Considering Loan Tran is beautiful and looks amazing, I don’t know why Johnson stuck her in that bag and odd haircut. No matter, JJ is home.
Because Racist Johnson couldn’t have Loan outshine the skinny white girl, that’s why. Daisy was insulted in the opposite direction, incongruously and ridiculously plastered with makeup as she was.
I’ve been thinking about which roles Finn and Poe could be playing in the Resistance in IX. Since they’re both leadership types there would be a great chance of the two of them tripping over each other narratively if they fill a similar capacity, especially since the Resistance according to Oscar is still very small. But with the new Star Wars show “Resistance” once more emphasizing Poe’s role in espionage I think they might give us general Finn and spy master Poe.
It would let both men play to their strengths and experiences while not tripping over each other plot wise.
Finn is a talented leader and great at inspiration. He has knowledge of, and talent for, unconventional battle tactics that works. One of the reasons Phasma wanted him for the officers track in the First Order before he noped out of that fascist regime in epic fashion. With any kind of sizable time skip, which we’re almost certain to see, Finn would have had to gain experience as well making him an excellent general for the Resistance.
Poe has experience with intelligence gathering and espionage from before he became involved in the Resistance. And a tiny Resistance would rely heavily on correct intel and prior knowledge of targets if their attacks were to have any effect against the First Order and not cost themselves too dearly in soldiers and materiel they cannot afford to lose.
In fact such a division could make for a good set up for roles for the entire heroic quartet as @lj-writes pointed out to me, with Finn leading the Resistance’s martial arm, Poe’s its intelligence capacities, Rey at least for the time being representing its Jedi/mystical capabilities and Rose rounding out the leadership by representing the all important support personnel – mechanics, medics, ect – without which the Resistance would not survive long.
~Mod Mara
The Resistance relying so heavily on intelligence would also be a nice dovetail into Poe being the Resistance’s overall leader, something he was being set up for in… pretty much every piece of franchise material he appeared in, most explicitly in The Last Jedi and the Poe Dameron comic.
This sets up an interesting dynamic between Finn and Poe, among others, because Finn has never been… how shall we say it… good with orders and bosses. I mean, ask the aforementioned Phasma. Wait you can’t lmaoooo
Even aside from the part where Finn understandably flips the bird to fascists, Poe himself tried to give Finn something approaching orders twice in two movies and Finn was 0/2 in following them. “We’re going back to Jakku!” “No, that’s stupid.” “Come back, this mission is a bust!” “Hell 2 the No!!”
This independence of thought is part of Finn’s strength and in fact in the best tradition of the Rebellion, e.g. Cassian, Raddus, Lando…, but it does mean that Poe would be foolish to expect a traditional superior-subordinate relationship with Finn. It’s interesting to speculate how Poe will carry forward his experience with Holdo and Leia in dealing with Finn. (I’m fine with the Holdo episode being quickly forgotten, personally. I mean, literally, “That’s not how the Rebellion works!”)
I think the franchise’s recent emphasis on maintenance and materiel–most prominently fuel–looks promising for Rose’s role. It’s also part of the reason I speculated that supplies will be a major part of Episode IX. As you pointed out, Rose’s technical expertise makes her indispensable to this side of the Resistance’s operations, making her vital for both intelligence and military operations. Rose started her career in the Resistance as a flight mechanic, serving aboard a bomber and providing real-time support in the thick of battle, and with the Resistance understaffed as it is she could reprise that role. It would lead to personal challenges, too, because the Cobalt Squadron book tells us that being responsible for lives in battle took a toll on her preexisting anxiety issues and she always flew with Paige before. The first time she didn’t, well, that was when Paige died.
Rey’s role as the Jedi is the vaguest, in some ways. Like you I am not enamored with the idea of her getting yet a third confrontation with Kylo Ren. This isn’t the Luke situation with Vader, where Luke was able to avoid confrontation with Vader altogether in the first movie, suffered defeat and a shocking revelation in the second, and was primed for a rematch in the third. She’s already beaten Kylo 2 for 2, there’s nothing to prove by kicking his ass a third time. She explicitly tried to replicate Luke’s Vader redemption ending, that bridge is crossed and burned. He tried Palpatine-style temptation on her, again, didn’t work. She was going for the RotJ ending and he for the RotS one, and they both failed. There’s nothing left in that direction that isn’t a boring repeat. As I said before, I’d find it interesting if she took point on eliminating the Knights of Ren so they can’t tamp down discontent in the FO ranks, causing chaos in the FO, kind of a “defeat the middle bosses to unlock the big boss” situation.
It’s Finn, not Rey, who is in Luke’s situation with this series’ Big Bad. Only it’s Luke’s sequence reversed, with a defeat and injury in the first movie and avoidance of confrontation in the second, leaving tension for the final confrontation. His position representative of the Resistance’s martial arm places him on a direct collision course with Kylo Ren. Now that’s a grudge match I’m up for.
They have an already established relationship that goes back quite a bit before TLJ and Poe obviously likes Rose a lot. And Rose like Poe in return.
Not to mention that Poe’s, “How did did you two meet?”, followed by, “Good luck?”, when Rose answers, “Just luck”, can easily read as jealousy of Finn.
He has been developing romantic feelings for Rose but haven’t found the place and time to talk to her about it and now suddenly here’s Finn, the gorgeous, dashing young man who Rose obviously likes a lot and he feels defeated. Not that he think Rose owes him anything, he just wishes that Rose would look at him the way she looks at Finn.
And Rose clearly trust Poe above all else. Having outgrown her unhealthy hero worship of Finn and realized that she’s all the hero she’s ever going to need would make for an excellent basis for a romance between her and Poe.
Evidently there’s a passage in Star Wars Adventures where Rose saves Poe’s life by opening the Raddus’s hangar door where no one else knew how to. She’d just been… like… reading the manual like the giant dork she is. I can imagine her really standing out to him from that moment on.
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.
I have talked before about how the Resistance could still grow its forces post-TLJ (link). However, in light of Oscar Isaac’s comments about the Resistance being a smaller, underdog guerilla force, I’ve also started thinking about how the Resistance could win without being a huge military force like the Rebellion was. According te Oscar:
“[The Resistance] are guerrilla fighters, adhering closer to something like the Revolutionary War fighters or even the guerrillas in Cuba with Che and Fidel and all these guys living in the mountains, coming down to do some attacks, and going back and trying to hide from the ’empire’ of the United States. It’s that kind of ragged at this point.”
Episode IX could still show the Resistance growing, of course; Oscar could be talking about an early stage in the movie, since he says “at this point.” However, if the Resistance is a much-outnumbered guerrilla force for most of Episode IX, could they still win?
A depressing possibility under the small-Resistance scenario, of course, is that the Resistance is defeated or reaches a ceasefire with the FO so that both sides retreat to their own regions of space in preparation for farther movies and series. I’ll rule that out for the moment, though, because it would be a rehash of the TLJ ending and is not a real ending to the saga at all. Besides, this entire situation with the FO has its roots a compromise with the Empire remnants and I highly doubt it’s a good idea to let that history repeat again.
Another point is that Oscar referenced victorious guerrilla fighters, the
Continental Army and Castro’s 26th of July Movement, each of which won their wars and
successfully took power. (What they did with the power afterward is
another matter. This is not meant to be an endorsement of either the U.S.’s or Cuba’s political systems so hold off on the anons please.)
If we leave out the unsatisfactory defeat/ceasefire ending and assume the Resistance stays small, there may still be paths to victory. To that end let’s examine Oscar’s historical parallels.
The British Empire lost to the Continentials because of lack of political will (many in Britain did not believe war was a solution at all), lack of command skill and command line coherence, lack of supplies in hostile territory, the failure of expected Loyalist support to materialize, and the Continentals gaining useful allies like France and Spain. The Cuban government under Batista lost because his commanders made crucial mistakes, he couldn’t get necessary arms and parts for his military due to a U.S. embargo, and he lost both United States and domestic support.
These factors can be boiled down to four things: Unity, supplies, support, and allies. If the FO is disunited and its command are at each other’s throats or simply failing to coordinate; if it loses crucial sources of supplies and has its supply lines disrupted; and if the populations of the occupied territories rise up against it while the Resistance gains allies, there is a chance for even a small Resistance to prevail.
For one it gives an alternative type of conflict, or at least how the conflict plays out, to the last two trilogies.
Another is that this gives Rose a place and time to shine as a mechanic. Who better in the Resistance to know where they should strike and how? She never got to show off her abilities in TLJ with this she has a great chance.
Finally there’s the possibility that the end game battle will be fairly small. As in, not a whole lot people involved. And I know there are people who hate that idea, but to me the battles in the Star Wars movies that kept me engrossed had nothing to do with how much pew pew was going on.
Think about the climatic battle in RotS? It’s basically two one on one duels: Anakin vs Obi-Wan and Sidious vs Yoda.
Or for that matter the action climax in ESB. Vader vs Luke and Leia, Lando and Chewie’s desperate attempt to first rescue Han and the escape the Empire all the while picking Luke up.
Or TPM. The battle with the Gungans on the plain and all the shenanigans up in space are really distraction from the main plot, Padmé capturing the viceroys. And a lot of emotional payoff is invested in Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan vs Maul.
Last, but certainly not least, TFA. Yes we have pew pew up in atmosphere above SKB and yes we want Poe and Red and Blue squadron to blow it up. But where is our attention and emotional investment? Down on the ground, with Finn, Han, Chewie and Rey. In the end all the pew pew up there feels like a distraction from the “actual” battle.
So small scale final conflict does not to me mean lack of payoff for the trilogy or IX on its own. Maybe the final battle is an attempt to capture or kill key First Order officers in an attempt to cut off the head of the snake so to speak. If the First Order is already pressed and internal conflict rampant, removing key figures one way or the other could be a method how a fairly small group of people, or number of small groups, could bring down a behemoth like the First Order.
You’re right, supply attacks would be a PERFECT way for Rose to shine! She’s built a crucial new technology herself and has experience with supply runs. I really hate how she was reduced to searching for a dude hacker in TLJ and then ending up with a different dude hacker. From TLJ you would never know that she was a brilliant mechanic and inventor who had supervised a whole team of bomber flight engineers to implement the technology she built. Having her cause chaos in the FO by cutting off its supply lines with maximum effect would go a long way toward doing her character more justice. Put your fist through the FO the right way, girl.
Yes, the climactic last battles in the SW movies have always been personal, even intimate. Even the destruction of the Death Star in ANH came down to Luke, his connection to the Force through Obi-Wan’s ghost, Vader trying to shoot Luke down, and Han coming through for a last-minute assist. One hero, the hero’s mentor, the hero’s implacable shadow, and the triumphant culmination of the friend’s character arc.
In fact, the operations to ultimately take down the FO as I outlined in the op are so vast they’d be a better subject of a between-movies TV series along the lines of The Clone Wars. (I wonder what this war against the FO would be called? The Shadow War? The Force War? The Star War?) Episode IX can show the final results, with a little exposition on how they got there, and then have our core group of heroes finish things off. It’s the Star Wars way.
Here are snippets from the TLJ novelization discussing Rose’s development of the baffler, a device that hides energy signatures to make ships harder to detect, and its role in Holdo’s plan with the transports.
The novelization follows up from Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein, the book that goes into much more detail about Rose and Paige’s time with the titular bomber squadron and how Rose used the baffler in action. In Rose’s last conversation with Paige, it is revealed that Rose has been tapped to help other mechanics adapt the technology she built so it can be deployed across the Resistance.
This is the reason Rose and Paige were separated and why Rose, who was previously the flight engineer on the bomber Cobalt Hammer, was not on board with Paige when it was destroyed in the dreadnought run. Actually I’m not sure why Rose couldn’t still board Cobalt Hammer. She wasn’t replaced as Hammer’s flight engineer as far as I can tell. Did they not need a flight engineer for the bombing run?
I’m calling bullshit on Rose no longer being needed on the Ninka after the techs learned from her. If Rose was not needed on Hammer anyway, why couldn’t she stay on Ninka to help adapt the technology? In Cobalt Squadron Rose and the entire team of bomber flight engineers were forever sweating to get the baffler, a very new and finicky technology, working right under intensive conditions. The bugs were getting ironed out during Cobalt Squadron, but it doesn’t seem plausible that everything was ready to go within a few hours on adapting this new tech outside its original setting. New and untried tech doesn’t… work like that. There’s always something to trip you up.
So instead of staying on to help the deployment of the technology she built, Rose is transferred back to the Raddus where she is just in time to witness her sister’s death and where she has so little to do that she’s relegated to “doing droidwork.”
What the FUCK in Cobalt Squadron Holdo directly addresses Rose by NAME to personally
request she come on board the Ninka. But a couple days later she forgets
who Rose is? Holdo even tells Rose the Ninka is desperately short on techs, and yet
Rose in TLJ was transferred back to the Raddus where she had nothing better to
do than tase people? What fuckery is this?
Also, Holdo in
Cobalt Squadron is actually a decent leader who inspires people with her
speech in the wake of Hosnia’s destruction, and Rose is impressed by
her. Why would Rose, only a day or two later, decide to go off and do whatever the hell she wants, fuck Holdo? There’s no consistency here.
The only way I can reconcile this in-universe is that familiarity bred some serious contempt and Rose decided in the hours she spent on the Ninka that Holdo is a horrible boss and worse human being. TLJ totally backs her on this, probably unintentionally.
Here are snippets from the TLJ novelization discussing Rose’s development of the baffler, a device that hides energy signatures to make ships harder to detect, and its role in Holdo’s plan with the transports.
The novelization follows up from Cobalt Squadron by Elizabeth Wein, the book that goes into much more detail about Rose and Paige’s time with the titular bomber squadron and how Rose used the baffler in action. In Rose’s last conversation with Paige, it is revealed that Rose has been tapped to help other mechanics adapt the technology she built so it can be deployed across the Resistance.
This is the reason Rose and Paige were separated and why Rose, who was previously the flight engineer on the bomber Cobalt Hammer, was not on board with Paige when it was destroyed in the dreadnought run. Actually I’m not sure why Rose couldn’t still board Cobalt Hammer. She wasn’t replaced as Hammer’s flight engineer as far as I can tell. Did they not need a flight engineer for the bombing run?
I’m calling bullshit on Rose no longer being needed on the Ninka after the techs learned from her. If Rose was not needed on Hammer anyway, why couldn’t she stay on Ninka to help adapt the technology? In Cobalt Squadron Rose and the entire team of bomber flight engineers were forever sweating to get the baffler, a very new and finicky technology, working right under intensive conditions. The bugs were getting ironed out during Cobalt Squadron, but it doesn’t seem plausible that everything was ready to go within a few hours on adapting this new tech outside its original setting. New and untried tech doesn’t… work like that. There’s always something to trip you up.
So instead of staying on to help the deployment of the technology she built, Rose is transferred back to the Raddus where she is just in time to witness her sister’s death and where she has so little to do that she’s relegated to “doing droidwork.”
Let me get this straight, they’re so busy that they didn’t have a job for an experienced mechanic? How does that even make sense? And then, of course, there’s the setup for Rose and Finn’s meet-electrocute where they insult her skills still farther by handing her a taser and the order to stun deserters.
Remember, this order HAS to have come from Holdo or someone under her command because the Raddus’s senior officers are dead, Leia is in a coma, and Holdo has taken over.
To summarize so far: Holdo requested Rose come aboard the Ninka to teach her techs the baffler technology, then decides that a few hours in hyperspace are more than enough to figure out and adapt this new tech and its creator is no longer necessary. Holdo then takes command of the Raddus but doesn’t do shit to make use of Rose again because evidently there’s no point in making sure the baffler technology runs perfectly, guided by the person who made it.
I mean, why would Holdo want Rose to supervise the technology she built? It’s not like Holdo was using the baffler for any vital plan that was central to saving the Resistance or anything-
OH FOR FUCK’S SAKE. Holdo used Rose’s baffler tech for the shuttles that the entire surviving Resistance’s LIVES depended on. And yet the inventor of that technology, who was on THAT VERY SHIP, was never called to help fine-tune the technology and didn’t even KNOW of the plan, so that she inadvertently worked at cross-purposes with it.
WHY would Holdo not tap Rose to make sure the bafflers would work correctly? Rose knew that tech inside out. She had supervised and taught engineers to deploy the baffler technology. She got anxiety from the possibility that the tech might not work correctly and cost lives, and worked like hell to make sure it worked. You leave someone like that out of your plan? Leaving this precious resource untapped just so you can keep your cards close to your chest for no fucking reason?
Holdo stans have defended her refusal to tell Poe or anyone about the plan, saying she didn’t owe anyone an explanation. Sure seems like shitty leadership, but let’s say for the sake of argument that she didn’t have to tell them. What’s the reason for leaving out Rose, the technician who invented the technology the whole plan depended on? Does this look like the actions of a leader who cares about maximizing the chances of success and giving everyone the best chance at survival?
No, Holdo shows a consistent pattern of keeping secrets to the detriment of the mission, sowing fear and distrust among her crew, not even caring enough to tap the right person to make sure the crucial piece of technology for her plan is foolproof. Again, the baffler was a new technology that had been adapted out of its original setting within a day ago. The person who knew it better than anyone was right on board the ship Holdo commanded, but Holdo didn’t give a shit.
Holdo should have been all over Rose’s ass to make sure nothing could go wrong with the bafflers. She should have been inspiring and reassuring her crew by letting them know exactly what she was going to do and putting all their efforts behind it, giving them hope that they would survive and light the spark of resistance across the galaxy. Instead she turned people against her by demanding they take her on faith alone, and set adrift without a sense of purpose or control some of her best people ended up unknowingly sabotaging her plan.
People whose names she didn’t even know, by the way.
Rose’s history with the baffler and Holdo is yet more confirmation that Holdo didn’t actually care about the mission. She cared about gaining a sense of power by disempowering people in her command, and she cared about her false sheen of modesty. This is terrible leadership on every level, and the narrative of TLJ is disingenuous in demanding that we see her as a heroic figure who was right about everything.
Rose taking comfort under fire in the fact that if she and Paige die, they die together
(Consider everything in the notes a potential spoiler)
Oh wow, this book has actual, proper grieving scenes for the characters’ losses in battle! Who’d have thought such a thing was possible? Everyone knows this is so hard, even billion-dollar grossing movies have characters grinning like idiots with no one ever shedding a tear after losing of most of their friends and comrades.
That said, who thought it was a good idea to go out and fly the exact same mission again when a TIE fighter had escaped in the previous battle and the enemy was ready for them? Without, say, a fighter escort to fight off the TIEs? If the Resistance couldn’t properly protect their supply ships they should have admitted they were overextended and declined to help any further, or deveoped a different method so the enemy wouldn’t see them coming. You can’t just send out your crew hoping for the best, ffs, especially when this mission was about giving aid to an outside group and was not vital to the Resistance’s work. There was no mention of Atterra being of particular strategic importance to dislodge the First Order.
If the Resistance were at all serious about Atterra, why not go to the Senate? By this point members of the Resistance had seen more than enough to testify before the Senate about the abuses in the Atterra system. Whatever happened to those spy droids in the opening mission? They must have gathered some evidence, as the Resistance who visited the planet must have. They had two real live Atterran witnesses right there!
And let’s say they didn’t go to the Republic because the Senate was willing to let the FO do whatever the fuck they liked in their own territory, blockade entire populations into dying of thirst, dissolve the bodies of their victims in the acid oceans. If so, the Resistance was violating its own mandate and potentially starting a war with the FO. It would have been better to fly humanitarian missions to evacuate the Atterrans instead, because there is no indication the Bravo Rising resistance group could hold territory and keep their supply lines open even if they defeated the FO.
Argh. I like the worldbuilding and character development in this book but the story makes no sense once you really look at it.
Rose thinking she’d rather blow herself and Paige up than let either of them be taken by the First Order
Also let it be known for the record that you have not lived until you have heard Loan Tran doing a British accent.
Oh, these kids. They’re going to kill me. They devise a new plan on their own because their commanders didn’t, and now they’re flying into the very space where they lost their comrades, eager to do the job and win it. These beautiful, doomed young people at war.
I so, so wish Paige and Finn had gotten to meet. Finn would have had so much to contribute to the bomber squadron, and he and Paige would have hit it right off with their strategic brilliance and penchant for gamebreaking ideas. I can see why Rose latched on to Finn so hard: he and Paige are a lot alike, and he could brainstorm with Rose much like she used to do with Paige. The execution is so much better in Cobalt Squadron, though. In TLJ it was just bewildering, while Paige’s plan was presented very clearly and excitingly in the book.
L.J.'s Obsessions 