I think it's a little surprising in that Ahsoka, which was a considerably crappier show on literally every possible level, is apparently still getting a second season (presumably this is largely because the alternative would be really pissing Filoni off, and Disney has put him in quite a position of power).
Yeah I wouldn't be entirely shocked if we got a "cloned Anakin" show at some point. The vagaries of cloning could allow you to even Hayden himself if it was set basically any time post-RotJ too.
I have heard that Disney was initially very keen on the original idea of Andor being a 5 season show, with each season covering one year leading up to Rogue One. The writers, producers, and Diego Luna quickly realized that it would be an 8+ year commitment, and difficult to accomplish. And at the end of it Diego would not look as young as he was at the start of Rogue One!
Yeah, I get that the idea of what makes a cut is kind of hard to really figure out. But I have to think that future plans and linkages are part of the calculus. Ahsoka may have had a few problems, but it reintroduced Thrawn (which people seem to like for some reason that I don't share), will likely have repercussions in other media, and it ended with a lot of unresolved questions that I think people are interested in. By comparison, The Acolyte killed most of the interesting characters we spent most of our time with leaving weirdness (Qimir, the oddball Sith, and Osha taking Mae's place at the cost of Mae's memory) in its wake. If both were on the cusp of renewal/cancellation, I can't fault Disney for picking Ahsoka to continue, and to save money on another season of The Acolyte.
Obviously we'll never know, but whilst I appreciate the "eight year commitment" claim, I feel like cutting down from four more seasons to just one probably wasn't a decision based solely on that. I strongly suspect there were other factors, particularly the political riskiness of Andor and/or (lol) its expense.
I don't know if I really buy that. Thrawn is a nothing-character in Ahsoka, they completely fail to convey his menace or even really the nature of the threat he poses, because they had to plot-armour the characters too much (and to be fair, his threat is kind of one relying on his own plans having plot armour, which is sort of incompatible with the goodies having too much). And none of the other characters involved in it seem at all important to future SW (also, Filoni seems to be incapable of extracting good performances from them).
They should have made Thrawn a villain protagonist as he is in many of the novels, and Ahsoka the near-invincible badass Jedi antagonist he needs to overcome.
Yeah, if there's one thing that rubbed me the wrong way it was getting us to like a bunch of those characters and then killing them to show how badass the villain was. It was almost traumatic.
