Speaking at the ATX TV Festival, writers Tony Gilroy and Beau Willimon touched on the relationship between Cinta and Vel, a sorrowful element of the broader Andor story that not only showed how even-handed fate can be, but how the writers chose to treat a queer relationship (and the misfortune that comes their way) exactly the same as a straight one.
When it came to some of the criticisms drawn from the choice to toe the line of falling into the “bury your gays” trope, Gilroy gave an even-keeled response. “This fascinates me because you get all this credit and the first season, ‘oh my God, you have a natural relationship ’cause, and we were like, ‘well, yeah, it’s just a relationship.’ We’re not making a big deal out of it. So then if you don’t make a big deal out of it and just treat it like it’s a normal thing and kill whoever you wanna kill, then that’s a problem all of a sudden.”
The choice was aimed at making it feel as real as possible for members of the rebellion, who no matter where they come from all choose to put their lives in the line of fire. “I would discount the first side if I could get a little bit more on the second. I mean, what more natural way to treat it than to treat it like a real thing? I’m not gonna like start to socially engineer my characters for some chat room.”
Willimon interjected, “Honestly, our mentality was that almost everyone’s gonna die. And that’s broadcast everywhere in the show, almost every episode, someone’s saying like, well, we’re never gonna make it, we’re never gonna see it.” Every Andor character is aware that they’re gambling their mortality for a bigger cause—especially in a series that culminates in the events of Rogue One, where most of the key characters die. “There needed to be something, something had to go wrong on Ghorman with that heist. We’re always thinking about cost.”
