Andor: The real reason it won't return for Season 3

It has been confirmed that Andor will not return for season 3, despite creator Tony Gilroy originally pitching the show with more seasons in mind. Andor was initially envisioned to have five instalments. The first season was set five years before Rogue One, with each follow-up taking place over a subsequent year, leading into the events of the 2016 prequel movie.

Why is Andor ending after two seasons?

But after coming to terms with Andor's long production schedule — the first season took two years to make — Gilroy realized it wasn't a realistic timeline for the series.

“You just couldn’t possibly physically make five years of the show,” he said in an interview in August 2022. “I mean, Diego would be, like, 65. I’d be in a nursing home. We were panicked. We can’t sign on to this forever.”

Despite receiving Emmy nominations and critical praise, Andor will not be returning for a third season. Originally conceived as a five-season story, series creator Tony Gilroy explained that the "scale of the show" forced them to reconsider how to tell Cassian's story with fewer episodes.

Fans might desire more Andor, but in a May 2022 interview with Gilroy said, "I think when the show comes out everybody will forgive us for not doing that."

He added, "The show is huge and it’s just physically impossible," which led them to a solution they found to be "incredibly elegant and perfect because we knew where we wanted to go. Every now and then you get really lucky and the solution turned out to be really fortunate for us."

With that in mind, the creative team condensed what would have been four more years into a single second season consisting of 12 episodes. Each three-episode segment is set a year prior to Rogue One.

Andor is also a costly production. As per reports, the two seasons cost Disney at least $645 million to produce. In terms of viewership, during the week of May 1-8, 2025, Andor was the second most-watched original series on streaming platforms as per reports.

Initially, Andor was planned as a five-part series. The first season was set five years before Rogue One, with each subsequent season spanning a year, leading up to the events of the 2016 prequel film.

However, after realizing the lengthy production process — with the first season taking two years to complete — Gilroy acknowledged the impracticality of making five seasons. “You just couldn’t possibly physically make five years of the show,” he told said in August 2022. “I mean, Diego would be, like, 65. I’d be in a nursing home. We were panicked. We can’t sign on to this forever.”