Andor Almost Featured The First-Ever Star Wars F-Bomb
Rebellions are delicate things. They're built on little more than hope and are as easily snuffed out as a spark. So, on occasion, it simply makes sense to spice things up with some shockingly course language to underline the seriousness of the moment. In other words, this ain't your father's "Star Wars," folks.
That's apparently the approach that creator Tony Gilroy and his creative team followed when initially crafting the rousing "Andor" season 1 finale, which saw the oppressed inhabitants of Ferrix cast off their chains and truly take the fight to the occupying Empire forces in one of the most stirring sequences in franchise history. The only difference, however, is that we didn't quite get to experience this brazenly uncensored moment as it may have been originally intended. As it plays out in the episode, the holographic recreation of the late Maarva Andor (portrayed by the great Fiona Shaw) enacts a prerecorded speech (with a helpful assist from the best boy of the series, the droid B2-EMO) where she steadily urges the onlookers at her funeral to rise up against the Imperial invaders and fight back. Essentially, this comes across as the first shots fired in what will eventually become the Galactic Civil War.
But where her speech crescendos with the uttering of "Fight the Empire," it turns out that the family-friendly Disney censors robbed us of an even more powerful line of dialogue that would've been a first in "Star Wars" canon. That's right, we came this close to experiencing the franchise's very first F-bomb. You might even say we were on the verge of greatness, in fact.
F*** the Empire
"Andor" wasted no time at all establishing its reputation as the rebellious black sheep of the "Star Wars" family, eh? Putting aside the glowing critical praise heaped on the series for its incredibly resonant storytelling and blisteringly anti-fascist messaging, the series became the first in the franchise to drop the word "s***" on us and nearly did the same for the F-bomb enthusiasts among us.
In the latest print issue of Empire Magazine (via io9), actor Denise Gough (who plays antagonist Dedra Meero) confirmed that what the cast heard on set during filming of Maarva's speech differed in one small but significant way from the final cut. Check out the below excerpt from her interview with the (very aptly-named) Empire:
"My first day was Ferrix," she said, recalling her arrival on the eight-acre town built at Pinewood Studios — a living, breathing, industrial planet. "I was given my two Death Troopers — one of whom had to be trained to run like a Death Trooper and not like a musical theatre star — and I couldn't help myself, I just started doing the [hums the Imperial March]. Then, everyone started doing it." From the very start, a rebellious spirit was in the air. "Fiona's voice was over all of us," Gough says, recalling the finale's fire-and-fury funeral monologue from Ferrix's formidable matriarch. "Except, at the end, she didn't say, 'Fight the Empire!' She said, 'F*** the Empire!' Which we were all really excited about. But we weren't allowed to keep it, obviously."
What could have been! While most instances of adult language in blockbuster filmmaking tends to come across as juvenile, this sure would've been an exclamation point on the righteous rage of Maarva's speech. But that's what head-canon is for!
"Andor" is currently streaming (F-bomb free, sadly) on Disney+.