Andor's Showrunner Just Confirmed A Tragic Season 2 Storyline
Yes, you do hear wedding bells.
The cast of Andor knows a thing or two about suffering for the cause, but few are more familiar than Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) According to showrunner Tony Gilroy, few characters will go through more than the Galactic Senator in Andor’s second and final season; in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Gilroy teased a “hellacious” arc.
“I don’t think anybody has a harder road than she does,” Gilroy said. “She has to do everything that everybody else does with all the tension, fear, and anxiety and she has to do it in public. She has nowhere to hide, and this season just ramps that up to an almost unbearable point.”
As many fans have guessed, Andor Season 2 will serve as a turning point for Mon Mothma. She was living a precarious double life in Season 1, serving on the Imperial Senate while secretly funding the Rebel Alliance. As Andor catches up to the events of Rogue One and A New Hope, Mon will eventually shirk her Senate duties to become the public face of the Rebellion. And as Gilroy teased with EW, her journey will only get harder — and more personal.
Andor Season 2 will continue its most shocking plot point: “It’s looking like there might be a wedding.”
Andor Season 1 ended on a disquieting cliffhanger for Mon Mothma and her family. While no one in her immediate circle knows she’s working with the Rebellion, Mon was forced to use her daughter Leida (Bronte Carmichael) as a bargaining chip to launder funds. At the end of Season 1, she secured a tentative alliance with a shadowy Chandrilan broker, Davo Sculdun (Richard Dillane), but only on the condition that Mon introduced Leida to his son.
In keeping with old Chandrilan customs, said introduction would pave the way for a marriage of convenience, something Mon is vehemently against. But Mon’s in no position to refuse Davo’s offer, and as the Andor Season 2 trailer suggests, she has no choice but to set aside her principles and co-sign a child marriage between Leida and Stekan Sculdun.
The plot of Season 2 is mostly still a mystery, but Gilroy and his cast recently teased a few moments in an Andor streaming event, including the potential Mothma-Sculdun union. O’Reilly was asked how she felt about Mon’s choice to marry Leida off at the end of Season 1, to which Gilroy responded, “She hasn’t yet.” That said, all signs do point to marriage.
“It’s looking like there might be a wedding,” the showrunner said. “If you could write a wedding, you’d want to write a wedding, wouldn’t you?”
Tensions between Mon Mothma and her daughter Leida will play a role in Andor Season 2.
Gilroy was careful not to give too much away regarding Season 2, but he did tease “more fun” for “anybody who’s into the Ledia-Mon Mothma relationship.” Whether that manifests as actual fun (in the trailer, Mon does get to dance at what looks like Leida’s wedding) or something on the angstier side remains to be seen, but that mystery only makes the upcoming season more exciting.
O’Reilly, for her part, has enjoyed exploring the “intergenerational” tensions between Mon and Leida. Though she was just as shocked by her character’s choices at the end of Season 1 — “Are we really doing this?” she asked Gilroy at one point — she’s since used that to inform Mon’s arc in Season 2. “It was such a joy to play and to wrestle with and to feel,” the actor said. “There’s so much that I think you’re gonna love in Season 2.”
