The Last Jedi made bold choices in prioritizing character over plot, and that investment paid off. While the film inspired so much debate and conversation around its messages, perhaps greater are its efforts to transgress our expectations. Rey, Rose, and Amilyn Holdo continue in Carrie Fisher’s legacy as an empowered, action-oriented heroine. But these three women of The Last Jedi are here to challenge deeply-held beliefs about Star Wars.
Rey: Making Her Own Place
Rey is the series’ new incorruptible soul. She is not a refined and elegant heroine; she grunts, sweats, grimaces, and accidentally chops boulders in half and crushes carts. Rey goes in swinging wildly, all with a grit worthy of acclaim. The revelation that she comes from nothing makes her an ideal hero, someone self-made and powerful in her own right.
Rey decides on a course and makes it happen. She skirts the treacherous border between curiosity and moral integrity. Where Luke shies away from the dark side cave on Ahch-To, she boldly strides in to face it. Being true to the light side doesn’t mean avoiding or ignoring the dark side, it means facing it head-on and refusing to yield to it. Rey knows this instinctively. She knows that to learn a new skill, she must take risks and endure tough lessons from all vectors.
More than that, as she challenges herself to rise above her circumstances, she brings others with her. Rey sought Luke hoping that he would show her her place in the universe. She winds up showing him his place, compelling him first to teach her, then challenging his version of events with his nephew Ben, and inspiring him to “face down the whole First Order.” She doesn’t just lift rocks, she lifts souls.
Rose: The Face of Endless Faceless Wars
Optimistic and full of a quiet, righteous rage, Rose is the moral heart of The Last Jedi. She and her sister, Paige, put everything on the line to fight for the Resistance, and it’s through Rose’s experience that we get to see the bigger stakes of this conflict.
As she mentions in the film, Rose and Paige were raised on a mining planet that the First Order robbed of all of its major resources. Then the First Order tested their weapons on the populace. Rose lost much in those gruesome months or years under the First Order’s white-gauntleted, throat-crushing rule. In the attack on the Fulminatrix, Rose loses her sister, and her sorrow and story puts a personal face on the impersonal masses.
Rose and her family represent a group Star Wars has failed to address in the past: the faceless victims of war. Previous films have treated these people as an abstract idea. In The Phantom Menace, Queen Amidala laments that her people are dying, yet we never see them. Alderaan is destroyed, yet we never see any of its civilians. Rose puts a face on victims of this protracted war and makes them impossible to ignore.
Fans are speculating that the young stable boy who summoned his broom with the Force and gazed at the stars will be one of Rey’s future Jedi apprentices. But let’s not forget that it was Rose who gave that boy the Resistance ring and stoked that fire of independence, self-worth, and defiance within him that can keep him going in the face of unbearable circumstances.
Amilyn Holdo: Unconventional, Uncompromising, Unforgettable
Amilyn Holdo’s flaws are what make her interesting. Even official supplementary materials describe her command style as “off-putting.” Yet Amilyn demonstrates calm competence. She rallies the core remaining Resistance leadership around her, assesses the situation, and sets her plan into motion.
There’s no question: Amilyn Holdo was right to cut Poe out of the plan-making. She has no obligation to share anything with her subordinates. As a commander in a clandestine paramilitary organization, she knows spies could be among them and any slip of that plan to the wrong person would doom the small flotilla and everyone aboard. Poe’s actions lose many Resistance lives, first with the bomber fleet, and then when his not-quite-master-codebreaker cues the First Order into the cloaked transports.
Meanwhile, Admiral Holdo, a capable strategist with a proven military record, is leading the First Order’s fleet on a wild goose chase, buying time to enact a plan that will get the survivors to safety on a secret base. As Leia later points out to the befuddled Poe, Holdo is not looking for glory, she’s only trying to keep the best hope for a restored Republic alive and well.
Besides, that tension between her and Poe is what makes Holdo so compelling. The most important lesson Amilyn Holdo has to teach is not about hope or trust, but about strategy. About how to lead, and how not to lead. And she’s teaching courses on both sides of the coin.
Most memorably, though, Holdo is responsible for arguably the single most striking image ever in a Star Wars film, as she jumps the Raddus into hyperspace and straight through the First Order line. May the Force be with you, Admiral Holdo.
The Future Is Female
Through Rey’s, Rose’s and Amilyn’s efforts, these three women win the respect of those around them and shape the outcome of events in ways grand and minute. The Last Jedi reiterates a truth that many would deny. It is possible to respect and admire characters who are unlike you. Not only is it possible, it is necessary. Our world, like that galaxy far, far away, is a vast and diverse place. It is our duty to lift up heroes who reflect that.
