The uprising on Disney+ has begun. Andor, the newest Star Wars series, debuted last week on the streaming service with three action-packed episodes that explore the backstory of Diego Luna’s character in Rogue One. A character poster for each of the three new characters introduced in the premiere has been produced in preparation for the upcoming episode. The first poster features Adria Arjona as Bix Caleen, a friend of Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor (Morbius, True Detective). On Ferrix, a whole new planet in the Star Wars universe, Bix Caleen runs a scrapyard. She swiftly earns Andor’s trust when she utilises her extraterrestrial contacts to bring in Stellan Skarsgard’s Luthen Rael to bail him out of trouble.
On her character poster, she is shown from the chest up, surrounded by crimson smoke, looking upward as the iconic X-Wings from Star Wars pass overhead. The next poster features Kyle Soller’s character Syril Karn, who is quickly being established as the series’ antagonist (Poldark). Syril Karn is a deputy inspector with the Pre-Mor Authority’s Security Inspection squad. The Pre-Mor Authority is a relatively new addition to the Star Wars canon; it is essentially a multinational conglomerate with ties to the Galactic Empire. Syril Karn is a young, ambitious, and devoted police officer who follows Andor’s trail after the latter murders two cops while searching for his long-lost sister.
Karn’s poster, with its crimson smoke and X-Wings in the sky, is visually similar to Bix Caleen’s. On this poster, though, his gaze is fixed straight ahead, and his expression is icy. Fiona Shaw (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) as Maarva Andor is featured on the third and final poster. Maarva Andor is Cassian’s adoptive mother. There are flashbacks in the show that show how Cassian was living with a community of kids in the jungles of a distant planet when a spaceship crashed there. Next, Cassian sneaked aboard the ship, where he was discovered by Maarva and her husband when they came to scavenge. They whisked him away from the planet to hide him from the hostile locals who would inevitably come hunting for the downed ship. Even though she disapproves of Cassian’s irresponsible behaviour as an adult, she does everything she can to shield her adoptive son from being captured by the law.
Her third poster follows the same design aesthetic as the first two but features a throwback photo of her instead of a contemporary one. The cast of Andor has both familiar and unfamiliar names from the Star Wars canon, with stars like Luna, Forest Whitaker, and Genevieve O’Reilly returning to their Star Wars roles. Arjona, Skarsgard, Soller, Shaw, Anton Valensi, Alex Ferms, and Denise Gough are just some of the new faces in the cast. Tony Gilroy, who wrote Rogue One and other movies including The Bourne Identity and its sequels, developed and is running the programme.
Andor premiered on Disney+ on October 3, and new episodes are available every Wednesday.