Disney's 10/10 Sci-Fi Masterpiece Deserves Kudos For NOT Following Its 5-Season Plan

Published Aug 27, 2026, 5:30 PM EDT

Sean is a senior writer for ScreenRant and has been writing about new TV releases since December 2023. He has received multiple advance screenings of popular shows and ideated his own coverage read by hundreds of thousands of readers.

Sean is a self-published author of a Western novel. Sean has also written award-winning opinion pieces related to local politics while getting his Bachelor's degree in journalism.

Normally, it's better when any show goes as long as it can. There are plenty of shows that had a lot of promise yet were canceled after a single season, like Firefly or Freaks and Geeks, and there are even more shows that got much better after a bad first season, like Parks and Recreation or Seinfeld. That rule is doubly true for sci-fi, a genre that often takes a bit to get viewers to buy into its premises and futuristic worlds.

The single best Star Wars show on Disney+, however, is an exception to that rule. The Rogue One prequel series Andor only ran for two seasons, but it's still the best science fiction show on the streaming service. In fact, Andor was originally supposed to run for five seasons, but showrunner Tony Gilroy ultimately condensed the final four seasons into four three-episode arcs in season 2. While many Star Wars fans would likely be more than happy to have five seasons of Andor instead of two, Gilroy actually deserves praise for abandoning its original plan.

Andor Running For 5 Seasons Would Have Ruined It

If Andor had run for five seasons as it was originally intended to, the show would have been ruined. Andor is already very nearly perfect as it is with just two seasons, and extending it to five would put that near perfection in jeopardy. Trying to squeeze an additional three seasons out of Cassian's story would have lowered the stakes of the story, the Rogue One cast would have been significantly older at the end of Andor than they were in the original movie, and more.

Andor season 2 is the crux of this argument. The very constraint of putting four years of the Rebel Alliance's history into a single season is exactly why it's so great. The three episode arcs are perfectly paced and show viewers only the most important moments from the most important times. Take, for example, episode 10, when Luthen is discovered by Dedra Meero and Kleya has to kill him. If Andor was five seasons, that story would be multiple episodes long instead of the nail-biting, breakneck, rush of adrenaline that it currently is.

With five seasons instead of two, Tony Gilroy and the other writers also would have had to come up with a lot of new content that might not be as excellent as what we got. There would be more room for errors, contradictions, lukewarm political takes, and second-guessing. On top of that, there's no telling what kind of interesting ideas Gilroy and others came up with because of the decision to limit Andor to two seasons. If they simply followed their original five-season plan, maybe some of the best moments in Andor never would have happened.

I, and many other viewers, have a tremendous amount of confidence in Tony Gilroy and the other creatives behind Andor, but even I can see that this show was lightning in a bottle. The two seasons that viewers ended up getting were firing on all cylinders for every single second. Trying to keep that lightning in the bottle for an additional three seasons would have opened Andor up to untold chances to get worse than the masterpiece it is. Plus, Tony Gilroy himself said that Andor didn't suffer at all from losing three seasons, and my faith in him extends to that judgement call as well.

Andor Highlights The Dying Art Of Ending A Story At The Right Time

The most compelling reason to believe that Andor was better off with two seasons instead of five is the show's ending. The ending of Andor is, simply put, a masterpiece. It wrapped up almost every loose thread, from Luthen and Kleya's operation to the fates of characters like Dedra Meero and Bix Caleen. It made the already tragic ending of Rogue One into a genuine tear-jerker, as fans now know that Cassian left behind the love of his life and his newborn child to destroy the Death Star and save the galaxy.

Andor ending with its second season is a prime example of how to end a story at the right time, an art form that is all too uncommon in the streaming age. So many shows go on well past their prime. This year alone has had plenty of disappointing finales, from Stranger Things to The Boys to Euphoria. So many of those shows could have ended in their second season and left viewers wanting more, but Andor was the only one to actually do it.

Because it abandoned its five-season plan, Andor has secured its own legacy. The show ended on its own terms without missing a single step due to age. Countless viewers want more out of this story, and when they look back on Andor, they'll remember it as a show that was flawless from start to finish rather than as one where the wheels fell off towards the end. The ending of Andor accomplished everything it wanted to do and more; a lot of other shows' finales can't say the same.