I know people have been worried about no sign of Rose in Act III of TLJ and I’m not saying not to, but you know who we haven’t had any sight of in Act III as well? Luke.
And we know that Kelly Marie and Mark did a chemistry reading, suggesting that they’ll share screen time and important scenes together.
So maybe we have seen neither in Act III because they’re together and off doing… well, some Force related stuff almost undoubtedly, given that Luke is involved.
I like this idea! Given the most recent Rose meta we’ve been working on, we may have some clues about their destination…
“Spoilers” for meta incoming later. While I agree that Jedha might be a possibility I think Crait itself is too.
My thoughts keep going back to the fact that Crait is covered in red crystals and that Kyber turns blood red when corrupted by the Dark Side (and then turns bright white if purified). Crait might be more important Force-wise than we realize right now
Rian may have left a possible return to Jedha as part of that “mess” he mentioned that the director of Episode IX would have to deal with.
In fact. Crait had mines going in Imperial era, just the way Kyber was mined on Jedha, there might have been a significant Jedhan diaspora of miners that had goen off world, post-ANH.
Hmmm, more thoughts.
Ooh, I like that! The official info is that the white stuff is salt, but who knows if that’s uniformly true. Also the underlying red rock base is unexplained, so is it some kind of red salt rock–or something else? The Storms of Crait illustrator Mike Mayhew says of Crait in an interview that “under the surface is this strange, alien red rock,” so I’m guessing it’s not salt. Also appearing in the book is a mine with droid workers, presumably mining the red rock.
Also when Kyle is searching the tunnels (mines?) in Crait with Troopers, could he be searching for Luke & Rose–and maybe the thing they’re searching for?
I wasn’t so much thinking of the white salt on the surface when I said purified, though you may indeed be correct, I was thinking of these little guys:
Purification would take some sort of deliberate intent and who knows, maybe these little critters are intelligent?
And when Rian was asked about the nature of these foxes he answered:
Okay, granted, that covers a lot of things. But still, it’s interesting.
The red rock has more than once been described as mineral and I’m fairly sure we see at least one of the mines in the trailer, where it looks distinctly crystal-like.
Re: Kylo and his search.
I really had been wondering what the hell is happening here.
It really does look like it’s Crait, so it must almost certainly be Act III but I kept wondering what he was doing on the ground and why. (Please note that he’s still with the FO at this late point.)
But yes, he could definitely be searching for Luke and Rose.
This line of theory really leads to all sorts of very interesting possibilities, doesn’t it?
That is a really interesting idea. I remember wondering what the hell kind of animals had crystals in their fur. (Is this theory the origin of your current url kyberfox?) And we know kyber crystals are at least partly organic.
If Rose, Luke, and Kyle are on–or in–the ground, I wonder if the battle on the ground and in the air have the objective to protect or attack them. Otoh since Crait is the new Resistance base after the evacuation from D’Qar, maybe this is an attack by the FO on the base which the Resistance is defending against? Idk.
I know people have been worried about no sign of Rose in Act III of TLJ and I’m not saying not to, but you know who we haven’t had any sight of in Act III as well? Luke.
And we know that Kelly Marie and Mark did a chemistry reading, suggesting that they’ll share screen time and important scenes together.
So maybe we have seen neither in Act III because they’re together and off doing… well, some Force related stuff almost undoubtedly, given that Luke is involved.
I like this idea! Given the most recent Rose meta we’ve been working on, we may have some clues about their destination…
“Spoilers” for meta incoming later. While I agree that Jedha might be a possibility I think Crait itself is too.
My thoughts keep going back to the fact that Crait is covered in red crystals and that Kyber turns blood red when corrupted by the Dark Side (and then turns bright white if purified). Crait might be more important Force-wise than we realize right now
Rian may have left a possible return to Jedha as part of that “mess” he mentioned that the director of Episode IX would have to deal with.
In fact. Crait had mines going in Imperial era, just the way Kyber was mined on Jedha, there might have been a significant Jedhan diaspora of miners that had goen off world, post-ANH.
Hmmm, more thoughts.
Ooh, I like that! The official info is that the white stuff is salt, but who knows if that’s uniformly true. Also the underlying red rock base is unexplained, so is it some kind of red salt rock–or something else? The Storms of Crait illustrator Mike Mayhew says of Crait in an interview that “under the surface is this strange, alien red rock,” so I’m guessing it’s not salt. Also appearing in the book is a mine with droid workers, presumably mining the red rock.
Also when Kyle is searching the tunnels (mines?) in Crait with Troopers, could he be searching for Luke & Rose–and maybe the thing they’re searching for?
Ahhhhhh I love this theory!! Maybe the hangar getting blown up from footage released earlier is from this evacuation, too! It would certainly fit with the way the FO was shooting at the Resistance ships, and I know if I was a commander in that battle I’d be making sure the X-Wings can’t launch.
So Poe, ordered to evacuate, realizes Leia is in danger, gets on an X-Wing with the hangar blowing up around him, dogfights Kylo Ren away from Leia at great risk to himself, and Leia gets mad as hell at him for putting himself in so much danger, against her express orders at that. She busts his rank down from Commander to Lieutenant for insubordination, too.
And what if Leia’s sorrow and fear in the trailer scene are due to watching the dogfight, not daring to imagine what would happen if either of them killed the other? It would certainly add an edge to her anger at Poe, the thought that she could have lost him or that she could have watched Kylo die, an agonizing prospect despite how far he’s gone.
In many ways she may have found the prospect of her own death easier than Poe confronting Kylo in battle, and maybe Poe made this observation in the heat of the moment–that she wasn’t thinking of herself, and her grief and her pain were overwhelming her so much that she wanted to end things and leave the fight for good.
This would certainly get Leia angry enough to hit Poe, because he’s out of line but he’s also right, which is worse. This was something Han did in Hoth, too, shadowing her through the evacuation so she couldn’t stay behind to die a heroic death. The memories would be almost too much.
I hope Leia’s and Poe’s care for each other, their personal philosophies, and their respective traumas collide and overlap to develop their relationship both as a commander and subordinate and as a surrogate mother and son. And I want to see Poe kick his torturer’s ass big time.
Is the “princess” actually Rose?
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?
The existence of the Executioner Stormtroopers, a unit dedicated to rooting out disloyalty in the ranks, has set fans buzzing. The reveal provided more fuel to speculation about a possible Stormtrooper uprising headed by Finn, and The Last Jedi trailer only intensified the speculation.
Could it be that we know at least one of the Executioner Stormtroopers from tie-in media? Someone who is known to Finn and has/will have a complicated relationship with him, with the potential for really gripping conflict?
I believe, or rather was—very easily–convinced by @kyberfox, that Finn’s old squadmate Zeroes, Trooper designation FN-2000, will appear as an Executioner Stormtrooper in TLJ. He is the only other known survivor of Finn’s Stormtrooper squad, and appeared in the Before the Awakening novella collection and, according to Wookiepedia, The Force Awakens junior novelization and The Force Awakens: Finn’s Story.
Full credit goes to Mara (kyberfox) by the way for this idea and even a possible casting choice for Zeroes, I’m just writing this up with her permission because I want this meta to be out there and because I spotted some stuff in BtA that further supports Mara’s theory.
Based on our chats I will also speculate briefly about the possible direction of Zeroes’ story, one obvious, one far less so and again suggested by the incomparable Mara.
So let’s briefly review the members of Finn’s luckless squad. Finn was the leader of a four-man squad composed of himself, FN-2000 (nicknamed “Zeroes”), FN-2199 (“Nines”), and FN-2003 (“Slip”). Of his squadmates we met Slip first. Alas, Slip’s first appearance was also his last and his death at Poe’s hands led to the first hint that Finn was different from the other Troopers.
[Image description: A close-up of Slip’s helmeted face just before his death]
We met the next member of Finn’s squad, Nines, during the battle of Takodana when Nines attacked Finn with a big baton and a bigger grudge. Before he went down at the business end of Chewie’s bowcaster he distinguished himself with the iconic cry of “Traitor!” and by nearly taking Finn down.
[Image description: The Stormtrooper with a shock baton who dueled Finn at Takodana, since identified as Nines]
As far as we know Nines’s first appearance was also his last, though depending on the protection provided by Stormtrooper armor and Nines’s luck we can’t completely discount the possibility that he survived. (For a headcanon/au of Nines surviving the battle, see this gorgeous moodboard and headcanon by @jakkus-storyteller.)
So that leaves two members of Finn’s old squad, Finn himself and Zeroes, who was not seen in The Force Awakens but did appear in tie-in works. For my purposes I will be relying on Before the Awakening for his characteristics.
[Image description: Zeroes in the background of a scene from Before the Awakening illustrated by Phil Noto]
What makes the mysterious Zeroes a likely candidate for an Executioner, and likely the most prominent member of the unit story-wise? For one thing there’s the fact that he and Finn knew each other, and that’s generally a better source of drama than an enemy who is a complete stranger.
What’s more, Zeroes was someone Finn once had a sense of responsibility for. If you read Finn’s story in BtA you know that when he feels responsible for someone he goes all out. His superiors’ only dissatisfaction with his performance was the way he protected and supported Slip, whom they considered a weak link. Finn would have done the same for Nines or Zeroes had they been the ones who needed him.
Further intensifying the drama is the fact that Zeroes may well hold a grudge much like Nines did. If the First Order’s stance toward defection and collective responsibility is anything like North Korea, which it was partly based on, both Nines and Zeroes would have been subjected to a metric ton of crap due to Finn’s defection. Due to their association with a defector they would have faced intense questioning and scrutiny, denunciation, demotion, demeaning treatment, and more.
In this context Nines’s scream of “Traitor!” is not just ideological but also personal. Of course most Stormtroopers, brainwashed with propaganda, are going to see Finn as a traitor anyway, but his old squad members may well have been tainted by association in addition to the usual reasons to despise a defector. In addition Nines was portrayed in BtA as an angry guy in general, so his outburst and rage-filled fighting style are consistent with his character.
Zeroes’ circumstances as Finn’s old squadmate are largely shared with Nines. Would his response to these circumstances differ from Nines’s? Does Zeroes have personal characteristics that would result in a different response to similar circumstances, and that would suit him to being an Executioner?
Based on the brief characterizations of Zeroes in BtA my theory is that Zeroes is a very different character than Nines, and that his personality provides additional reasons why he is likely to be an Executioner.
So what kind of character is Zeroes? A lot of the time in BtA he and Nines are indistinguishable. There’s Finn, the leader of the pack in ability as well as in position, and then there’s Slip, who is always falling behind and subject to Finn’s protection. Nines and Zeroes are at the middle of the pack, not the pinnacle of excellence that Finn is but also not the problem that Slip is. They both are, in many ways, rank-and-file Stormtroopers.
The few times Zeroes stands out as an individual, however, the clues to his character are subtle but unmistakable. In a post-simulation briefing with Phasma, Zeroes shows more eagerness to please his superior than any other member of the squad when he is described as “[drawing] himself even higher” when Phasma pointed out the need to improve his marksmanship. No other member of the squad has a similar physical reaction to Phasma’s feedback, leading me to believe Zeroes had a stronger visible reaction than the others.
Then there is a passage later on when Zeroes figures out ahead of the rest of the squad that they are about to get sent on their first mission:
“It’s coming, you can feel it. No more exercises. An actual deployment.”
When they do go on the mission, he explains to the squad why Phasma didn’t brief them about their destination and target:
“She’s not going to tell stormtroopers the Supreme Leader’s plans, or General Hux’s, or even her own. She’s not asking for our opinion. She’s got a job she wants done and she’s counting on us to do it.”
Notice how he gets into Phasma’s mindset despite having no more contact with her than anyone else in the squad. He also shows exceeding ability in reading his surroundings and the people around him—a good quality for an information officer, including a secret police. In these matters of discipline and morale he comes across as more of a squad leader than Finn does, showing the makings of a fine political commissar.
True to his analytical and watchful nature, Zeroes generally seems to have a more even keel than the hot-tempered Nines or even the constantly self-doubting Finn. This makes it even more interesting when Zeroes does lose his temper after losing a match to Finn:
Zeroes shrugged [Finn] off, his anger evident even behind his armor. [Finn] figured that was because he’d broken Zeroes’s streak.
This situation deserves further analysis. I mentioned, from the above briefing scene, that Zeroes showed more eagerness to please his superior than any other squad member. The main flaw Phasma pointed out to Zeroes was his marksmanship. This is in stark contrast to Finn, who, as Phasma revealed, fired only 36 times but scored 35 hits.
Then came the melee training, which Zeroes discovered he was actually pretty good at. He beat four opponents in a row, the longest winning streak up to that point. The success must have felt good to anyone, but especially to Zeroes who likes to please authority and was likely feeling overshadowed by Finn.
Then what happens? Finn breaks Zeroes’s winning streak and breaks his record, outshining Zeroes even at this. Again. This is when Zeroes starts getting mad, unlike Nines who just started out angry according to Finn. Zeroes is not generally an angry guy, but he shows clear ambition here, a desire to shine.
To recap, Zeroes is a really ambitious guy who has a sharp eye for reading situations and people. He also knows his superiors exceedingly well and wants nothing more than to please them and climb the ladder of power himself.
Zeroes may not be quite the warrior material Finn is (as it is, I’m pretty sure Zeroes would have been squad leader if Finn didn’t surpass him so clearly in conventional evaluations), but he has very clear strengths in another area: Espionage, especially internal surveillance. Something like discovering and dealing with disloyalty in your own ranks, in other words. Something like the Executioner unit.
In fact, Nines’s and Zeroes’s differing abilities and personalities may well have led to different reactions to Finn and his defection. They would both have had to prove their loyalty in some way in addition to working out their personal grudges. Nines, with his temper and straightforward (and rather unimaginative) mind, thought that way lay in beating Finn in battle.
Zeroes, on the other hand, is very likely to have taken a more systematic, methodical approach. What better way to prove his loyalty than by uprooting disloyalty within the ranks, exposing future Finns before they emerged? This course of action both plays to his strengths and matches the way his mind seems to work. And he certainly showed the intelligence and imagination to engineer such a position for himself. In addition, I’m sure he would not say no to a rematch should he and Finn cross paths again—say, because Finn is trying to foment an uprising among Stormtroopers.
Mara even had an idea of who might play Zeroes if he does appear in TLJ and beyond: Bronx-born actor and model Dante Briggins, who played uncredited Stormtrooper roles in TFA and is slated to appear again in TLJ as one or more unnamed Stormtroopers.
[Image description: Picture of Dante Briggins]
Mr. Briggins matches Zeroes’ physical description of having dark brown skin; the character’s other distinguishing characteristic, a scar on one cheek, is not difficult for professional stage makeup artists to simulate.
What can we expect from this character if he does appear in TLJ? The more straightforward path is that of the implacable yet methodical enemy, and it’s certainly something one can expect from Zeroes’s ambition, his intellectual detachment, and his lack of hesitation when shooting unarmed people at the end of Finn’s story in BtA. Where Finn fought a physical battle with Nines he may find himself in a battle of wits with Zeroes in a game of intelligence and counterintelligence.
A much less predictable and, in my opinion, more interesting story was suggested by Mara. In this theory Zeroes is a part of the uprising, likely part of their leadership given his position and abilities, and is their inside man in the Executioner squad. You can flip everything we know about the guy on its head and it still works—yes, he’s a sharp and canny guy, but that also means he can make himself seem to be exactly what the FO brass want. His lack of hesitation in shooting the miners? We have no idea what he was thinking, and this may well be the act of a man who doesn’t want to commit murder but is also ruthless and pragmatic not to blow his cover for people who will die no matter what he does.
I find this possibility of a rebellious Zeroes fascinating because he would provide such a perfect foil for Finn. Where Finn chose to flee due to his revulsion for the First Order’s crimes, Zeroes chose to stay and topple it from the inside. Where Finn chose individual moral purity, Zeroes chose to stay with the other troopers and share in their suffering and also their crimes. Where Finn turned his weapons on other Troopers in the quest for his own freedom (which was fully justified, I want to make clear), Zeroes is working toward getting as many Troopers out alive as he can, though his chosen path no doubt leads him to kill, directly or indirectly, those he cannot help. I mean I’m pretty sure the name “Executioner” isn’t just for the cool factor.
Just think about the possibilities for conflict. In Finn’s eyes Zeroes is a criminal for participating in the Order’s war crimes and turning in disloyal Troopers. In Zeroes’ eyes Finn is selfish for seeking freedom only for himself and killing other Troopers. Under this scenario Finn and Zeroes personify the conflict between individual freedom and moral purity on the one hand, and the search for collective freedom at the price of getting one’s hands dirty by staying in a criminal organization.
Each man is a coward in the other’s eyes. To Finn, Zeroes didn’t have the courage to leave. To Zeroes, Finn didn’t have the courage to stay.
Finn and Zeroes may also learn from each other, however, and complete each others’ journeys. Finn might realize his quest for individual freedom, while brave and admirable, is incomplete unless it includes others. Zeroes might learn the value of Finn’s individual vision and heroism in making collective freedom a reality. They’d both have to swallow a lot of pride before they come to this realization and work together, but if they do they’d be unstoppable as a team.
If Finn and Zeroes do work together, they would parallel an ancient story of two men with very different values and temperaments working together to free the enslaved—Moses and Aaron, the brothers from Exodus who led their people out of slavery in Egypt. I won’t go deeply into the Finn-Moses and possible Aaron-Zeroes parallels here, but I’m hoping Mara will (nudge nudge).
Suffice it to say Finn is definitely the fiery visionary who went off on his own and who was forced to defend his ideals with violence much like Moses. On the other hand, a theoretical rebellious Zeroes would be the communitarian trying to keep his people together and sharing in their suffering as well as their moral compromises, much like Aaron.
The possibility of the fourth member of Finn’s old squad, the only other surviving member so far as we know, making an appearance as an antagonist—and even more intriguingly, a grudging ally—enriches and deepens the overall story and the character of Finn. Even if it doesn’t turn out to be canon it’s great material for speculation and fan works.
At the very least I hope we get to meet Zeroes in some form in the movies, and hopefully he’ll prove a more lasting character than the other members of his ill-fated squad.
There’s one thing that’s been nagging in the back of my mind ever since we saw the first still of Rose and Finn in First Order uniform
What does it mean that hers is blue? We’ve never seen a blue FO uniform before, nor have so far been shown another like it either. All the others we have seen are black or very dark grey as the one Finn wears. DJ’s is the same as Finn’s too.
Nor is it a gender thing as all the other women we’ve seen in FO uniform have been in black/dark grey too.
So, why is Rose’s blue? What could blue signify in FO context? It’s clearly an officer’s uniform, but beyond that I have no idea so far.
My mind keeps flying to Star Trek and screaming “science officer!!!”
Good question. I believe that in the Empire, different colored officer uniforms signified different branches of the empire. So, black would be navy, green would be army, brown would be government, white is for grand admirals or other special positions, etc (I’m just pulling these off the top of my head and have no idea if they’re right). A Google search pulled up info that blue uniforms signified the imperial press corps (as seen in Rebels).
Of course, we have no way of knowing if the first order carried on the same color codes as the empire. But if so, maybe blue signifies something to do with propaganda?
Anyway, it’s likely that the 3 just got the first uniforms that they could find and Rose happened to get a blue one. Whether that will mean anything for the story or not is hard to say. Wouldn’t it be cool if she impersonates a propagandist and gives the Stormtroopers some speech or message to help Finn break them free? Ohhh I’m getting “we are the spark that will light the fire that will burn the first order down” feels
There’s one thing that’s been nagging in the back of my mind ever since we saw the first still of Rose and Finn in First Order uniform
What does it mean that hers is blue? We’ve never seen a blue FO uniform before, nor have so far been shown another like it either. All the others we have seen are black or very dark grey as the one Finn wears. DJ’s is the same as Finn’s too.
Nor is it a gender thing as all the other women we’ve seen in FO uniform have been in black/dark grey too.
So, why is Rose’s blue? What could blue signify in FO context? It’s clearly an officer’s uniform, but beyond that I have no idea so far.
My mind keeps flying to Star Trek and screaming “science officer!!!”
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 btw 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 btw 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 an 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 Benicio has been claiming, how did Finn and Rose talk him into coming along? Does Rose’ tragic past play into it, one she might share with DJ? Or is there a glimmer of altruistic good in DJ under the cynicism?
I love it! My only thing is, I want to see troopers rebel because Finn inspired them. It could go both ways, though: there could be the rebel troopers, and the “loyal” troopers who DJ might be able to help.
I really expected DJ to be in like one scene on Canto Bight, so I’m like “wut?” rn. But YES, the uprising was supported by the trailer, and it’s supported by this! Maybe not confirmed, but my hope for an amazing Finn story has been renewed.
That brings to mind another speculation! If the reconditioned Troopers are programmable, not only could the program be broken–maybe it could also be turned so that they become mindless automata for the Resistance instead. Maybe that’s what at least a faction of the Resistance brass want. But Finn is like “fuck that” and orders DJ to break the reconditioning and give the troopers a choice–even if the choice is to walk away from the fight or to kill the intruders.
Actual excerpt from a reylo theory that speculates that Finn, not Kylo, reaches out for Rey in a Force vision – setting off a journey to discover that “Ben” is the one she truly belongs with.
And it still pissed reylos off because it was Finn’s hand, even though he’s blatantly, spectacularly, dissed in this “speculation” lol.
(and sorry, there are no points given for calling Finn beautiful while erasing him from Rey’s life)
Exhibit 2,301 that Reylo is just an attempt to push Finn out of his story and replace him with Killsalot.
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?
It would be really interesting if this is something Finn comes up with himself. Remember my earlier speculations about the Resistance brass possibly ignoring the Stormtrooper uprising as impossible and too risky? Well what if the DJ mission were originally for the usual espionage uses–getting a command code and whatnot–but Rose discovers a new application to breaking Stormtrooper reconditioning? And DJ agrees to help, because he sees in Finn’s passion and Rose’s brilliance something he can believe in again, or at least a change of pace?
L.J.'s Obsessions 