The nominations are out for this year’s Emmy Awards, and as always, one of the biggest stories is about the shows and performers who were snubbed.
Andor — the Disney+ original series that serves as a prequel to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story — did very well with 14 Emmy nominations, including Best Drama Series.
However, the only actors who received nods were Forest Whitaker and Alan Tudyk for guest star and voiceover, respectively.
That snubbed one of the best performances of 2025 from Stellan Skarsgård, as well as great turns by Genevieve O’Reilly and series star Diego Luna. Here are a few reasons why their performances deserve to be recognized and appreciated.
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Stellan Skarsgård Elevated the Entire Franchise With His Performance
It would have been unrealistic to expect every actor in Andor to get an Emmy nomination. However, this series was an actor’s showcase with an incredible supporting cast, including Adria Arjona, Denise Gough, Kyle Soller, Elizabeth Dulau and others.
Yet Skarsgård’s Luthen Rael towered above the rest with his intensity and moral ambiguity. Even during the first season, Luthen openly expressed that he was damned for using the Empire’s tactics against it, but he remained relentless and unapologetic to the end.
Andor season 2 didn’t give Skarsgård a monologue to match his best scene from the first season, but he stole the show every time he was on screen. Even in Luthen’s final appearance, Skarsgård had one more chance to display his character’s depth in an extended flashback that chronicled his transformation into a rebel.
Genevieve O’Reilly Revitalized an Underutilized Character
Mon Mothma has been part of the Star Wars franchise since 1983’s Return of the Jedi, but she didn’t really become a fleshed-out character until Andor‘s two-season run. O’Reilly briefly portrayed Mothma in Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One, but this was the series that gave her something real to convey, and she ran with it.
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Mothma’s arc in the show is about a politician coming to terms with everything she has to sacrifice to keep the rebellion alive, including the love of her family and her own morality. O’Reilly was especially great at conveying Mothma’s quiet desperation as she made compromise after compromise. And she was also very convincing when Mothma had her big moment in season 2 when she forcefully denounced the Empire and risked her own life in the process. While the Best Supporting Actress in a Drama is a crowded category this year, O’Reilly deserved to at least be nominated for her stellar work.
Diego Luna Brought Complexity and Intensity to ‘Andor’
It may seem like faint praise to call Luna the third-best actor on his own show, but that’s simply because he was surrounded by talented costars. This show was built around his Rogue One character, and it wouldn’t have worked if Luna hadn’t been able to embody Cassian Andor’s transition from a simple thief into a revolutionary who was willing to lay down his life to end the Empire.
Luna may not have gotten the incredible monologues of Skarsgård’s Luthen or the quieter dramatic moments that O’Reilly’s Mothma endured, but he carried the show with his singular focus. But when Cassian’s emotions came to the surface, Luna delivered one of the best performances of his career. It wasn’t enough to be recognized as one of the Best Actors in a Drama, but Cassian Andor’s legend in the Star Wars universe will live on far beyond the Emmy Awards.
Andor seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Disney+.
