Yes, I know, she’s from Hays Minor in the Otomak system, but Hays Minor was a poor mining colony, a frozen wasteland only settled for its mineral resources. Even before the First Order took it over and systematically destroyed it Hays Minor was a harsh place, with no indigenous animal species and temperatures so lethal people couldn’t go outside without special protective suits. It’s not the kind of place where people dream of raising their families, but someplace people go because they have to make a living--and, if they have young children, because they have nowhere else to go.
And what was Jedha known for? Force religion, sure, but also for mining kyber crystals. It would have been home not only to believers and clerics, but also to skilled miners experienced at extracting these invaluable resources. And also to violent partisans, of course, a backlash to the Empire’s anti-religious repression and ruthless exploitation of the area’s resources, but for now let’s look at more ordinary citizens just trying to go about their lives.
Imagine you are a miner on Jedha.
You were fortunate enough to survive the blast of the Death Star. Maybe you escaped into space like the Rogue One crew did, or maybe you didn’t live in the Holy City--maybe you were working on a mine elsewhere. Even if you were not in the City or its outskirts, though, you have to get out eventually because the blast is breaking the whole moon apart, kiling your world. You’ve lived on Jedha for generations and have no ties anywhere else. Where do you go?
The galaxy is wide, but the reach of the Empire is long. The stigma of being from Jedha clings to you and comes back in the form of refusals to let you settle, even violence from the authorities or from neighbors. Maybe one of the excuses is that you’re a terrorist, because your origins are associated with the memory of the partisan zealots who held out against the Empire in a mountain fortress until their violent ends.
Maybe you settled on other, more hospitable planets only to be driven out, losing everything you built and barely escaping with your life. Others were not so lucky. Maybe you learned to change your dress and customs so you would not stand out, learned never to talk about Jedha so you would not draw unwanted attention. Even your spouse might not know, if you met them after Jedha. (All things in your life are divided into before and after Jedha.) Maybe your spouse is from Jedha, too. Maybe you met them in the diaspora, which is bittersweet because you never would have met and fallen in love on Jedha. The two of you agree that it is best to stay silent about the home whose name still echoes in your hearts. Survival comes first.
You never talk to your children about Jedha. You don’t tell them what the ceremonies you hold from time to time mean, religious ceremonies from home that you carry on in secret, mourning what can never be again.
Maybe you even fought in the Rebellion yourself, finally free to shout and scream and sob the name of Jedha when you run into battle, a cry for justice. It hurts every time to say it but you do it anyway, letting the name tear your throat and your soul, Jedha, Jedha, Jedha, so you will not forget, so the world will not forget.
Maybe, despite using the name as a rallying cry, the other Rebellion fighters did not always look kindly on you and the other Jedhan fighters. The whispers of “extremist” and “fanatic” still cling to you, and the same people who say “May the Force be with you” to each other may find your ways in the Force strange. There are a thousand glances and words that cut and every time you have to wonder, is this because I’m Jedhan? You try not to be so sensitive. You pick at the meanings behind meanings, trying to disentangle the threads that trip you up. You hope for a better galaxy anyway, and that’s what you’re all here for no matter where you’re from, right?
When the Empire collapses you rejoice and weep, and say a prayer of thanks. There can be justice at last, and better days for the Jedhan refugees. The New Republic promises to do right by you and the Alderaanians, to all the people who lost everything to the Empire.
The promises, fragile and hollow, break under strain. You, like much of the Jedhan disapora, are vocal against the truce with the Empire’s remains, warning they’ll be back. You are called warmongers and extremists. You and your fellows ask for the New Republic‘s assistance with resettlement, demand that the Empire officials’ riches from the lifeblood of your people and peoples elsewhere be returned to the Jedhan diaspora and so many others displaced by the Empire. You are called greedy and a nuisance.
You are still not welcome anywhere, and if anything seem to be an inconvenience to a universe that wishes to move on and forget. You drift, body and soul, without a home, and survival becomes increasingly more pressing as your family grows.
Then you hear about a mining colony far out in space--an inhospitable place, a deadly place actually, but they’re looking for people and they can use your skills. Maybe you even hear of it through the refugee grapevine, and other Jedhans are going so it’ll feel a little like home. Nothing will ever be home, but it’s a living and a community. You could do worse than that.
So you raise your daughters on a frozen planet, in a shelter specially shielded to keep the planet from killing you all. You watch them play in the artificial light, happy and smiling and alive, and you are content. You are luckier than many, so many that you will carry to your grave.
You don’t talk to your children about Jedha, the old fears locking your lips, not wanting them to go through what you had to as a Jedhan. When you and your spouse make them matching medallions you tell them they represent the twin planets of Hays Major and Hays Minor. In your heart of hearts you think of them as being Jedha and NaJedha, orbiting each other even in ruin. You hope your daughters’ lives will be better, not touched and tainted by destruction as yours was. Maybe that’s another reason you don’t want to tell them about Jedha, because you don’t want that shadow over their lives.
And Hays Minor has been good for your family, after all. Your daughters can do worse than think of a community of courageous, hard-working, honest people as home. This is enough. Not perfect (not Jedha, never Jedha) but enough, and maybe you’ll save up to move to a kinder planet where life isn’t quite so harsh, a place where your eldest can see and touch the animals she’s always talking about, where she and her sister can stand in the sun and breathe unfiltered air.
Your dreams and your heart shatter when a Star Destroyer blots out the sky over your home a second time. They will be back, you and your people warned the galaxy. You just didn’t think, never let yourself imagine, that they would come for your home and your family first. Not again.
A list of the unforgivable things Rian Johnson has done to the characters in TLJ
Character assassinating Luke Skywalker. The real Luke who risked his own life to try and bring his father back to the Light would never have even thought of killing his own family member. No wonder Mark felt offended.
Making Leia Organa unlikable by having her slap and stun Poe whom she knew had only recently recovered from torture.
Making Rose Tico unlikable by having her tazer Finn into unconsciousness whom she knew had just barely recovered from a life-threatening injury, and playing the whole thing off for laughs.
Character assassinating Poe Dameron. The real Poe from BTA, TFA and the Poe Dameron comics would not behave this way to neither his superiors nor his subordinates. No wonder Oscar felt offended.
Character assassinating Rey. The real Rey from TFA wouldn’t sympathise with someone whom she had seen attack civilians, who abducted her and invaded her mind against her will, who hurt her and murdered and almost murdered her friends.
Sidelining Finn, the male hero of TFA, into a pointless, irrelevant B-plot and giving him the exact same story arc he had already gone through in the previous movie, and treating him like a comic relief buffoon.
Completely ignoring Finn for most of the promotional campaign, and at the last moment lying about how Finn was still a main character and just as important as Rey.
Queerbaiting FinnPoe and then lying about how he couldn’t have known people would get their hopes up.
Killing off Amilyn Holdo, the first actual on-screen LGBT+ character in a SW movie.
There. I thought it would be good to have them all in one place. Please feel free to add to the list should I have forgotten something.
(And don't forget to return those movie tickets and merch you might have bought, and to encourage others to do the same. I know I'm sounding like a broken record here but this is really crucial)
A popular theory about what Finn’s arc in TLJ will be, involves him freeing reconditioned Stormtroopers and starting a rebellion against the First Order from within. With the further benefit that if the Resistance can permanently disable or find a way of easily circumvent the reconditioning process they’d have dealt a strong blow to how the First Order maintain complete loyalty among its trooper and officers.
This idea that is based among other things on Finn and Rose going undercover, the knowledge that we’re going to be encountering at least one Executioner Trooper - a branch who’s sole task it is to hunt down disloyal members with the First Order and take care of them - and us seeing him fighting Phasma while Stormtroopers seems to be aiding him, rather than fighting against him.
And in the bts video released today the theory may have got additional confirmation.
If my theory that reconditioning is literally a procedure that turns the subject into a human droid - such as Terex is in the Poe Dameron comic - then the best way to foil such a thing would be with a slicer (the in universe word for a hacker). And a slicer is exactly what Finn and Rose originally goes hunting for and find, embodied in Benicio Del Toro’s mysterious character DJ.
Here is where the bts video gets interesting.
We see a very brief scene of a determined Finn walking down a large hallway. Rose is behind him in the right side of the screen.
And to the left?
Benicio Del Toro.
So, DJ is with them when they get to the FO base or Star Destroyer.
Now there’s a lot of reasons to get a slicer and bring him into a First Order base. Such as getting codes or critical intel, or just wreck general havoc with their systems.
So was the idea to use DJ’s skills to free reconditioned troops the original idea? Or is this Finn’s own plan? And if DJ is as self serving as both Benicio and John has been saying, how does Finn and Rose talk him into coming along? Does Rose’s tragic past play into it? One she might share with DJ? Or is there a glimmer of altruistic good in DJ under the cynicism?
❤ Rose and Rey have a cute house with a huge garden out back. Rey takes a master gardening class and gets instantly obsessed. Things get a little out of hand and they end up with chickens and a goat somehow, but even though their yard is full of a ridiculous amount of veggies, flowers, and trees, they enjoy the quiet chaos of their own peaceful kingdom.
❤ They adopt a pup named Kaytoo, and they love him very much. They take him to the dog park every day, and make friends with the other dog owners in town.
❤ Rose is a professional baker, known for her unique creations. They live in a smallish town, but she becomes so well known that people come from all over just to try her cupcakes and cookies. She also bakes fresh bread every week at home, and her and Rey’s house always smells delicious.
❤ Soon after Rey gets into gardening, she takes up cooking as well (gotta do something with all those cucumbers after all.) It’s a bit of a rocky start at first, but she figures it out. Soon, she and Rose have fresh delicious food for dinner every night.
❤ While walking Kaytoo one day, Rose and Rey meet a group of elderly women who are sitting in their front yard, drinking tea and talking shit about the neighbors.
It turns out that the women are old friends who formed a bowling league, and now they hang out every week. The “Rocking and Bowling” grandmas immediately adopt Rose and Rey, and affectionately call them, “the kids.”
❤ Rey and Rose join the old ladies’ bowling team. Rey is very, very bad at it, but ridiculously competitive anyway. Rose throws strikes all the time, without even trying, and Rey pretends to be very upset but really, in this place, surrounded by a wonderful community and the love of her life, she couldn’t be happier.
That picture of the destroyed Jedha in the Star Wars comic brought my thoughts back to Rose’s pendant and her possibly being Jedhan.
The original idea was that it might have tied back to one of the Jedhan religions, the Church of the Contained Crescent, and it still might.
But maybe the crescent has nothing specifically to do with any of the faiths, maybe it is used by all Jedhan survivors regardless of religions persuasion Because the crescent is meant to be the destroyed Jedha itself, the crisscross pattern, cut deep into the surface a parallel to the jagged, broken surface.
After all, Jedha was a moon. And after the Death Star devastated it, a moon with a chunk torn out of it making it look sort of like a crescent.
So I know this might sound wild, but hear me out! I kept thinking about Adam Driver's recent comments to GQ about a princess hiding who she is in order to survive. The exact quote is:
"You have, also, the hidden identity of this princess who's hiding who she really is so she can survive and Kylo Ren and her hiding behind these artifices."
The immediate conclusion people drew was that he was talking about Rey's origins, and I would be as happy as anyone if this means she is Leia's or Luke's daughter.
However, that seems to me a little too easy? And a violation of his NDA if this was an unauthorized comment? Make no mistake, the current promotional blitz is a carefully orchestrated event. The GQ interview and the other media appearances aren't hard-hitting journalistic pieces on a search for the truth of a galaxy far, far away. They're meant to sell the movie to us in a way LucasFilm has planned and approved. Unless Driver is currently being sued for all he's worth I don't buy that he let a spoiler slip.
It also doesn't quite fit. Rey isn't hiding who she is, her identity was hidden from her. There's also no indication that not knowing her own identity helps her survive or hide.
There was also speculation that the line referred to Leia, but this also doesn't fit because everyone knows who Leia is--a princess of Alderaan by adoption and the daughter of Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala by birth. The revelation that her birth father was the hated Darth Vader derailed her political career years before TFA started.
What if the princess is Rose Tico? Here's what we know about her: she works in maintenance, she is a "nobody," her home was destroyed by the First Order and, according to the book Star Wars Made Easy, "she has a tragic past that she prefers to keep hidden."
This last part has prompted speculations that Rose is a former student of Luke's and survived the massacre of the Jedi school. But what about the part where her home was destroyed by the First Order? I guess one could say the Jedi Temple was her home, but we know that she has a sister, Paige, so she has or had an origin family. Wouldn't it be more natural to say this family's home was her home? Did the First Order destroy her school AND her family's home? I mean that seems a bit much to me.
What if we assume instead that the destruction of her home and the tragic past are connected--her home was destroyed, and this is part of her tragic past? Running with the princess theory, she was royalty on her home planet but it was destroyed by the First Order, and she had to go into hiding as a result.
We know from the Princess Leia comic that the Empire targeted the surviving Alderaanians after destroying their home planet. The First Order is certainly not above such tactics, especially when any surviving members of the former leadership may be a threat to their rule.
Rose as a lost princess, in other words, fits the description of a princess hiding her identity to survive and also matches our scant prior knowledge of her. Even Kelly Marie Tran flatly stating that she's not royalty could be read as a deflection that is not quite a lie--it was said in the present tense, and from a certain point of view (cough) royalty with no power and nothing to rule is not, in fact, currently royalty beyond a title.
Now think about the courage it took for a Princess Rose, marked for death by the same organization that destroyed her home planet, to run not away from danger but into it by joining the Resistance like a certain other Princess we know of. Think of how her story would affect Finn, whose internal conflict in TLJ is whether to stay and fight or to run.
To get even farther with the speculation, what if Rose's destroyed home and the home Finn was taken from are the same? What if they are bound by the ties of a common origin, even the ties of family?
I would die of joy if we have Princess Rose and her knight Sir Finn, or Princess Rose and Prince Finn as brother and sister. Even if it's not canon it's a really fun piece of speculation.
And if you're outright dismissing this theory as crack, why is that? If you're willing to believe a scavenger can be a princess, why not a mechanic?
