Maarva's funeral procession

Prelude

Background

Ferrix, a manufacturing and commercial world in the Morlani system within the Free Trade sector, served as the birthplace of Maarva Carassi Andor. After the Proclamation of the New Order, it transitioned from being a part of the Galactic Republic to being under Imperial control. Its people cherished their autonomy and actively opposed outside attempts to govern them; following the Clone Wars in 18 BBY, a radical group even staged an open demonstration against the newly formed Imperial government during the first deployment of clone troopers to the planet. The protestors faced severe consequences; Clem Andor, Andor's spouse, was executed publicly along with others, and their bodies were left suspended in Fountain Square for everyone to see. Even though Ferrix was soon given to the Preox-Morlana corporate authority, with the Empire drastically reducing its contact with the system, Ferrixians remained a cohesive and energetic community, creating a thriving market for used starship parts that had been recovered from the planet's salvage yards, where the majority of the population was employed.

Ambush of Pre-Mor corpos and annexation to the Empire

The corporate authority and Ferrix maintained a relatively passive relationship, and the galaxy government nearly forgot about the planet, with the most recent census taking place in 11 BBY. There were few conflicts between the locals and the government until 5 BBY, when Cassian Jeron Andor, Andor's adoptive son, traveled to Morlana One, the system's capital, in an effort to find his long-lost sister, Kerri. He got into a fight with Verlo Skiff and Kravas Drezzer, two corpos, while he was there, and they died as a result. Despite his superior officer's concerns, Pe-Mor Deputy Inspector Syril Karn took over the case and quickly identified Cassian Andor as the perpetrator, sending a Pre-Mor Security Inspection team under the command of Sergeant Linus Mosk to Ferrix to apprehend him. Andor was unaware that Luthen Rael, a rebel, was in the process of hiring him to carry out a mission for him. Rael was heavily armed and was able to assist Andor in engaging and killing numerous Pre-Mor corpos, as well as destroying a speeder, ultimately escaping the planet with him. During the skirmish, local Ferrixians helped the pair escape by banging on metallic objects along the corpos' path to alert Andor and Rael to their movements, as well as removing street signs to confuse them. Maarva Andor was held in her residence and refused to work with them.

Blevin, the ISB Supervisor in charge of the Free Trade system, took notice of the unprecedented fiasco and placed Preox-Morlana under permanent Imperial control. The newly deployed Ferrix garrison, which was made up of heavily armed stormtrooper and Imperial Army trooper units, maintained a constant presence on the planet, which both enraged and perplexed many locals who were accustomed to a tranquil and unhindered existence. Hotel Rix, an old city hotel in the main square, was occupied in order to establish a headquarters, and Imperial Prefect Vanis Tigo governed the city with unrelenting zeal, showing no mercy to those who broke Imperial law. Dedra Meero, the new Supervisor for the system, requested that the Repaak Salyard be placed under observation because she suspected it was hiding a communicator used to contact a rebel agent. Tigo seized the opportunity to demonstrate his power by having Salman Paak, the yard's owner, hanged in the main square, despite the fact that he had already admitted under intense torture that he had no involvement with the device.

These and other events, along with news of the Aldhani heist, the first open attack against an Imperial installation reaching Ferrix, inspired Maarva Andor, an influential Ferrixian and former President of the Daughters of Ferrix, to rebel against the Imperial occupation. She began using her knowledge of ancient passages and hidden tunnels to investigate their headquarters and troop movements in the hopes of eventually assisting the rebels in retaking the planet. She tripped and was hurt during one of these scouting trips, and Brasso, her son's friend, had to carry her back to her home. She soon became ill, but she refused to take her medication, choosing instead to secretly record an anti-Imperial speech in the hopes of having it played at her funeral. Simultaneously, Meero concentrated on Cassian as her key to unraveling Rael's expanding rebel network, which she referred to as "Axis," while also assisting in countering the upcoming raid on the Spellhaus Imperial power station. She was instructed to find Axis after the raid ended without any prisoners being taken.

The funeral

Preparations

Maarva Andor succumbed to her illness a month after being injured in the hotel tunnel, at the age of 77. The Daughters of Ferrix, including Jezzi, her friend, arrived the morning after her death to collect her body, which they had wrapped and adorned with flowers. Brasso remained with her grieving B2EMO salvage assist unit B2 groundmech, who remained in his charging station, refusing to leave the house and requesting his master's return. Locals, friends, and neighbors of Maarva gathered outside her house to accompany her body in an impromptu procession. Corv, an ISB Attendant assigned to keep tabs on Maarva in the hopes that she would come into contact with her wanted son, Cassian, noticed the gathering and contacted the Prefect, who in turn informed Supervisor Meero of the incident. Meero placed all Imperial forces on high alert because it was now even more likely that Cassian would return to the planet to pay his respects to his mother; Luthen Rael, who also had his agents Vel Sartha and Cinta Kaz stationed in the city to intercept Cassian - who was regarded as a liability to the team because he had gone rogue after their mission - was also informed.

In accordance with Ferrix customs, Maarva's body was cremated, and her ashes were combined with mortar and Ferrix dust to create a pressed funerary stone. Her full name and dates of birth and death were then inscribed on it in Bazeese script using the Coruscant reckoning calendar, and it was given to Brasso, who was chosen to carry it in the absence of her only living relative, Cassian. The Daughters wanted to hold a traditional public funeral for Maarva because of her status as a former President and upstanding citizen, and they asked the Prefecture for permission to do so. Meero explicitly instructed Prefect Tigo to allow the funeral to proceed in the hopes of attracting Cassian to the ceremony for arrest, but he limited the number of attendees to 40 and moved the ceremony from midday to two standard hours later. Roadblocks were prepared to be placed at the end of Fountain Square, directly in front of and around the Prefecture headquarters in the old hotel, while a containment team and a sniper unit were placed on standby around Rix Road; Meero removed the latter because she needed Cassian alive. Air traffic in the area was restricted, and patrol units were recalled, both as a courtesy to Ferrixians and to give Cassian a false sense of security if he were to actually return to the planet. Supervisor Meero arrived on the planet the night before the funeral with a death trooper escort to assist her in Cassian's arrest.

The ceremony

Two groups of Ferrixians gathered on the day of the funeral. The first, made up of Daughters of Ferrix and the brass section of the Honor Guard band, gathered outside Maarva's house, where they tuned their instruments while waiting for everyone to arrive; the second, made up of Honor Guards and the woodwind section of the band, gathered elsewhere. At midday, the Time Grappler began striking his beskar anvil, signaling the start of the ceremony. As the Imperials watched in astonishment, the two halves of the procession were assembled behind the bands, and as the musicians played "Forming Up," they began marching through the streets leading to Rix Road. Despite the restrictions, Ferrix citizens joined the parade, resulting in a massive gathering; by the time the Daughters and the Guards had arrived at Rix Road, the funeral procession numbered hundreds of Ferrixians, including Maarva's doctor Mullmoy, her close friend Pegla, her sons' friends Brasso and Xanwan, and Salman Paak's son Wilmon Paak, who had joined the ceremony in the hopes of getting close enough to the Prefecture to bomb it with a homemade explosive device in retaliation for his father's death.

The two halves of the procession arrived in Rix Road at the same time and merged into one beneath the Ferrix bell tower, with the Daughters and the Honor Guard at its head. The band, led by a drummer, began playing "Unto Stone We Are" with its two sections united, and the procession marched down Rix Road toward Fountain Square and the hotel; caught off guard, the Imperials scrambled to establish a defensive perimeter under the command of Lieutenant Merzin Keysax. Brasso, carrying Maarva's stone and accompanied by B2EMO, emerged from the crowd when the head of the procession was halfway into Rix Road; simultaneously, the band began playing a faster tune, "To The Sky," and the Ferrixians followed, marching faster toward the Imperials, who were still struggling to assemble into a line in front of the hotel. Ignoring them, the Ferrixians entered and gathered around Fountain Square, at which point they stopped and made way for B2EMO to reach the middle of the street. The crowd began chanting "Stone and Sky" around the droid, while B2 deployed his holoprojector to play Maarva's speech and begin the Truth ceremony.

Maarva spoke out against what she saw as the Empire's tyranny, accusing her fellow citizens and herself of "sleeping" and failing to recognize its destructive influence as long as they were handsomely compensated by it. She expressed her affection for Ferrix and its traditions, including the Truth and the Stone ceremony, as well as her desire for the planet and its people to continue, but she also urged Ferrixians to awaken as she had failed to do and "fight these bastards." Vanis Tigo stepped through the trooper line and into the ceremony as the speech came to a close with Maarva's wish to "Fight the Empire!" He pulled his cape over the droid's projector and angrily kicked it to the ground to silence it. The crowd, enraged, immediately moved to attack him, marking the beginning of a resistance movement. Brasso kicked him in the chest, sending him flying into the street, and wrestled two security troopers attempting to save their captain to the ground. Tigo seized the opportunity to crawl under the crowd's feet back behind the trooper line.

Aftermath

The crowd noticed Tigo's escape and rushed in to attack, but the security troopers, who had formed a wall with their riot shields to protect their officer, stopped them. More and more people were rushing toward the hotel, pressing the line, who responded by bashing them with batons and zapping them with zap rods, pulling the injured protestors back to detain them in the hotel. Wilmon Paak pulled the bomb from his satchel and threw it at the Imperials in the midst of the chaos. The explosion shattered the hotel windows, instantly killing several stormtroopers and troopers stationed inside, as well as a Ferrixian informant, and detonated a crate of N-20 Baradium-core thermal detonator. The explosions destroyed the hotel's façade as well as two armed speeders, killing both protestors and Imperials, and prompting an immediate response from Imperial security forces in the form of open fire against the remaining Ferrixians in the square. Brasso grabbed Maarva's droid and funerary stone and fled the planet with other Ferrixians as the ceremony was interrupted; the ceremony was never resumed, and Maarva's stone was never interred in a city wall as was customary.

As predicted by both the ISB and Luthen Rael, Maarva's son Cassian had indeed returned to the planet to attend the funeral. However, he was able to elude his pursuers in the midst of the riot. Disgusted by the atrocities he witnessed and the slaughter of his home planet's citizens, he joined the Axis network after the funeral to actively fight against the Empire. He would go on to become a valuable member of the Alliance Intelligence, eventually recovering the DS-1 Death Star's plans along with Jyn Erso during the Battle of Scarif, an integral part of the successful Rebel attempt to ultimately destroy the station in the Battle of Yavin.

Behind the scenes

The funeral was first alluded to in "Daughter of Ferrix" and was depicted in "Rix Road," the season finale of the television show Andor season one.

Tony Gilroy, the executive producer and writer, stated that the Provisional IRA funerals were the first comparison for the funeral, and the joy and soul of a New Orleans second line funeral procession were the second. The funeral procession for Maarva Andor, particularly the music, was the first thing Gilroy worked on. He insisted that real instruments be played by actors on screen rather than professional musicians, and that it be recorded on the Ferrix set in Little Marlow, Buckinghamshire. Gilroy and composer Nicholas Britell collaborated for two years before filming began to create a seven-minute piece. Britell made certain that the piece would be about the people of Ferrix and a tradition with which they would naturally connect. He realized that the sound would have to be meaningful enough to bring them together and feel like it was a part of the people's folk tradition. Gilroy stated that the civic procession brought the funeral to life for him. He also stated that the funeral advanced Ferrix's personality and demonstrated the people's concern for one another.

Michael Wilkinson, the costume designer, and his team intensified the red to make it a powerful symbol of the Ferrix spirit. To accomplish this, Maarva Andor's red jumpsuit was echoed in the red cloaks worn during the procession. According to Gilroy, everything on Ferrix was filmed first. Denise Gough, the actress who played Dedra Meero, stated that the voice of Fiona Shaw as Maarva surrounded those who were filming the scene. Maarva's monologue originally ended with her saying "Fuck the Empire!" but it was changed to "Fight the Empire!" in the episode.