Andor has been praised from the beginning as one of the Star Wars shows aimed at a more adult demographic. We’ve talked before on Dork Side of the Force about the brothel scene in the first episode, and how it wasn’t actually Star Wars’ first jump into “adult themes.” But one first for the galaxy far, far away almost did happen in the Andor season finale and that was the use of the F-Bomb. You know the word. It’s the one from A Christmas Story that Ralphie actually says instead of “Fudge.”
In an interview with Insider, actress Denise Gough shared that at the end of Marva Andor’s speech to the people of Ferrix there was a big F-Bomb at the end.
Gough said, “Fiona ’s voice was over all of us. Except, at the end, she didn’t say, ‘Fight the Empire!’ She said, ‘ the Empire!’ Which we were all really excited about. But we weren’t allowed to keep it, obviously.”
This doesn’t surprise me at all that this line got left on the cutting room floor. Honestly, I was surprised that the S-Bomb that’s the harsh word for poodoo snuck its way into episode three, “Reckoning.” Despite how Disney executives said at the 2021 Lightbox Expo that Disney+ was going to be tailored to an older audience (read more about that here), getting an F-Bomb in any show or movie is a bit of a big deal.
As Den of Geeks points out, to get a single F-bomb into a PG-13 movie has a set of guidelines to follow and has to meet particular circumstances. Buzzfeed News laid out how cable television has been more of a wild west scenario. Premium channels like HBO rely on subscribers and specialized advertising, so they can be as bonkers crazy as Game of Thrones as they like. Cable tv gets more complicated because channels have more self-imposed guidelines on themselves depending on if they want a TV-MA rating and how much they want to put up with the Federal Communications Commission or FCC. This is why the FCC is the butt of many Family Guy jokes to the point they even wrote a song about the group. The show is constantly pushing its TV-14 rating and goading the FCC to penalize them in the process.
But Disney is not a cable or premium channel even with Andor being on a streaming service which has even more freedom. The House of Mouse is not known for its swears and will go to great lengths to keep its content on the more family-friendly side. While it would have been a fist-pumping moment to hear Marva say the big bad F-Bomb, it really is no surprise it didn’t make it into the series.
Check out all of our Star Wars television news here at Dork Side of the Force.