Diego Luna hints at Cassian’s complicated ‘Andor’ backstory

Cassian Andor is something of the Black Widow of Star Wars; both big players in their organizations, each of them shrouded in mystery and suspicion, and both of whom have tragically met their fates in the present day of their respective canons.

Last year, we finally got a hold of Black Widow’s tumultuous life story in Marvel Studios’ feature film of the same name. We will soon be getting the same for her Star Wars equivalent in Tony Gilroy’s Disney Plus series Andor, charting the life of thief-turned-Rebel intelligence officer Cassian Andor in the years leading up to the formation of the Rebel Alliance.

The series will serve as a prequel to 2016’s Rogue One, in which Andor met his fate whilst assisting the Alliance in obtaining the plans for the Death Star. We never learned much of the character over the course of the film, and, evidently, neither did Diego Luna, who portrayed the character in the film and will do so again in the series.

But that never stopped the actor before, and he’s soon to experience a rewarding payoff in the form of Cassian’s backstory. In an interview with Screen Rant, Luna recalled how he brought the character to life in Rogue One, making up his own backstories to create a workable personality for Cassian.

“When Tony Gilroy pitched me his idea for the season and for the story, we were in tune. And I thought a lot about the background of Cassian and created my own stories, in order to have an answer and to make sure that there was some logic applied to every choice of my character. There are so many questions that I wanted answers [to], but that audiences don’t have.”

He would go on to note how Andor will seek to give canon answers to the questions he once answered himself during Rogue One‘s production.

“Rogue One is a film pretty much about an event, and now we’re gonna get to tell you who this character was. Who’s around this character, who matters to him, what happened in his childhood, what strengths he has, what weaknesses he has, and what does he carry on his shoulders? He always talks in Rogue One about a dark past, a difficult past—now we’ll get to know what that is.”

And we’ll all get to find out the who and the what behind Cassian Andor when Andor releases to Disney Plus on Sept. 21.