With episodes 8 and 9, the storytelling of Andor Season 2 broke barriers, glass ceilings, and IMDb records, and showrunner Tony Gilroy’s wife had something to say about that.
The slow, creeping, eerie tension that builds over the first seven episodes explodes in “Who Are You?” when the Empire commits genocide on Ghorman, opening fire on a peaceful gathering of protestors. In the next episode, “Welcome to the Rebellion,” Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) stands up against it with the help of Alderaan’s Bail Organa (Benjamin Bratt). She openly blames Emperor Palpatine for the atrocities and warns the galaxy that a similar fate awaits them all.
Mon’s Senate speech after the Ghorman Massacre was already part of Star Wars canon. We find out in Star Wars Rebels Season 3 episode 18, “Secret Cargo,” that the Chandrilan Senator defects from the Empire and reaches Dantooine to call for the official formation of the Rebel Alliance. Captain Hera Syndulla and her Ghost crew help Mon after Admiral Thrawn’s fleet attacks her Gold Squadron.
While Andor slightly changes the words of the speech that we hear at the beginning of "Secret Cargo," the overall sentiment of it remains the same.
However, we were not told how Mon manages to escape from the Senate unscathed after such an act of treason against the empire. Gilroy decided to flesh out that story for us in episode 9, and naturally, we have Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) to thank for that once again.
In a hair-raising seven-minute sequence, Cassian guides a terrified Mon Mothma through the Senate levels, shoots her Imperial driver (whose real motives we will never know, just like Skeen after Aldhani), and drives away with her to their Coruscant safehouse.
Speaking on IndieWire’s Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Gilroy said how the scene came to be and what his wife, Susan, had to say about it.
“That's canonical. She makes a speech in the Senate and calls out Palpatine, and has to leave. How she gets out of there... I'm canonically fancy dancing there. That's our cool solve to canon. I have to do the speech,” Gilroy said.
When asked if a lot of heavy writing was involved to make this edge-of-the-seat scene possible, Gilroy said, “That's the job, right? I have to keep you interested. I mean, this is an adventure story... My wife just watched episodes 8 and 9 and was like, 'God, it's so Bourne-y.' I was like, 'Really?'"
Gilroy has written the screenplays of The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), the first three films in the franchise. He was the writer-director for the fourth, The Bourne Legacy (2012).
“People think that limitations, guardrails, or rules are really inhibiting. They're just not. They're absolutely liberating if you're creating,” Gilroy finished.