The Wait for Andor Season 2 Will Be Excruciatingly Long, Showrunner Confirms
As TV series grow ever more lavishly funded and epic, an unfortunate side effect of high production values sets in – long production periods.
Fans of several shows which debuted this fall will likely have to wait more than a year for their respective second seasons. This, unsurprisingly, includes The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, House of the Dragon ( both promise to release a new season somewhere in 2024), and – this time, perhaps, surprisingly – Andor.
While Disney had not yet announces a release schedule for Andor Season 2, it is unlikely to come out before fall of 2024, according to what Tony Gilroy, Andor's showrunner told The Wrap in his interview:
"I have two more years to go. We start shooting in November on Part 2. And I don't know if … Our past pattern was two years, but I mean, I'll be on… We'll shoot from November to August. And then our post[-production] last time was about a year."
Given that Andor is not quite as high-profile or epic in scope as The Rings of Power or House of the Dragon, this is another manifestation of the changing industry standard. Until relatively recently, TV series were supposed to release seasons annually, exceptions, like HBO's The Sopranos, which took two years for its final season, were just that, exceptions.
Several shows can be seen as responsible for changing that. Game of Thrones ' final season took two years, and though its creative decisions were criticized severely, no one argued that its episodes looked like full-blown feature films – or that it broke ratings records. Westworld was taking two years per season from the beginning. Stranger Things took longer and longer to produce as its seasons have progressed.
Besides the increase in production values, this trend towards longer time periods between seasons has another obvious reason – the advent of Internet streaming and other easy methods of watching shows at your own pace.
When TV series still aired on actual TV, and viewers had no easy way catch up on past episodes, any break in the release schedule was risky and dangerous. Now, when viewers can start watching a show anytime they please, showrunners have greater creative freedom, and can work on their shows for as long, as they need to create a quality product.
Such is the case of Andor. While not exactly popular, it is a solid show, and we can hope that Season 2 will be worth the wait.