One of the writers behind Disney+'s Andor revealed Emperor Palpatine's secret impact on the show's dramatic finale arc. After five in-universe years hanging alongside Diego Luna's Cassian Andor as he rose the ranks from fledgling smuggler to Captain in the Rebel Alliance, fans took their eyes off the titular Star Wars hero for a moment in Season 2's final few episodes, getting the story of how Stellan Skarsgård's Luthen Rael came to be in the company of Elizabeth Dulau's Kleya—a pair of characters who orchestrated many of the Rebel activity seen in the series to that point.
And, as it turns out, The Emperor played a key role in the series finale arc between Kleya and Luthen, even though he was never seen on-screen. That is not to say the ruthless Sith lord's presence was not felt throughout Andor before that, but it was in Season 2, Episodes 10-12, where his secret impact on the show came into play unlike ever before.
Speaking to Backstory Magazine about the hit Disney+ series' thrilling conclusion, Andor writer Tom Bissell revealed that The Emperor played a special role in the show's final few episodes.
Bissell described the process of writing the flashback sequences seen in Season 2, Episode 10, in which fans got a taste of how the enterprising insurrectionist Luthen Rael met his trusty assistant in Rebel activity, Kelya. He revealed that the crew knew they wanted to depict the pair's first act as terrorists against the Empire, and Bissell himself came up with the idea of setting it on Naboo.
"If Luthen was going to make his first public statement," the Andor writer posited, then "I think he is going to stick his thumb into the eye of the guy that he hates more than anymore:"
"We know that we were going to have their first act of terrorism, Kleya and Luthen together, and I argued it should be on Naboo, because that is The Emperor's home planet, and if Luthen was going to make his first public statement, I think he is going to stick his thumb into the eye of the guy that he hates more than anymore. So, when Tony heard my reasoning, he was like, 'I like that. Let's do that.'"
That is where the idea of setting that particular flashback on Naboo came from, as Luthen made his mission against the Empire and (more specifically) Emperor Palpatine very clear to the rest of the galaxy.
Bissell also mentioned how this first act of terror on Naboo was then mirrored in Luthen's final act, as Kleya used a similar tactic to distract the Imperial guards watching over the Rebel mastermind's body in the Coruscant hospital seen in the same episode:
"So, when we come back to the hospital scene, I had already gotten [Kleya] up to the top floor, and I remember thinking, 'Well, how the hell do I get her to Luthen's room?' And then I thought, 'Oh gosh, the first thing he taught her was going to be the last trick she uses to help him. And going from that detonation of that bridge to her blowing up all the speeders out on the parking ramps, like that was never talked about in the room, that was something that came to me when I was puzzling out. And I think it works really beautifully, in so far as, you know, terrorism can be made beautiful."
Andor Season 2 comes from acclaimed Star Wars creator Tony Gilroy (best known for his work on the hit Rogue One: A Star Wars Story movie from 2016). The acclaimed Disney+ series stars Diego Luna returning as his Rogue One character, Cassian Andor, as he is thrust into a galactic conflict, going from a small-time black marketeer to a full-fledged member of the Rebel Alliance.
Season 2, which wrapped up its 12-episode run on Tuesday, May 13, ended right as Rogue One began, sending Cassian toward his inevitable death where he and the Rebels would strike their first significant blow against the Empire in stealing the Death Star plans and destroying The Emperor's superweapon.
Why The Emperor Is Andor's Secret Villain
Even though Ian McDiarmid's Emperor Palpatine is never actually technically seen or heard from in Andor Seasons 1 or 2, he still makes a formidable villain for the show's main characters on both sides of the Rebel/Empire divide.
Of course, he is technically the villain for characters like Cassian Andor, Luthen Rael, and Mon Mothma. All of the series' central band of Rebels are ultimately fighting the Empire, and Palpatine is the head of that Imperial snake.
But, despite never showing up on-screen, his actions resonate across the series with sweeping moves like the introduction of the Public Order Resentencing Directive (aka PORD) that sends Diego Luna's titular Rebel to the Narkina-5 prison in Season 1 or the instilling of anti-Ghorman sentiment to justify the Ghorman Massacre all pushing the show's plot forward and giving its heroes something to come up against.
However, even on the other side of Star Wars' moral dividing line, The Emperor still looms as the show's primary antagonistic force for the Imperial characters it follows in its two seasons.
Palpatine's directives result in Kyle Soller's Cyril Karn ending up on Ghorman, which leads to his untimely demise during his skirmish with Andor. By the end of Season 2, the Emperor's ruthless internal bureaucracy is also what binds Denise Gough's Dedra Mero to the cold walls of an Imperial jail cell.
So, it would make sense that writers like Tom Bissell had the brooding Sith lord in mind for key moments in the series, like seeing Luthen's first act as a Rebel terrorist.
If a character like that, who had been seen as one of the complicated heroes of Andor Seasons 1 and 2 to that point, were going to make a statement, of course, he would do it against the show's secret primary villain.
