I didn’t actually know Cassian was from that movie! Someone else mentioned that to me when I was mid season lmao. I was watching it as a true one off kind of show with a totally new character!

I think the simple answer to why Andor, is that he is the type of character Tony Gilroy wanted to write about. His being situated in the star wars universe is mostly unimportant, aside from being an avenue to get disney funding. Andor could easily be sci-fi unrelated to Star Wars at all, there are some misc easter eggs and the Empire exists, but it’d be super easy to file the serial numbers off, and change some of the aesthetics and names.

Andor isn’t significant to “skywalker saga” Star Wars, he’s just some dude who is pretty competent who starts as a self interested disaffected lowlife dude, and who becomes radicalized to join the nascent rebel alliance. It’s just a good story, and I’m glad Tony Gilroy was able to get disney bux to fund it. Its easily the best Star Wars that Disney has made, maybe that anyone has made if I take off my rose-tinted glasses. It’s honestly kind of surprising to me that the script got past disney, given how they’ve gone about Star Wars.