The return of K-2SO was one of the treats of the final episodes of Andor season 2. Amidst the desparation of Ghorman and the thrill of Coruscant, his presense not only anchored us to Rogue One, where his heroic circuits were utliised to the max, but also the way Tony Gilroy and the writing team introduced the character. First off, Star Wars Explained break down the differences between the Marvel Comics version of their meeting compared to the one we saw onscreen in season 2.
K-2SO’s origin story has been changed in Andor, retconning a one shot comic from 2017. Here are my thoughts on how it was handled.
Speaking with Collider, Gilroy looks at the way in which the now functional K-2SO was introduced into the story, and how a fortunate reunion of characters gave him the opportunity to do so in a far more organic manner.
“The thing that I hadn’t realized, which was really cool, and I wish I could take credit for, is that in Episode 9, when Bix leaves, you come back a year later and the house has turned into a frat house, and it’s like, ‘Oh, of course, this is naturally exactly what would happen. Of course, he’s got a new friend. Who’s his new roommate?’ Melshi’s there and K-2’s there, and it’s a big, stinky frat house now that she’s gone. That was just like, ‘Of course. This is perfect.’ It helps us blend into Rogue in a really sneaky way. It wouldn’t have if we introduced him a year earlier, for example. I don’t know what he would have done. He’s so hard to plot.”
Finally, speaking with EW Gilroy discussed a scrapped idea for the ninth episode which would have seen K-2SO feature in his own episode, a horror movie set on a tanker headed for Yavin.
“Dan Gilroy wrote an amazing, entirely self-contained episode that was episode 209,” Gilroy reveals, referring to his brother and Andor writer. “It was an amazing episode that was like a horror movie.”
So what exactly happened in this scrapped K-2SO horror movie episode that was originally slated to be episode 9 of season 2? “It was the K2 story,” Gilroy explains. “They had to bring this huge ugly tanker ship to Yavin, and there was a KX unit that was trapped inside there hunting. It was sort of like a monster movie with K2 on it. It was really cool.”
As for why the entire episode never made it to the filming stage, it came down to a matter of economics. “We could not afford to do it,” sighs Gilroy. “It was made clear that it was out of the range, so we had to abandon that and consolidate things.” That consolidation also meant moving up Mon Mothma’s big senate speech, which was originally slated for episode 10.
