By George & Josh Bate
K-2SO (voiced by Alan Tudyk) in Lucasfilm’s ANDOR Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm. ©2025 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Abrams Books’ The Art of Star Wars: Andor is the “definitive behind-the-scenes exploration of the making of Andor,” according to Emmy award-winning writer Dan Gilroy. As such, the book is filled to the brim with insights, beautiful concept art, and the deepest dive imaginable into every facet of the acclaimed Disney+ series.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly last year, series creator Tony Gilroy revealed that Andor Season 2 was originally going to feature a “horror movie” episode in which K-2SO terrorizes a group of rebels. Over a year later, The Art of Star Wars: Andor reveals more about what this episode of Andor may have looked like.
New Details about the Alien and Predator-Inspired K-2SO Horror Episode Emerge
Dan Gilroy, who penned the Aldhani and Ghorman massacre arcs of Andor, envisioned the ninth episode of Season 2 as a “self-contained horror story, in which a KX unit gets trapped inside a Yavin-bound tanker and begins hunting down its rebel occupants.”
Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) in Lucasfilm’s ANDOR Season 2, exclusively on Disney+. Photo courtesy of Lucasfilm. ©2025 Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All Rights Reserved.
Production designer Luke Hull elaborated on the idea for the episode and cited Alien and Predator as inspirations.
“We were going to have almost an Alien-esque/Predator combo in space on a ship, which would have been really cool, but it was a whole other, massive expense.”
So why didn’t the horror movie K-2SO episode of Andor come to fruition? “It always stood very large and looming outside the budget,” explained Hull. “And it felt like a diversion from our storyline. Suddenly, we just left Ghorman on some random mission on a ship. They get boarded, and K-2 tears through the ship. It’s a cool episode, but wouldn’t it be better to sort of weave it into the lot, which Tony did! And which I think is much stronger, personally.”
While it seems unlikely that the K-2SO horror episode will be reworked into another Star Wars story, the possibility of a Star Wars project existing in the horror genre continues to warrant discussion. In an interview with Business Insider, Tony Gilroy mentioned that Disney and Lucasfilm are currently developing a Star Wars horror project. “They’re doing that,” Gilroy said. “I think they’re doing that. I think that’s in the works, yeah.”
Star Wars and the Horror Genre Have Crossed Paths Before
The K-2SO horror episode would not have been the first time that Star Wars dabbled in the horror genre. In 2020, Disney-Lucasfilm Press published Dark Legends, a collection of short stories written by George Mann with illustrations by Grant Griffin. The stories include shadowy figures snatching children in the night, a haunted mask, a powerful Sith, a wolfman gone mad, twisted spirits, and more.
The Vader’s Castle Saga, meanwhile, asks the question: What if your starship broke down on a lava planet and the only safe haven was a castle that once belonged to Darth Vader?
In Legends, author Joe Schreiber penned Death Troopers and Red Harvest, two horror novels centered around a virus that turns people into monsters. Death Troopers follows a crew and inmates of a drifting prison barge that have to fight for their lives against undead Storm Troopers aboard a Star Destroyer, while Red Harvest was a prequel that showed the development of the virus, set at a Sith academy in Old Republic times.
