What’s really happening in the Star Wars timeline when Andor starts
Andor, the new live-action limited series that premiered on Disney Plus on Wednesday, is pitched as a gritty adult spy drama, the rare mass-marketed entry into the canon to frame Star Wars as the story of a political revolution on a galactic scale. The 24-episode, two-season series follows the life of Rebel operative Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), first seen in the 2016 feature film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Through the viewpoints of both its title character and that of Senator Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly), Andor will tell the story of how isolated cells of resistance against the Empire became the Rebel Alliance, setting the stage for Rogue One and the original Star Wars.
During this period just before the outbreak of the Galactic Civil War — which Obi-Wan Kenobi dubs “The Dark Times” — the Star Wars galaxy is a true dystopia, an authoritarian nightmare whose citizens are either ignorant of its atrocities or hopelessly outmatched against them. This fascinating era has been the subject of some of the current canon’s most interesting ephemera. But for those who would prefer not to spend weeks untangling the intricacies of the first Galactic Empire, here’s a brief guided tour to set the stage for the franchise’s next grand opus.
While the Galactic Republic officially becomes the Galactic Empire in 19 BBY (before the Battle of Yavin at the end of A New Hope) at the conclusion of the Clone Wars, totalitarian regimes are not born overnight. The degradation of the Republic into the Empire takes place over the nearly four-year span of the war, and its roots go much deeper than that.
As seen in the prequel film trilogy and explored in greater detail in the Clone Wars animated series, Supreme Chancellor Sheev Palpatine
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