Andor, starring Diego Luna as the titular Star Wars hero, is coming back for its second (and final) season at long last. We will finally see how both Cassian Andor and Mon Mothma’s storylines sync up to where we meet them in Rogue One. The season has 12 episodes overall, which is an unusual amount for a Disney+ original show. Especially one as pricey as Andor. But Disney+ won’t spread it out over 12 weeks. The streamer has revealed that Andor’s second season will have an unusual release schedule. Here’s how it’s going to look, according to official Disney sources:
The final season of Andor will unfold over 12 episodes broken down into four chapters of three episodes each. The first chapter will premiere April 22, with subsequent chapters debuting each week.
April 22 — E1, E2, E3
April 29 — E4, E5, E6
May 6 — E7, E8, E9
May 13 — E10, E11, E12
Essentially, Star Wars fans will have a three-hour movie every week for a solid month. And based on the high quality of the first season, it’ll be a fantastic movie. Of course, this was not always the intended rollout for the show. When Collider asked Andor creator Tony Gilroy if they always planned to release Andor season two this way, here’s what he had to say about it:
We heard about that as we finished. We finished the show in November. We finaled the show in November, so we really had to wait for Skeleton Crew. It’s a Disney decision. There’s an internal logic behind it. They have their reasons. It’s kind of cool. I mean, it puts a burden on podcasters. What are they going to do? It’s a movie a week, you know?
So what is Disney’s internal logic here, you may ask? Well, we have no proof. However, recent polling has shown that younger viewers greatly prefer the binge model versus weekly episode drops. It makes sense, as a whole generation grew up with the model Netflix created. Streamers always care more about what a younger demographic likes versus The Olds, who were reared on weekly episodes. So this model, similar to Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, seems to be meeting somewhere in the middle. Fans can binge several episodes, and Disney+ can still stretch out the experience for longer than a weekend. Whatever way they choose to release the follow-up to Andor’s brilliant first season, we know we can’t wait for it to get here.