I'm going to begin this first of all by telling all of the sick, toxic bastards who drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media to go fuck themselves. Lord am I sick and tired of the darker elements of the Star Wars fanbase. No person is ever defined by the fictional character they play and no one should ever be harassed for a movie you didn’t like. Grow up.
This article, however, is about that fictional character, who I believe is funny and charming and delightful, personality-wise, but more importantly is absolutely vital to the story of Star Wars and specifically the direction the sequel trilogies need to go with the state of the universe.
The first time I watched The Last Jedi I honestly agreed with a lot of people who found the Canto Bight scene a distraction, mostly because I was gnawing my own arm off demanding the movie get back to my precious Luke. Upon every single rewatch, however, I have come to appreciate the scene and Rose more. That scene, and Rose, represent something very important about the Star Wars saga and its cyclical nature: the importance of breaking the cycle.
One of the criticisms long-time SW fans have had of the sequel trilogy is how depressing it is that thirty years later there’s another Empire and another rebellion is necessary and how fleeting success was for the heroes of the first trilogy. This is actually not unrealistic, nor does it mean our heroes from the OT were “failures,” as I’ve detailed previously. Evil will continue to come back and will always require another generation of heroes to beat it back. The important question to ask is why does the First Order rise up from the ashes of the Empire, why didn’t the New Republic last as long as the old?
The answer lies in how the Empire came to be in the first place. One of things the Prequels and the various forms of Clone Wars media have masterfully portrayed is how Palpatine manipulated the existing systems of the deteriorating Republic to form the Empire. He did not use Sith sorcery to rise to the top, nor did he rely on an army of cultists to establish his regime. Palpatine saw that the Republic had failed its most desperate citizens and favored the wealthy elite over the majority of the galaxy. To the desperate his Empire promised a way of cutting through the bureaucracy and corruption of the Senate in order to get things done. In the meantime the work of instigating the war necessary to erode the Republic completely and make the Empire the only solution was aided by a cabal of war profiteers, bankers, and corporations who happily sold the galaxy’s sovereignty to Darth Sidious in exchange for credits. All of the political power Palpatine acquired was given to him voluntarily by a hoodwinked population and a complicit elite class.
Over 20 years of single-handed rule by Palpatine, however, combined with the loss of people like Bail Organa who were actually witnesses to his rise to power and the complicated reasons behind it, led to the narrative of how the Empire came to be and maintained itself getting simplified down to “Palpatine was bad.” His accomplices were largely forgotten, the failings of the Republic whitewashed in contrast to what replaced it. The Rebel Alliance needed every ally, every bit of energy they had simply to remove the man at the top of the hierarchy, dismantling the entire system and reversing the erosion of freedom and quality of life throughout the galaxy that it represented would be the work of generations, not undone simply declaring “The Republic is back!”
Unfortunately the young members of the Rebellion who knew the Republic only through the nostalgia of their elders were unaware of how complicit it had been in its own demise, and they sought mostly to recreate, rather than replace, the old form of government. We know from the Aftermath books that Mon Mothma, who did remember the downfall of the old government, was too concerned with being seen as the next Palpatine to take the chance of overstepping her bounds by attempting the massive, systemic change necessary to create an entirely new government.
The result was a New Republic that was as weak as its predecessor, and because of the constant fear of a strong central government resulting in another Empire the Republic largely left the fate of its citizens in the hands of their local governments, while ignoring planets outside of the Republic entirely. Rose enters the story as a survivor of one of those forgotten planets. She is the person the Star Wars movies have never focused on, despite her story being the one that matters: that of the average citizen of the galaxy. Rose is not Leia, who despite her genuine heroism and her commitment to the cause of freedom throughout the galaxy has never actually been an ordinary citizen and instead fights for the restoration of the Republic her father idealized. She isn’t Luke, who is really only in the fight because of his family. She isn’t even Finn, a different kind of victim of the First Order who has known only his stunted upbringing and seeks (at first) merely to escape the First Order to some place safe.Unlike Finn she has seen enough of the galaxy to know there is nowhere safe to run. She knows the current state of the galaxy is entirely due to the powers that be, not just Supreme Leader Snoke, but the elite classes that are content to see another Empire rise because they profit from it. She is the one who correctly addresses the problem and the solution.
When Rose explains the rot behind Canto Bight’s façade and when she makes her declaration that the way to win is “saving what we love, not destroying what we hate,” she is not, as upset fanboys have claimed, uttering some mushy pacifist notion that you win by not fighting back. She is correctly pointing out that simply defeating the second Empire will not be enough. You cannot remove Palpatine or Snoke and expect that everyone underneath them will see the error of their ways and wickedness will disappear without someone to direct it. Evil will always fill the void. Our heroes must go further this time. There will be no “restoring” the hallowed Old Republic. A galaxy that values credits more than the rights of its citizens has twice allowed fascism to reign supreme. Something better must come from this, and it will be built by people like Rose Tico.
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