‘Andor’ Season 2 Trailer: Get a Glimpse at Ben Mendelsohn and Forest Whitaker in the Cast

So does Alan Tudyk as the droid K-2SO, as the events of the Disney+ series careen ever closer to those of "Rogue One" and "Star Wars: A New Hope" itself.

“Star Wars” fans need this. So badly.

Though “Skeleton Crew” was warmly received by much of the fanbase, there hasn’t been an all-out rousing success for the galaxy far, far away franchise on Disney+ since the first season of “Andor” in 2022. (As much as we loved “The Acolyte,” and wish it had continued, we certainly see its flaws too.)

Now the “Andor” Season 2 trailer is here, showing us the most extensive look yet at the new episodes, the first three of which drops April 22 on Disney+.

This writer says “Yippee!” like Anakin Skywalker, because is there ever a lot of goodness here. First and foremost: A ton of connections to 2016’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars” story, which introduced Diego Luna‘s Cassian Andor character. There’s Forest Whitaker as partisan leader Saw Gerrera, Ben Mendelsohn as Death Star project mastermind Orson Krennic, and Alan Tudyk’s beloved droid, K-2SO.

If this looks a lot like “Rogue One,” it’s because “Andor” Season 2 will use its 12 episodes to take us up to the events of that film starting at about four years out from where the movie begins.

“One of the great thrills of making ‘Andor’ is the scale of the story and the number of characters we’re able to meet — ordinary people, Imperial overlords, passionate revolutionaries,” creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy said in a statement. “They are real people making epic decisions, all of them staring down questions with terrifying consequences. Cassian’s journey is the soul and spine of our story, but it’s the choir that makes the show. I’m so excited for audiences to see where we go in Season 2.”

And characters fans loved from the first season are returning as well, including Kyle Soller as Imperial true believer Syril Karn, Stellan Skarsgard as rebel leader Luthen Rael, Denise Gough as by-the-book Imperial intelligence officer Dedra Meero, and Kathryn Hahn as Eedy, Syril’s mother (you’ll remember her as the witches in “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and as a saucy madam in “Poor Things”). Also back is Genevieve O’Reilly as Mon Mothma, the future leader of the Rebellion.

What’s interesting about this trailer is its inclusion of critics’ praise for the first season — it seems almost a tacit acknowledgment that “Star Wars” spinoffs have not been very well received for some time by even professional critics (let alone the legion of YouTube fan commentators whose bilious reaction to anything “Star Wars” is practically a given now). And as a tone setter, the trailer features Steve Earle’s 2004 song “The Revolution Starts Now.” All of which is to say, this isn’t the “Star Wars” you’re used to, at least the past few years — but it has a lot of the best elements of the “Star Wars” you love.

This geek will make one bit of idle speculation here: That grassland planet that’s shown here? Betting that that’s Dantooine, previously established as a prairie planet… and any rebel activity there during the events of this show would make it make that much more sense why Peter Cushing’s Grand Moff Tarkin thought it was plausible the rebel base might be there in “A New Hope.”

Watch the trailer below. The 12 episodes of “Andor” Season 2 will drop in three episode installments across four weeks starting April 22.