Tony Gilroy Explains Why Andy Serkis Doesn't Show Up in ANDOR Season 2

Fans fell hard for Andy Serkis’ performance as Kino Loy in Andor Season 1, the floor boss turned rebel sparkplug who delivered one hell of a rousing monologue. But as it turns out, Kino’s story is staying right where it ended.

In an nterview with The Hollywood Reporter, Andor creator and showrunner Tony Gilroy opened up about why Serkis didn’t show up in Season 2, and it comes down to preserving the power of the character’s ending. Gilroy said:

“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.

“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.”

That “mic drop” moment Gilroy refers to happened in Episode 10 of Season 1, when Kino rallies the prisoners of Narkina 5 to rise up and escape. It’s an emotional arc as Kino is a man who had resigned himself to surviving his sentence, finds something bigger to fight for.

But, just as freedom is within reach, we learn he can’t swim. The last we see of him, he’s left behind in the chaos as prisoners leap into the ocean.

It’s a brutal, poetic ending, one that Gilroy clearly feels is worth preserving. As much as we’d love to know what happened next with the character, Kino’s final scene hits because we don’t get closure. Pulling him back into the fold just to tie a bow on things risks undercutting the emotional punch of that scene.