It's hard to come up with a better Star Wars show since the Disney takeover than Andor. It's so good, it doesn't even feel like you're watching Star Wars, but instead you're seeing a tense, clever spy drama that shows how evil rises to power. However, it could have been quite a different show, had it been Jared Bush at the helm.
Bush, famous for his co-directing and writing of Zootropolis, initially pitched an idea for Andor. That pitch has now been made public, and was posted online via DiscussingFilm. It reads as follows:
"The fledgling Rebellion experiences a crippling setback when an Imperial mole hidden within its ranks decimated a series of rebel bases. Cassian Andor, a young intelligence operative, is one of the few who survive, only to be falsely accused of being the mole himself. Out in the cold, Cassian discovers the only way to clear his name and find the mole is to infiltrate an Imperial planet which holds the key to uncovering the mole's identity."
This idea sounds like it would be similar in some ways to the series we got, but markedly different in others. It would be much more about Cassian's journey of survival than a broader look at what the galaxy became in the era of the Empire. It might not have featured stand-out characters like Luthen Rael, Mon Mothma, and the like. Still, some fans are interested in the alternative.
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"I'm obsessed with the Andor we got, but a small part of me is a bit curious about how this version would have looked. Seeing Cassian fully out in the cold, dealing with paranoia within the early Rebel cells, could have been super tense," reads one comment. "This pitch feels more like a classic espionage series than traditional Star Wars and that's exactly why it could have worked so well," says another.
What do you think about this alternate Andor?