Warning: SPOILERS for this week’s Andor episodes are forward!
“Who Are You?”, the second of the three Andor Season 2 episodes that premiered on the 2025 TV schedule, depicted the Ghorman Bloodbath, an occasion that had already been talked about in Star Wars historical past. Kyle Soller’s Syril Karn was killed throughout the tragic occasion, and the slaughter of so many innocents pushed Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma to overtly condemn Emperor Palpatine within the following episode. Nonetheless, followers of Star Wars Rebels might have seen that this second deviated from how the animated present introduced Mothma talking out towards the Empire, and Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy defined why he and his group determined to pivot from canon with this.
For these unfamiliar, the Star Wars Rebels Season 3 episode “Secret Cargo” reveals Mon Mothma delivering a speech decrying the Empire’s atrocities that was broadcast throughout the galaxy far, distant whereas she’s being transported to Yavin IV by Gold Squadron. Whereas it was established in the direction of the tip of “Welcome to the Rise up” that this second continues to be going to occur following the occasions of this episode, Tony Gilroy defined to EW that he and his brother/fellow author Dan Gilroy weren’t fascinated by having O’Reilly recite the very same speech for Andor, saying:
In canon, she’s rescued by the Gold Squadron and the speech that they gave within the cartoon, which was a canonical present, [is on that ship]. And Danny’s like, ‘Do I’ve to stay to this f–ing speech?’
I can perceive perspective, particularly from a writing perspective. Though Andor and Rebels each exist inside official Star Wars canon, each really feel fairly completely different from each other. The latter present is accessible to followers of all ages, whereas the previous present gearing itself to the older members of the Star Wars fanbase with its extra mature storytelling. So whereas there’s nothing incorrect with the speech Mon Mothma offers in Rebels, it was additionally superb for Tony and Dan to provide you with one other speech that extra successfully match Andor’s tone.
However once more, the speech we noticed in “Welcome to the Rise up” isn’t retconning Star Wars Rebels. It’s merely increasing this nook of Star Wars lore, as Tony Gilroy laid out:
In a extremely sneaky means, we’re minimizing what they did in Star Wars Rebels, however we’re retaining it constant. We’re simply saying you do not actually know the entire story of what occurred.
The speech Mon Mothma gave to the Imperial Senate was lower between motion scenes involving Diego Luna’s Cassian Andor and the operatives Bail Organa despatched to sneak Mothma off planet, one among whom was an Imperial spy. Nonetheless, a full speech was certainly written and filmed for “Welcome to the Rise up,” and Genevieve O’Reilly advised EW that it felt “particular” getting the recite the entire thing. Alas, the video feed broadcasting this primary speech from the Imperial Senate chamber was lower a part of the way in which by, which is why it grew to become needed for Mothma to ship that second speech from Rebels as soon as she was in Gold Squadron’s care.
There are simply three episodes left to go in Andor, and with Mon Mothma now on the run from the Empire, we’ll lastly get to see her as that public Rise up chief we all know so nicely. These episodes will lead straight into the occasions of Rogue One, which was technically O’Reilly’s theatrical debut because the character since her scenes from Revenge of the Sith have been deleted.