The television series Andor is in many ways the most intriguing offering in the Star Wars universe. It does not lean into the lore of the Jedi Knights and the Force. It does not show off with lightsaber duels. It does not depend on many of the tropes of its genre. Instead, it’s deeply political.

“This is the moment where people have to step up,” says Diego Luna, who stars as rebel spy Cassian Andor in the critically acclaimed series. “What strength do people have but organising, but making sure they can work for a cause in common that unites the needs of the people?

“The best possible way to approach science fiction is to make sure you don’t waste the opportunity to talk about the world we live in. When I tell you that this happened in a galaxy far, far away, you bring your guard down as an audience.

“Then suddenly you find a way to connect with audiences in a way probably that you wouldn’t [otherwise] be able to. I don’t think entertainment should miss the opportunity to also bring reflection, make comments, serve as a tool for debate, for questioning audiences.”

Cassian Andor, who was introduced to audiences in the 2016 film Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, is the spy who steals the infamous “Death Star plans”, one of the plot details on which the entire Star Wars franchise was built.

Rogue One was a standalone movie, a small detail that rings curiously false in hindsight. Standalone, sure, but immediately preceding the now-legendary original 1977 Star Wars film.

“There is a line in Rogue One, ‘We’ve all done terrible things for the rebellion’, but we don’t know what that means,” says Luna. “Then we saw Andor season one, and we go, OK, that’s what we’re talking about. It’s just going to get more interesting, more complex and the stakes are getting higher and higher.”

Though the universe of Andor is a deeply political one – Cassian is a key figure in the formation of the Rebel Alliance against the Galactic Empire – the show’s creator, Tony Gilroy, has always been at great pains to stress the series is not conceived as a great polemic on the political sphere.

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And yet, it borrows heavily on the DNA of the original Star Wars film, itself a grand political space opera on tyranny, rebellion and heroism in the face of fascism. It had funny droids, strange aliens and kooky doughnut hairdos, but the political underscore is undeniable.

“It started that way in ’77, didn’t it? [The original Star Wars] laid the groundwork for it,” Gilroy says. “The five years that I’m curating is essentially a nascent revolution and an authoritarian government that’s trying to suppress it. That’s the framework. That’s the stage I’m given. So, intrinsically it is true [that it is a political story].”

The two seasons of Andor bring the story up to the commencement point of Rogue One. And Rogue One, quite memorably, concludes with scenes – featuring Darth Vader and Princess Leia – that immediately precede the opening scenes of Star Wars.

Those connections do not lay a clear route for the story, says Gilroy, nor do they complicate the story as he would like to write it. “It’s more essential than that,” Gilroy says. “It makes it possible. It would be impossible without it. Most of movie-making is problem-solving on a practical level. It’s shocking and sad how many excellent ideas come out of tragic problems that have presented themselves.”

Plus, the Andor/Rogue One/Star Wars story path means Andor, unlike many long-form stories written for television, has a narrative North Star to head towards.

“Look at all the shows that pop up and someone gets a great first act, or a great first season, or some really exciting concept, and they, themselves, didn’t know what they were hitching themselves onto,” Gilroy says. “Really smart people, and all of a sudden, they’re saying, ‘What do we do?’

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“I don’t ever want to be in that position. Sometimes people figure it out, sometimes they don’t. We all know what those shows are. But I can’t imagine ever being in that position. I like to make a mess. But at a certain point, I really need to know where I’m going.”

Perhaps the most complex aspect of Andor is the darkness of its storytelling, and the already known detail that by the end of Rogue One, many of the key characters have died. It contradicts the notion that in a Star Wars story, the heroes (mostly) live to fight another day.

“It is a really complicated cultural question; there’s such a weird spectrum of why we watch films and narrative stories,” Gilroy says. “In season two of Andor, I’m carrying 20, 25 characters over from season one to season two, and concentrating on, what, 10?

“Everybody gets their real estate. But I want to finish with the complexity of life at the end. I’m hoping to fray it off at the end so it’s not a sharp cut, it’s a braid. A weave. It’s the way I think we feel about all of our lives.”

That darkness is central to the story’s DNA, Diego Luna adds. “Rogue One was meant to tell you the story about these rebels that made the ultimate sacrifice for the rebellion and for those [stolen Death Star] plans,” Luna says. “It brings the idea of mortality right in front.

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“Andor exists because Rogue One made a point, and audiences said, we like it and there’s room for these to be there. Here we are doing a very complex story in the world of Star Wars, where there’s room for this and many other different expressions.”

The other genuinely intriguing aspect of the show’s second season is Ben Mendelsohn’s Orson Krennic, one of the architects of the Death Star project.

His inclusion, and proximity to some of Star Wars most beloved characters – Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Grand Moff Tarkin and the sinister Emperor Palpatine – gives substance to the possibility of their (or indeed other original trilogy characters) appearing in the new season.

Gilroy is giving nothing away, but he does offer this: “All I can say is what we said before: we would never, ever do fan service for the sake of it. I think that would be cynical. We’d just never do it.

“We’re leading into Rogue One and we inevitably have some characters that we have to get to, and bring into the fold, and they have to be there. But we would never just bring somebody in extraneously just to have a scene, ever.”

Season two of Andor premieres on Disney+ on April 23.

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