‘Fight the Empire’: The Rise of Planet Ferrix in ‘Andor’
“Deep Dive” is an in-depth podcast and video essay series featuring interviews with the stars and creative team behind an exceptional piece of filmmaking. For this edition, the IndieWire Crafts and Special Projects team partnered with Disney+ to take a closer look at the “Andor” Season 1 finale, Episode 12 (“Rix Road”), with costume designer Michael Wilkinson, production designer Luke Hull, composer Nicholas Britell, editor Yan Miles, executive producer Sanne Wohlenberg, and executive producer/actor Diego Luna.
It’s one of the most stirring and beautifully crafted season finales in recent memory. With the death of Maarva Andor (Fiona Shaw), her son, Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) — followed by the ISB and rebellion forces hunting him — returns to the planet Ferrix, where the Season 1 storylines collide for the funeral. It is through its traditional funeral march and Maarva’s pre-recorded eulogy for herself that the town’s simmering frustration with Empire’s occupation mounts and eventually erupts into a riot with Maarva’s call to “Fight the Empire!”
“What was special about ‘Andor,’ and [creator] Tony [Gilroy’s] vision, was it wasn’t just, ‘Oh, there’s a funeral march and then we’re going to have a speech,'” said composer Nicholas Britell. “It’s actually the way that we get there [that] matters. It was about the feeling of what this was and the meaning of it.”
In the video below, Britell, costume designer Michael Wilkinson, and production designer Luke Hull talk about how Gilroy conceived of the community of Ferrix and how they brought it to life, with every detail capturing the story of a proud, close-knit community that would naturally reject its occupation.
“That realism is crucial in this show because Ferrix has to feel alive in order to lose that life,” explained executive producer and lead actor Diego Luna of the Ferrix world-building in the video below. “The task was to reflect on what happens with oppression, what sparks an awakening in people. Therefore we had to create that environment.”
As Gilroy began to conceive of the funeral march, the creator started his collaboration with Britell, whose first task on “Andor” was to create the three movements of the music as the band of local townspeople gathers and marched to the end of Rix Road to hear Maarva’s last words.
“It was very important to Tony that we get this really, really right,” said Britell. “What would it feel like to have a piece of music that resonated through the ages.”
Beyond capturing the emotion and traditions of Ferrix, Britell’s funeral march also served as the baseline for the choreography of an incredible eight-minute sequence. “The rhythm was very much set by the music, so Tony wrote to it,” said executive producer Sanne Wohlenberg. It was also within that rhythm that director Benjamin Caron and editor Yan Miles wove together the large ensemble and tracked how their storylines emotionally and physically converged with each musical phrase.
“It became this rhythmic process to integrate the journey from the beginning of the music to place at the end of Rix Road. And then amongst all that was all the other storytelling to integrate inside of it,” explained editor Yan Miles in the video above. “It’s like surfing around all these characters, and they are all circling inside the same rhythmic pulse.”
It all leads to the climatic moment of Maarva’s four-minute speech, delivered in a projected hologram at the end of Rix Road, which the “Andor” crafts team breaks down in the video above.