'Andor' creator says Jyn Erso cameo would have been 'lame' and 'disrespectful' (2025)

While Andor was ostensibly a Rogue One prequel series that focused on Diego Luna’s Cassian, several other characters from the film also showed up at one point or another during the Disney + streaming series. Obviously, Genevieve O’Reilly’s Mon Mothma played an instrumental role on the show, but we also got long looks at Saw Gerrera (Forest Whitaker), Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), and Ruescott Melshi (Duncan Pow).

Not only that, but Andor creator Tony Gilroy was so insistent on bringing Rogue One’s Bail Organa onto the show that he even recast the role from Jimmy Smits to Benjamin Bratt after Smits was unavailable for filming.

So with all those familiar faces, and with Gilroy saying that Andor would finish right where Rogue One begins, naturally Star Wars fans couldn’t help but wonder if Cassian’s partner in Scarif crime, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), might be making an appearance in the finale. Alas, it was not meant to be. But did Gilroy ever consider it?

"No," the showrunner tells Entertainment Weekly. “I was asked that several times. I tried to sketch some versions along the way of what we would do. Episode 12 is very unique. It's its own energy and we are not trying to hype anything in 12. We always knew it was going to be not a low energy, but a different kind of episode.”

However, that doesn’t mean the possibilities of more Rogue returns did not enter Gilroy’s brain. “I couldn't think of a way to get anything else from Rogue One, really,” he says. But once Cassian was informed on the show he needed to meet informant Tivic —connecting the character to his very first scene of the movie —it appeared we might get to at least see the rebel spy before his untimely demise.

“I always thought, ‘Oh my God, I'm going to have to deal with Tivic the spy!’” says Gilroy. “Should I deal with Galen Erso? And was there anybody else? I really thought I was going to have to use Danny Mays as Tivic. I thought, ‘Well, we probably should.’”

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Until the showrunner changed his mind and decided they probably shouldn’t, which extended all the way to Jyn. “In the end, I realized if people didn't absolutely have to be there, they shouldn’t. And it would've been lame to bring Jyn back as a cameo. That would've been really disrespectful in a way. I'd rather honor Rogue and keep it straight.”

Of course, that final shot of the series showing Bix carrying Cassian’s baby may have Rogue One fans thinking about Jyn anyway, and reassessing their take on the doomed duo. Says a laughing Gilroy, “I mean, people who thought that was the love of his life are going to have to reorient their thinking.”