"No, that was never on my agenda": Tony Gilroy on Darth Vader's limited presence in Andor Season 2

Andor Season 2 returned to our screens on April 22, 2025.

The cast and crew of the series gave interviews to different outlets after the release of the first three episodes. One of these interviews was given by showrunner Tony Gilroy to Rolling Stone on Friday, April 25, 2025. In this interview, Tony Gilroy touched upon a wide range of topics, including the lack of two iconic characters from the wider Star Wars Saga.

The two characters that we know for sure are not appearing in the upcoming episodes of Andor Season 2 are Emperor Sheev Palpatine and Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker. Gilroy's exact words on Vader's absence were:

“No, that was never on my agenda. Writing for Darth Vader is really limiting. I’ve done it. He doesn’t have a lot to say.”

What did Andor Season 2 showrunner Tony Gilroy say about the lack of Palpatine and Darth Vader?

Gilroy, confirming the lack of Vader in Andor Season 2, said that writing opportunities for the character are very restrictive. After explaining why Andor Season 2 doesn't include an appearance of Vader, Gilroy answered the reason for not including Palpatine in the series:

“He was too big a piece of meat for me to introduce. It was too heavy a lift. I thought about it at one point, but it was too heavy a lift.”

However, despite the lack of physical appearance of Sheev Palpatine doesn't mean that the presence of his evil isn't felt. The first three episodes of Andor Season 2 slowly build tension for our heroes as they are in a constant state of anxiety, as they might be rounded up by the imperial officials. This pressure builds towards a dark moment in the third episode of Andor Season 2, where the Star Wars franchise has never gone before.

TRIGGER WARNING: This portion of this article mentions a moment of s*xual violence. Reader discretion is advised.

With Andor Season 2, Tony Gilroy makes it clear that the Empire is Fascist:

Palpatine and his Empire were stand-ins for fascist governments across the world throughout history. But commercial needs like toys and support of a wider audience meant that the evils of the Empire needed to be defanged a bit. But Andor feels refreshing because it doesn't shy away from showing the evils of the Empire. This is observable in the first season with Narkina 5, the secluded labor prison.

In Andor Season 2, Girloy draws the parallels between the Empire and fascist governments even further right in the first episode, in the scene in which Ben Mendelsohn's Orson Krennic presides over an imperial meeting. Gilroy in The Hollywood Reporter (THR) interview published on April 22, 2025, explained the real-life inspiration for the scene:

“The very first scene that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that’s based on the Wannsee convention — the Nazi convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch.”

Then, in another interview with the same outlet the next day, Gilroy spoke about the controversial Bix Caleen moment from Andor Season 2, Episode 3:

“I get one shot to tell everything I know — or can discover, or that I’ve learned — about revolution, about battles, with as many incidents and as many colors as I can get in there, without having [the story] tip over. I mean, let’s be honest, man: The history of civilization, there’s a huge arterial component of it that’s r**e."

"All of us who are here — we are all the product of r**e. I mean armies and power throughout history [have committed r**e]. So to not touch on it, in some way … It just was organic and it felt right, coming about as a power trip for this guy. I was really trying to make a path for Bix that wunfoldould ultimately lead to clarity — but a difficult path to get back to clarity.”

These moments prove that Palpatine or Vader needs to appear on screen to link them to the evil unfolding across the galaxy.

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What do you think about the absence of Palpatine or Vader in Andor Season 2? Let us know in the comments below.

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