In a new interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy discussed why they ultimately opted not to use the Volume technology for the show, and gave some insight into Luthen Rael, the mysterious character played by Stellan Skarsgård that we were introduced to in the second episode. In this article, we’ve condensed the most interesting parts of the interview, but you may head over to their site if you are interested in reading the entire piece.

When asked if shooting on location was a prerequisite for him when he was brought on board, Gilroy said that it was a decision that they took when they started to plan out the series and hired a production designer:

“When I came on, Sanne Wohlenberg was the producer of record. She came with the existing pieces of the show. So Sanne was there, but I didn’t know her. She had just done Chernobyl, and it was sort of a shotgun marriage. So here we were together, and I had no idea that she was just going to be this rockstar producer.

And so the first decision you have to make is who’s going to be your production designer. Even in writing, my first call is to the production designer, because everything we do has to be designed. So we put a marker down. It was kind of a test for Disney: ‘How serious are you?’ We didn’t want to go with any of the traditional Star Wars people. We wanted [production designer] Luke Hull, who was like 12 years old and had just done Chernobyl. He’s just a fricking genius, but non-Star Wars in every way. So we brought him over. As I was doing the [series] bible, I wrote the first three episodes as a sort of a test….