Its pretty rare — nearly unheard of — that you know exactly how a TV show is going to end before it even begins.

Yet Andor concluded precisely how showrunner Tony Gilroy said it would back when the series launched in 2022: Leading up to the first scene introducing Rebel spy Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) in the 2016 film Rogue One. Andor concludes as Cassian is going to meet a source at the Ring of Kafrene, where the film shows him gaining valuable intel about the Death Star.

And yet, so much else about the critically acclaimed Star Wars drama was very much a mystery until late in the series, including the fates of Dedra (Denise Gough), Bix (Adria Arjona) and Syril (Kyle Soller). While a couple notable names from the first season (Kino Loy and Cassian’s missing sister Kerri) interestingly did not return.

Below Gilroy takes some questions about the Andor series finale.

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You have the line “What a bitter ending” in the finale. The revelation that Bix was pregnant and Cassian had a son he didn’t ever know about, to me, actually makes his fate somehow more tragic, not less.

I agree. It does three things for me. It does exactly what you said — I think it makes his sacrifice that much more bitter. And I think that for anybody who had any lingering doubts about Bix leaving in episode nine, it explains it for anybody who was hesitant about buying into that scene. And finally, ultimately, I was desperate to end on a hopeful note. “Rebellions are built on hope” isn’t just a T-shirt, it’s a legit flame that a lot of people need to see. So hopefully I was ending on something that was upbeat, as it was important for me to do that.

If Bix wasn’t secretly pregnant, would she still have left Cassian to continue fighting the cause? 

I don’t know the answer to that. I think she is pregnant when she leaves.

I love that the “rebellions are built on hope” line comes from like a humble hotel clerk, particularly because now that we know Cassian a lot better than we did in Rogue One, that line doesn’t sound like the sort thing that he would come up with.

It’s embarrassing. My office is in my house, and my son is a very big Star Wars fan. So he comes over one day and he said, “Whatcha going to do about ‘rebellions are build on hope’?!” And I go, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, who’s going to say it?” And I go, “It comes up in Rogue.” He said, “But where did Cassian get it from?” And I go, “Doesn’t that come from somewhere else [in the movie]?” He goes, “No, it comes from nowhere.” I’m like, “Holy shit. I better find somebody to drop this in there.” So my son really saved my ass on that.

Jumping back a bit, that was an amazing sequence with the massacre on Ghorman. In those final moments, could Syril have tilted into joining the Rebellion?

I’ve always viewed him right from the very beginning as a romantic and a fantasist that has this incredibly rich internal life. And I think at lot of times that people go where they’re liked, where they’re encouraged. There is a scenario under which he might’ve taken an entirely different path. I think you can see on Ghorman that he likes it there. He’s grown comfortable there. It certainly appeals to his fashion sense and to his fastidiousness. When the massacre happens, so many things are upended for him and have come undone. The amount of chaos that’s just been visited on his soul is almost incomprehensible. And then to see [Cassian] through this dream state, to see the person you have been chasing for years, and then to have them not even know who you are … I feel for all these characters, but I’m really sympathetic towards Syril.

So my prediction for the ambitious Dedra was that she would be so successful that she would be “rewarded” by a position on the Death Star — which would lead to her unseen demise in A New Hope. What made this fate right?

Well, we knew she’s going down. I mean, the whole ISB is coming to an end. If you think about it, if that was the CIA or any intelligence bureau, with those kind of breaches and that kind of disaster happening simultaneously, it would be a cleaning of house. So she’s definitely going to go down. And then to have her on Narkina 3 or Narkina 9 or wherever she’s on … I mean, that was just too juicy to ignore.

Speaking of Imperial prisons, I kept expecting Andy Serkis’ character Kino Loy to pop up as a Rebel leader on Yavin IV or something. Did you ever consider having him back and is there a fate you have in mind for him?

Andy dropped the mic, man. What am I going to do that’s going to be better than what we did? All it does is minimize that moment [where Loy reveals “I can’t swim” after breaking out of the island prison]. I knew a lot of people were talking about whether we had a way of [bringing him back]. But I didn’t want to have that sort of coincidental environment.

[Kino Loy] is like [Cassian’s] sister [who he was trying to find in the series premiere]. People wanted to know if we’re going to resolve the sister. And the sister, in the beginning, is so much more interesting to me as a deficit. She’s much more valuable to me for Cassian as an absence. As he says in the end, “Maybe I should stop saving people.” His need to return and save people and to be a savior and the compulsion to do that comes from this hole in his life, and I didn’t really didn’t want to fill that in.

Also not around in the finale: How’s Mon Mothma’s daughter’s marriage going?

[Laughs] So you’ve probably seen in your life at some point where a child becomes more orthodox — whatever the orthodoxy is — than the parents. The parents have broken free from the traditions of their parents, and then their children are like, “No, I want go back.” I think she’s living a very comfortable country club life on Chandrila. I don’t know how happy she’ll be, but that’s where she is.

My favorite shot in the season was in the finale when the ISB commander shot himself off camera. We’re watching outside the door and the two stormtroopers flinch and the other guy just slightly raises his hand to hold. It was a beautiful bit of visual storytelling right there.

[Michael Jenn is] a really fine actor, yep.

As much as we get some terrific K-2SO scenes, I’m sure fans are going to wonder why wasn’t he in the show more. He looks fantastic. Was it a purely creative decision to have him come in as late as he did, or was it a cost limitation, or a bit of both?

[Limiting] K-2SO came from the experience of making Rogue, to be honest with you. From the very beginning, that was one of the most difficult parts of the original conversation — how long I was going to have to delay [K-2SO]? Because what can you do with him? I don’t want people to go back and diagram Rogue, but just within that movie, there are two or three or four places where we are hiding him — where he has to stay on the ship or can’t go somewhere. He’s a really, really difficult piece of equipment to carry through a story. The limitations on him are huge. He’s a very visible, troublesome piece of story gear. So I knew intuitively how long I would have to wait to do it.

[K-2SO] is fantastic and he’s funny. Tudyk is hysterical and it’s really great. We were like, ‘OK, we’re going to [have him in the show] and let’s make it spectacular and let’s really make a thing out of it.’ And that’s what we’ve tried to do.

Was there anything you put in the scripts that you didn’t or could’t end up doing?

There are things that economically we just couldn’t. Dan Gilroy wrote a really ripping episode for nine that was very different, which was a very different introduction of K-2SO. But it was a whole self-contained episode that was just a real thriller that we couldn’t afford that we had to reshape.

How do you hope Andor changes the way people watch Rogue One? As soon as I finished the screeners, I immediately re-watched it.

How was it? I haven’t done it yet.

It really works and largely matches up well. You have this feeling of dread for Cassian from the moment he rolls into it.

I didn’t want to do it before the junket. I mean, for all the people that thought the Cassian-Jyn Erso relationship was the be-all, end-all romance, like, my God, what does it do to that? So I haven’t watched it, but I probably will.

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Andor is now streaming all episodes on Disney+. Read THR’s season coverage.