Perhaps no other instance in the Star Wars canon marries the desperation and thrill of revolution like Maarva Andor’s self-recorded eulogy during the season finale of Andor. Recently escaped prisoner Cassian Andor makes his way home to Ferrix just in time for his adoptive mother’s funeral, where a towering hologram of the recently deceased matriarch speaks in her own words about how intolerable life has become under the Empire.

The speech ends with Maarva shouting to the crowd, “Fight the empire!” but if showrunner Tony Gilroy had his way, she wouldn’t have said: “fight.”

In a recent episode of Variety‘s “Making a Scene,” the filmmakers and actor Fiona Shaw discussed the funeral sequence, which is Star Wars‘ first spark of widespread rebellion that will eventually lead to the events of Rogue One and the original Star Wars trilogy. Shaw described the monologue as what Maarva “has always wanted to say — and probably we should all be allowed such a speech after we die when there’s no recriminations.” She elaborated further:

Her speech, in essence, says that even though nobody would want a war, it’s so intolerable what they’re all living under that, if she had her time again, she would be up in the morning and fighting.”

Andor‘s creative team wanted to drive the point home, with her final line being “F— the Empire.” Of course, Disney wouldn’t allow that to happen, according to director Benjamin Carin.

Gilroy explained that he always knew the line was “vulnerable” when working on the script. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my god, I have to have this,'” he explained, adding, “I made a case for it. I wrote a legal brief for it. … I wrote a memo saying, ‘This is why I think it’s economically prudent. This is why I think it’s good.'” Carin added that he believed Gilroy would convince Disney to let them keep it “all the way until the end.”

While we don’t want to sound like Disney apologists here, using that word at that particular moment would have completely taken us out of the scene. Perhaps if F-bombs were more common in Star Wars it would have read as authentic, but having the line that starts the rebellion in earnest be the only time we hear the word? It feels like an artist trying too obviously to be subversive.

Maybe Disney will let Gilroy fire off a swear or two in the second and final season of Andor, however. After all, the F-bomb felt perfectly at home in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, as that series snuck in a few junior swears in previous chapters before going after the almighty. Perhaps “arse biscuits” is a good place for Star Wars to start.

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