Andor is back for a hotly anticipated second and final season, with the tension being amped up, as the titular character – a thief turned rebel spy who takes on the Galactic Empire as part of the Rebel Alliance – gets set for his date with destiny, when he heads out on what will be suicide mission.

The prequel to 2016’s Rogue One cranks everything up to 11 in its new run, with the lead protagonist, again brilliantly played by Diego Luna, becoming what series creator Tony Gilroy has described as “this super all-singing, all-dancing, spy-war fighter”

Does Luna get all of the scripts and discover how everything will play out beforehand?

“Everything has to go through Tony Gilroy’s desk,” says the affable star. “That’s one of the reasons it takes so long to execute this show. We are committed to one vision, which is his. And yes, we all receive the material before we go on-set – and I’ll tell you something even more important. The first day he pitched this story to me six years ago, he talked about the ending that you are seeing now in the second season.

“That’s something that makes this project very special. Today, many shows start knowing what the beginning is, but hoping the end never comes. In our case, it was the opposite – we knew the ending from the beginning. Therefore, there is that commitment from all of us to tell the same story.”

Though Andor was originally planned to last five seasons, Luna notes that would have presented some exceptionally difficult challenges, and thus the final season will arrive weekly in three episode blocks.

“Tony was remembering a particular moment yesterday,” he says. “We were halfway through season one, and we were sitting in a tiny, beautiful hotel in the mountains in Scotland. We were talking to each other and saying, ‘It’s impossible we do five seasons of this!’ If one season takes two and a half years, that’s more than a decade of our lives. I won’t fit in the clothes for that long!

“So his idea I think he was genius. Naturally, because we bring in a director and a team to work on three episodes, that makes three episodes a block. And he went, ‘Well, let’s do four blocks.’ I think it’s a great tool for storytelling, because it asks audiences to join us in imagining what happens in between.”

As for Gilroy himself – an Oscar nominee celebrated for his work on movies like Michael Clayton and Duplicity, as well co-writing Rogue One – he explains that the Andor storylines are constantly being honed and developed, with other writers involved in the series including his brother Dan, and House Of Cards creator Beau Willimon.

“It’s a holistic process,” says Gilroy. “The writing never stops – we continue writing all the time based on production and things that are happening. Sometimes when you’re developing a story, you might follow one character to keep a through-line, as a sketch. But I kind of write to cuts – I have a very editorial writing style, so I always feel the pressure of getting back to everybody I need to get back to.

“The writing process really came about through how we did it the first time, which was just out of panic. The clock was ticking, and I had written three episodes and we were starting to make the deal. All of a sudden I needed all this other stuff. I didn’t really have time to go out and read thousands of scripts, and get into the competitive market of meeting people, and seeing who was available and who I could get along with etc.

“So I just went to two people I knew I could trust, who had been through this before, which was Beau and my brother Dan.”

Elsewhere, there is a notable Irish involvement in Andor, with roles for a trio of Irish actresses, Fiona Shaw, Genevieve O’Reilly and Denise Gough, who plays imperial officer Dedra. One of the most striking sequences in the series is the Ghorman Massacre, and Gough notes the enormous effort that went into it.

“We were very fortunate with this amazing group of actors who set it all up,” she says. “Everyone committed – it’s hard to do those things, because you have to do it for days, weeks even. It takes a lot of commitment from hundreds of people to make that happen. So watching it was completely devastating.”

And will we ever see an Irish Star Wars character?

“I did try and do Dedra in an Irish accent,” says Gough. “I was like, ‘Come on, she can be Irish!’ But I’m sorry, we just don’t sound evil enough!”

• Andor season 2 is streaming now on Disney+