless period.

That orphan is in fact Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), one of many insurgent spies who (spoiler alert for a 9 yr outdated film) dies after transmitting the Dying Star plans to the Insurgent Alliance in Rogue One. Gilroy is obvious about the truth that the present finishes the place the film begins.

So we already how Season 2 will finish: with Cassian completely keen to kill a colleague who would decelerate his escape, and completely able to die combating the Empire.

Cassian’s destiny — certainly, the destiny of all of the insurgent figures we see on this trailer, together with future insurgent chief Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) — is to be haunted by all of the struggling in service of that trigger. (That is exactly the purpose of Information” goal=”_blank” data-ga-click=”1″ data-ga-label=”$textual content” data-ga-item=”text-link” data-ga-module=”content_body” title=”(opens in a brand new window)”>Mon Mothma’s most well-known line, the primary time we met the character, in Return of the Jedi.)

You may see IT right here of their nervous faces, Cassian’s temporary smile and enjoyable 1950’s-style disguise however.

You may definitely see IT within the hardened gaze of Noticed Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), additionally returning in season 2. Noticed, as we all know from Rogue One, Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, is probably the most morally-compromised insurgent within the galaxy — a lot in order that Mothma and her shadowy contact Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgård) shun his strategies.

Rael, additionally seen wanting unhappy within the trailer, already summed up the place all his fellow rebels are heading in Andor season 2. “I’ve given up all probability at inside peace,” Rael stated in season 1’s most critically-acclaimed performance. “I made my thoughts a sunless place, I share my desires with ghosts, I get up each day to an equation I wrote 15 years in the past from which there’s just one conclusion: I am damned for what I do.”

What’s that trailer music attempting to say?

At first blush, then, IT could seem out of sync {that a} 2004 rock anthem by Steve Earle, “The Revolution Begins Now,” performs over these pictures. The music attracts our consideration to the colourful celebration Mon Mothma is attending, the newest in a sequence of elite gatherings for the Senator, fairly than her anguished look.

Mashable Prime Tales

In the meantime, the enhancing makes IT look like Cassian and his hooded colleague are detonating a bomb in a constructing behind them with the coolness of motion film heroes, not the hardened masks of reluctant rebels.

Nonetheless, Earle’s lyrics communicate to a different highly effective story thread in Andor. The track implores listeners to make a stand, to “rise above your concern and tear the partitions round you down” irrespective of the place you’re. That remembers the Season 1 speech by Kino Loy (Andy Serkis), who overcame his concern and helped his fellow prisoners to flee by working collectively.

IT additionally matches with the “struggle the Empire” speech delivered by Cassian’s adopted mom Maarva (Fiona Shaw) through posthumous hologram within the season 1 finale. In keeping with the director, Gilroy’s original line for Maarva was “fuck the Empire” — evidently a way more rock-and-roll assertion than Disney+ would enable.

The Season 2 trailer accommodates one other, probably extra troubling track lyric, nonetheless. IT‘s delivered by Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn, returning to the franchise for the primary time since Rogue One). “What a swell celebration that is,” we hear Krennic say, over a picture of him gazing lovingly at his pet challenge, the Dying Star.

That is clearly taken from the Cole Porter track “Nicely Did You Evah,” most famously carried out by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra within the 1956 film Excessive Society. The track is a satire of two drunk, gossiping celebration visitors, who deal with even the potential destruction of Earth calmly, and repeatedly return to the scene round them with the identical line: What a swell celebration that is!

You may anticipate that Krennic says this line on the similar shindig the place we see Mon Mothma. IT would match Coruscant’s political elite, the folks we have already seen wilfully ignoring the rise of the Empire throughout them, with a wink on the viewers.

However IT would additionally breach one of many floor guidelines of the franchise as laid down by George Lucas. Star Wars, traditionally, does not wink on the viewers. There could also be lots of enjoyable available in IT, however the galaxy far, distant takes itself very severely when IT comes to creating itself immersive and plausible.

You could discover reminders of Earth tradition within the distant future (keep in mind, that is all taking place “a very long time in the past”), however they’re all intentionally mashed up with one another, creating one thing that feels new and alien.

The cantina band in A New Hope could also be taking part in one thing that seems like swing music, however they’re additionally bizarre insectoid aliens utilizing uncommon devices. (Precise Earth musicians have been thrown into the much-reviled Star Wars Vacation Particular, proving the purpose.)

So Krennic instantly quoting Cole Porter? This ain’t IT, chief. We have by no means heard the phrase “swell” in a Star Wars story for a similar purpose we have by no means heard “groovy”: IT‘s too clearly related to a time and place on Earth.

We will solely hope that Tony Gilroy is doing the identical right here as he did when he stepped in to reshoot Rogue One: slicing a controversial trailer that contains moments never seen in the final cut.

As a result of hey, even Charles Dickens wanted so as to add some layers of fluff and enjoyable so the general public may swallow his grimmest tales.

Andor Season 2 premieres Apr. 22 on Disney+.