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Those at the Andor panel in Star Wars Celebration Japan on Saturday got a pretty great surprise at the end of the panel — a chance to see the entire first episode of the new season days ahead of the rest of the world. (Amongst those audience members was Popverse's Trent Cannon; yes, the rest of us are very jealous indeed.) However, even though we might not have been amongst the lucky few, we can console ourselves with this action-packed clip from the episode — and a little bit of extra context we can offer, courtesy of the aforementioned Mr. Cannon. (Without too many spoilers, of course).

Lucasfilm actually released the clip two days before the Andor panel without any information beyond it coming from the second season. We now know that this scene comes from not just the first episode of the season, but is actually part of the opening of the episode — an opening that sees Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) attempting to steal an experimental TIE Fighter, having entered the facility as an experimental test pilot. As you can see in the clip, that doesn’t go entirely to plan… but nobody said the Rebellion was going to be easy.

Let’s be honest; given that we know how Andor ends up, this might actually be one of his more successful missions, as ridiculous as that might seem... and given what happens in this scene, it's actually kind of surprising that no-one in the Empire/First Order seemed to upgrade security given that Finn goes through something extremely similar when he escapes the First Order in 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens, canonically about three decades later. It's so similar that it has to be intentional, right? (But, really, who saw a Force Awakens shout-out coming in Andor at any point? Raise your hands.)

We also have to ask: given the design of the experimental TIE, should we assume that this is an early prototype for the later TIE Interceptor, beloved of LEGO fans galaxywide? So many Easter Eggs being offered at such an appropriate time of the year.

Andor season 2 begins with three episodes debuting on Disney+ April 22.

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