One of the most exciting characters we’re eager to see more of in season two of Andor on Disney+ is Stellan Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael, the rebellion’s main orchestrator. As the Empire has tried to uncover who he is, the mysterious benefactor of many identities and stunning wardrobe choices has become a fan-favorite new character of the Star Wars universe who ultimately gets Andor (Diego Luna) to join the cause.
In a live Q&A session on the official Star Wars YouTube channel, showrunner Tony Gilroy was asked where he got the inspiration for the “morally gray” character. Gilroy broke it down as an artist starting to illustrate the world he’s building and who inhabits it.
“This is the same as with any character. I think the easiest thing to say is imagine you just have a pencil and a piece of paper and you’re gonna start to draw somebody,” he said of Luthen, who happens to be the architect of the rebellion in a galaxy far, far away. “I needed an organizer. I needed a recruiter. I needed somebody who was at the center of something. I needed a new mysterious character. What would he be like? What’s a cool job for that? What’s the kind of job that gives you access to all kinds of things and also plugs you on Coruscant? Oh God, what if it’s a gallery? What if its an antique gallery and then once you know that just leads to all kinds of other things. Well, he needs a sidekick doesn’t he?”
Ever since his introduction, Skarsgård has imbued Luthen with a cold determination to get all the pieces moving no matter how many he loses along the way as the ISB attempts to find him. As Gilroy points out, it’s really speaking to the threat he poses in the unpredictability of “how’s he gonna do this and how long has he been doing it.” In his all-timer monologue from season one, Luthen all but says his sacrifice is his humanity in order to forge the tools needed.
Gilroy continued to share how he’s learned more about Luthen since writing the first season. “There’s a lot of things about Luthen that I did not know until we started writing season two. So those things we’ll learn about Luthen, [like] who he was before in season two. You’re gonna see a guy who built a startup company in his garage and in Aldhani, he goes public. It’s gonna be the stress of how do you take your little revolution and all the work you’ve done for 15 years—how do you go public with that and how do you go large? That’s really the stress [he’ll be under] so we’re gonna watch him under a great deal of stress.”
And since he’s clearly a player still unseen even in events that outlast his legacy beyond Rogue One, we can’t wait to see if he dies starting the revolution or slinks even deeper into its shadows.
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