Popverse's top stories of the day

• The Last of Us season 2 has an A-ha moment: What 'Take On Me' means to the franchise
• MEMBERS ONLY: For Your Consideration: Columbo, Quincy ME, and The Rockford Files walked so Rian Johnson's Poker Face could run
• WATCH NOW: Critical Role's Travis Billingham and Laura Bailey duel over the ideal party leader, merchant haggler, and more in Popverse's Who is More Likely To?

After a season-and-a-half of waiting, fan-favorite droid K-2SO has finally shown up in Star Wars series Andor, making his debut in episode 8 of the current season — but his introduction into the show didn’t happen the way it had originally been planned… or even written.

“Dan Gilroy wrote an amazing, entirely self-contained episode that was episode 209. It was an amazing episode that was like a horror movie,” showrunner Tony Gilroy told Entertainment Weekly. “They had to bring this huge ugly tanker ship to Yavin, and there was a KX unit that was trapped inside there hunting. It was sort of like a monster movie with K2 on it. It was really cool.”

So, what happened to this introduction? “We could not afford to do it,” Gilroy said. “It was made clear that it was out of the [price] range, so we had to abandon that and consolidate things.”

This was part of a wider push to lower the costs of season 2, Gilroy revealed. “The whole dynamic and the economics of everything changed between season 1 and season 2,” he explained. “Season 1 was, ‘Oh my God, Pearl Harbor was just bombed! Build aircraft carriers as fast as possible! We don't care! Size, scale, build it, go Game of Thrones! Money is no object. Make it!’ …By the time we got to season 2, and Bob [Iger, Disney CEO] came back, everything had changed and everybody was belt-tightening. It's hard to ask for more money when they're laying people off at Disney, and we were like, ‘Wow, man. Well, we built half an aircraft carrier. We'd like to finish it.’”

(Suddenly, Disney offering Jeremy Renner half his season 1 fee for Hawkeye season 2 makes a little bit more sense, doesn’t it?)

Ah, well; at least we have K2 back with us for now — and, if fates and Lucasfilm are willing, maybe we can eventually get the K2 monster movie screenplay released as a book or something as a glimpse of what could have happened in an alternate universe one day, too.

Andor is streaming on Disney+.

Get to know, understand, and love the Star Wars franchise more with our Star Wars watch order, guide to all the upcoming Star Wars movies & TV shows, and all the Star Wars movies and Star Wars TV shows ranked.