Rogue One: Diego Luna As Captain Cassian Andor Revealed

In an exclusive look at Rogue One by Entertainment Weekly, Diego Luna was revealed to be playing Captain Cassian Andor of the Rebel Alliance in the film.

While Jyn Erso is the hothead of the Rogue One group, Captain Cassian Andor is the voice of reason who keeps everyone in check. In fact, keeping Jyn in check is one reason he’s been assigned to the Death Star theft mission, according to Entertainment Weekly‘s Anthony Breznican.

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In EW’s exclusive Rogue One article highlighting the main characters of the film, Breznican describes Andor as a “by-the-book Rebel intelligence officer,” which sounds almost like a dichotomy. As Jyn said in the first trailer for the film, a rebellion is for rebelling, but Andor sounds to me like a representative of the higher thinking promoted by Princess Leia, Mon Mothma, Jan Dodonna, and others who fight, but fight smart against the Empire.

Rebelling doesn’t always require blowing things up and knocking a few bucketheads together; it requires strategy, and a close adherence to regulations so the explosions don’t get out of hand. That’s exactly what Andor is supposed to do: keep the ticking bomb that is Jyn Erso from getting out of hand and her talents in the control of people who can direct them responsibly.

Andor also represents, to some extent, the part of the Rebellion doing the nitty gritty of resisting the Empire and not just the miraculous, Hollywood adventures media outlets in our world like to publish. Kiri Hart, chief of Lucasfilm’s story department, told EW as much in the following quote.

"“He conveys a fair amount of experience and the reality of what it’s like to do this every day, to try to figure out how to resist the Empire effectively and intelligently,” says Kiri Hart, Lucasfilm’s chief of story development. “It’s not easy.”"

It won’t get easier, either, with such an important mission of stealing the Death Star plans ahead of Andor and the rest of the Rogue One crew. I suspect, though, given the opposing personalities of Andor and Jyn, the two will have a lot to teach each other. We may even get a romance out of their time together, if Jyn’s not too busy with daddy issues and Andor isn’t too straight-laced. But it’s been awhile since we’ve met a really sensible main character in a Star Wars film, so I welcome the steadiness Andor will bring to the film’s chaotic war aesthetic.

Next: Rogue One: The Return Of Darth Vader

Stay in touch with us as we continue to explore the characters from Rogue One and how they will appear in the film with the new information from Entertainment Weekly.