Diego Luna Explains Why Andor Is The Real "Shoots First" Guy In Star Wars

Cassian Andor was introduced six years ago in the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and is now the focus of the aptly-titled series Andor on Disney+. In the series, we get Andor's backstory and what led him to the doorstep of the Rebel Alliance, but not everything he does is for the greater good or the most honorable.

Within the first few minutes of meeting Cassian, he kills an informant that was on his side and did the work he set out to do. Mild spoilers ahead, but in the first episode of Andor, Cassian accidentally kills one corporate security member trying to shake him down, but then he very clearly intentionally kills another one who was a witness.

Talking to Entertainment Weekly, star Diego Luna goes into depth on where Andor is at the beginning of the series and the correlation to that and Rogue One, as well as Cassian's easy trigger finger.

"We find him in a very dark moment, and he understands, because of oppression, what killing that first corporal means. He is a survivor, no matter what it takes," explained Luna. "And I think it tells you about what justice means in the galaxy then. There's no way you can expect justice to be fair. And he has to fix it himself because there is nowhere to go, no one to convince, and no one to help him."

Luna went on to elaborate the setting of the series and how there's a void of not simply justice, but also no sense of law for people like him or his peers.

"It's like the absence of state. It happens in the places where there's an absence of the institution that would provide justice. There's no sense of that in this world," he said. "There's no sense of that in this galaxy. Therefore, he understands that his only possibility of not being thrown in jail forever is basically finishing the life of this other corporal. And that triggers our story." Luna also added that Andor is "never going to forget" his victim's face.

In the tradition of Star Wars gunslingers, Andor is the latest in the line of people trying to run away from the Empire--even when it's blooming in real time like it is in Andor--or it being already established in the original trilogy. The famous Han Solo and Greedo scene in Star Wars was redone for the Special Edition in 1997, where it looks like Han shot in retaliation. The reasoning behind this was that George Lucas didn't see Han as that cold-blooded, leading to the popular "Han Shot First" movement, which really should have been "Han Shot Only" if you think about it.

Andor airs exclusively on Disney+, with new episodes premiering every Wednesday.