Learn about the creation of the rebel game Five Hands and other fascinating behind-the-scenes facts from the making of the Star Wars series, with the first three episodes now streaming on Disney+.
If Five Hands — the game the Maya Pei Brigade plays to solve their internal disputes deep in the jungle — looks familiar, that’s because Sam Gilroy created it based on the playground staple Rock Paper Scissors.
The actor behind Gerdis this season and actor Benjamin Norris, who plays his rival Bardi, initially inspired their characters at a family dinner, his father and creator and executive producer Tony Gilroy tells StarWars.com.
“I went out for dinner with my family. It was a big, long dinner table and I was at the end of the table with my son and Ben Norris,” he recalls. “It was a big, rowdy, drunken dinner.” Their antics gave Gilroy an idea for the series, adding a bit of levity and allowing a new take on the burgeoning rebellion. “So I went back and I started writing Heckle and Jeckle in the woods.”
As the character grew, Sam Gilroy crafted the Star Wars spin on the hand game by not only introducing alternative gestures, but also adding several layers of complexity. In Five Hands, there are 15 animal gestures, including rancor, snork, and snoozbird, which are displayed by two players in three rounds overseen by a referee.
You can see a shortened version, the so-called Roski Rules, playing out this week in the three-episode premiere of Andor. Read on for more fun facts and trivia from the first arc this season.
Episodes 201-203
1. (Above) In addition to their home base at Pinewood Studios, Andor Season 2 returned to Longcross Studios in Surrey, England, last used for the Millennium Falcon, Ahch-To island library tree, and Canto Bight casino entrance set builds for 2017’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
2. Rogue One and Solo: A Star Wars Story co-costume designer Glyn Dillon returned as a concept artist for Andor Season 2, under costume designer Michael Wilkinson.
3. (Above) The TIE Avenger prototype that Cassian Andor steals was a rare full interior and exterior TIE Fighter set build. It could support its own weight on four points of its lower wings.
4. (Above) The TIE Avenger prototype design was, in part, initially inspired by Kylo Ren’s TIE Whisper from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The TIE Avenger was first featured in the 1994 TIE Fighter computer game from LucasArts.
5. (Above) The starfighters that chase Cassian Andor from Sienar’s Imperial testing base are TIE Advanced prototypes, first seen in Star Wars Rebels‘ Season 1 episode Empire Day.
6. (Above) The jungle clearing where Cassian encounters the Maya Pei rebels was a section of Longcross Studios test track covered in plants by the Andor Greens team.
7. (Above) The hippo-like Yavinian doodar creature that attacks the Maya Pei rebels was named after its designer, Alexander Dudar.
8. (Above) The fields of Mina-Rau were an ancient rye planted specifically for Andor Season 2 in Watlington, Oxfordshire and took a full year to grow. Due to the SAG-AFTRA strikes of 2023, the crop had to be harvested and placed in sheets of polystyrene by the Greens team, allowing the outdoor location sets to be reconstructed on Pinewood’s 007 Stage in early 2024.
9. (Above) The mobil-haus where Cassian, Bix Caleen, Brasso, and Wilmon Paak live on Mina-Rau was a full interior and exterior set build, disassembled and relocated/reassembled twice to Pinewood Studios, first due to torrential rain and then the actors’ strike of 2023.
10. (Above) ILM modified their Gozanti cruiser digital model, created for the second season of The Mandalorian, to become the Imperial scan cruiser seen in the skies of Mina-Rau.
11. (Above) Brasso’s speeder on Mina-Rau was mounted to a vehicle, allowing it to accelerate and fly completely in camera, as opposed to the VFX compositing typically employed for Star Wars speeders.
12. (Above) The beasts of burden utilized by the farmers of Mina-Rau were an unused design from Andor Season 1 for cattle found on Aldhani. They are operated by two puppeteers, each operating a pair of legs.
13. (Above) An Imperial transport from later in Andor Season 2 was adapted into a troop carrier for Mina-Rau, as the first arc was shot out of sequence.
14. (Above) The mountain range that envelops Santa Maria de Montserrat, an active Benedictine abbey in Montserrat, Spain, was utilized for the area around Mon Mothma’s Chandrilan estate.
15. (Above) The Andor cast traveled to Montserrat, Spain, in March of 2023 to film the traditional Chandrilan hike sequence before relocating to Valencia for the Season 2 Coruscant location shooting.
16. (Above) The wedding dance to Season 1’s diegetic synthpop track “Niamos!” was among the last shot for Andor Season 2 in January 2024.
17. Some of the wedding guest speeders were reused from production on The Acolyte, a series that had previously reused some of the Andor Season 1 speeders during shooting.
18. (Above) Hundreds of costumes, including jewelry and headwear, were created for the extras populating the Chandrilan wedding sequence.
19. (Above) It took costume designer Michael Wilkinson’s team six months to construct Leida Mothma’s wedding dress, which included dozens of pattern pieces sewn together, with hand-beading and hand-finishing.
20. (Above) The view outside Director Orson Krennic’s secret meeting conference room was a hand-painted backdrop, touched up digitally by ILM.
21. (Above) Dedra Meero’s Coruscant apartment was, in part, inspired by Torres Blancas in Madrid, Spain, an Organicist building designed by Francisco Javier Sáenz de Oiza.
22. (Above) Dedra Meero’s dining room table was modelled off of a 1970s prototype that set decorator Rebecca Alleway found in a magazine. Designed for serving fondue, the set piece inspired showrunner Tony Gilroy to add fondue to the menu in the Dedra, Syril, and Eedy Karn dinner scene.
23. (Above) A ring-shaped docking bay, not unlike Docking Bay 94 in Mos Eisley, for Luthen’s Fondor Haulcraft was designed for Andor Season 2 by the art department but was never used on-screen.
24. (Above) Kleya Marki’s fractal radio in the backroom of Luthen’s gallery was partially inspired by an old telephone operator’s switchboard.
