#i mean come on galen basically adopted bodhi

[art-question-mark]

“Bodhi leaned forward in his seat, fully intent on Jyn. "You're Galen's daughter?" he asked.

He looked like he hadn't slept in days. He looked almost as pathetic as she did.

"You know him?" she asked.

What did he think of the stranger in her hologram?

"Yes."”

—Rogue One Novelisation by Alexander Freed

[jyndor]

Rogue One Meta: Bookends

You know what I love about Rogue One? Well, a lot of things. The anti-fascist message, the characters, the found family trope, the soundtrack, how pretty the whole movie is... there is just too much to like about it. But one thing that really gets me going is how neatly the movie ties in its beginning with its ending.

Let’s do a recap.

So in the beginning, we skip the usual Star Wars crawl and get straight into the action: little Jyn runs to her parents, the family packs up what little they can grab, Lyra calls Saw to alert him to Krennic's approach, Galen asks Jyn to tell him that she understands that whatever he does it is all to protect her. She says she does (she doesn't, of course; she’s EIGHT) and they hug it out. Lyra takes Jyn off to go hide in their little bunker before she changes her mind, she gives Jyn the kyber necklace and then leaves Jyn to try to save Galen, etc etc. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

We all know that when Lyra tells Krennic that he will "never win" and is killed while shooting Krennic, Jyn sees it. We know that Jyn hides in the bunker for a long time, long after her lantern dies out, until Saw is able to rescue her.

We know this just as well as we know how the movie ends: Krennic finds Jyn on the top of the tower, she knows she is about to die so she tells him that she brings her parents' revenge, that he has lost and he snarls at her, monologues like a villain always has to do, aims his blaster and-

Cassian shoots him before he can pull the trigger. Jyn transmits the Death Star plans, Cassian stops her from wasting time on Krennic, they definitely don’t make out on the elevator, and then they go sit on the beach and cuddle while they wait for their deaths. It’s very cute and very sad.

We know that Jyn is Galen and Lyra's weapon, their revenge for the violence that Krennic did to them personally as well as for what the Empire has done to the galaxy. It's personal and political, as most things are. Rogue One makes this very clear - the personal is political (btw the radfem who coined that phrase can get fucked tyvm).

It’s actually always been how Star Wars works. We would care about Alderaan’s destruction, it’s a terrible thing, but we feel so much more connected to it because of Leia. The Empire oppresses every day people, but when we see Owen and Beru’s charred corpses (and Luke’s grief) we feel more about their deaths than if we didn’t just see them sitting down for a meal together with our protagonist. The Clone Wars is so effective because we care about the characters and see the war through their eyes. Politics is personal.

At the beginning, Galen is resigned to being taken by Krennic and working for the Empire against his will. It's why he sends Lyra and Jyn to safety, because he knows that they will be used as hostages to force him to complete the Death Star (and Lyra says as much). But Lyra obviously isn't willing to give her husband up without a fight (and she's also not willing to let the Empire get any closer to building a 9/11 times 100). It’s both political and personal.

Lyra’s heartbreaking act of resistance creates the narrative framework for who Jyn will become in the film but also for Cassian. In fact I would argue that Lyra's fridging sacrifice is just as important to the structure of Cassian's arc as it is to Jyn's. Don't buy it yet? Okay, look:

Lyra hits Krennic in the shoulder but it's just a graze, and she gets shot first so whether or not she's any good is irrelevant. Cassian is a soldier and a sniper. She also doesn't have the element of surprise on her side like Cassian does. She's a civilian, he's an officer who grew up in the rebellion.

But Cassian doesn't hit Krennic in the chest or the head, which he clearly could do. Perhaps it's because he doesn't have the time to fuss with his aim because he makes it up to the top of the tower just in time. Or maybe since he's really hurting, like Lyra, he doesn't have the focus that he'd need to kill the motherfucker.

Cassian hits Krennic in the shoulder just like Lyra (although I assume given how Krennic falls on his face it's not a graze).

Lyra walks so that Cassian can run.

None of them - not Jyn or Cassian, certainly not Galen or Lyra - gets to kill Krennic; none of them matters as much to Krennic as Krennic himself does. He's a textbook narcissist, so of course he is his own downfall in the end. It’s infinitely more satisfying to see him regain consciousness, look up at his creation and watch it aim at his head, and it would be to see Jyn or Cassian kill him. Cassian gets to tell Jyn what Lyra no doubt would have liked to tell Galen - "leave it" - and then walk away arm in arm without sparing Krennic another thought, and Jyn gets to finally outgrow this childhood phantom.

So much has been written about how Cassian Andor does not let Jyn Erso down. It's adorable, hilarious and also heartbreaking to see him in full Jyn Panic mode for most of the film. In the novel he's clearly attracted to her (he is a POV character so we get to read about Cassian's fixation on her need~ and how "neither pity nor pragmatism" explains why he's saves her on Jedha, and how when he looks at Galen, Cassian sees Jyn's eyes lmfao okay we get it she’s pretty). According to Chris Weitz and Gary Whitta (in the ign Rogue One commentary) they were originally more romantic but over time that dynamic got dialed back (and they said they're sure some of that got filmed so show me tHE ELEVATOR TAPES MOUSE).

But I don't think Lyra and Cassian mirroring each other has to mean Cassian loves Jyn in the same way that Lyra loves Galen. Love takes many different forms - even romantic love. What isn't up for debate is that Cassian is the only person in Jyn's whole life who does not leave her behind. No one who cares for her wants to leave her - not Galen, Lyra, or Saw; not the Pontas in the extended content, not even the rest of Rogue One - but Cassian seems to comes back from the dead for her.

Which is exactly what Krennic sarcastically says about Lyra when she comes running up to them.

In this case Galen doesn’t think Lyra is dead but he has no idea what she’s dealing with. He hopes she’s hiding away with Jyn, which is why he tells Krennic that she died, but he’s just giving them time to hide away. For Galen, Lyra might as well be dead because he doesn’t think he’s going to see her again. But when she comes “back from the dead” he feels horror because he knows it won’t end well, that she won’t just go quietly.

Jyn thinks that Cassian has left her just like everyone else. So when he comes back, it’s like a revelation for her. In the novel, Jyn thinks that Cassian looks "as beautiful as anyone" she has "ever known" and after she rushes over to transmit the plans, she smiles up at him "like a child." Hell, the minute she sees Krennic get shot, she thinks that “her nightmare is over.” Which makes me think about how eight year old Jyn never gets the chance to smile up at Lyra like that. In her eyes, Lyra doesn't really protect her from the man in white, and neither does Galen. Saw does but then he abandons her when he worries people will use her as a hostage against the Empire. Galen, Lyra and Saw do try to protect Jyn from the Empire, but the steps that her parents take (all three of them) are to hide her, or to leave her.

In Jyn's eyes, that isn't protection the way going on the offense is. That is also the thesis of her speech to the Council - appeasement and hiding away from evil does not stop evil from harming innocents, these are not ways in which people can resist occupation and oppression long term. It makes sense coming from a former insurgent; to her, nothing but direct action is going to make a difference. And she would know - after Saw leaves her, she does take part in some minor actions (according to the expanded lore) but mainly she’s in hiding, looking out for herself and coping with the trauma of being abandoned by all of her parents.

So the one person who not only gets her mission off the ground, but who also vanquishes this monster who has been haunting her since her childhood is Cassian. He ends what Lyra begins.

But Jyn doesn’t end what Galen started. She continues what he started, just like Bodhi (who basically functions as Galen’s adoptive son you will not convince me otherwise). I started this essay talking about beginnings and endings in the sense of a story’s structure, but Rogue One in the larger context of Star Wars is neither a beginner nor an ending - it is just one generation (that of the prequels) passing on the torch to the next generation (the original trilogy). In politics there are no beginnings or endings, there is just (hopefully) generational progress in struggles.

The whole movie can be summed up in one scene:

But just because it can be summed up that way doesn’t mean it should be. Of course, John Knoll got the idea for the movie based on the scroll in ANH so it makes sense that Rogue One’s characters ultimately are just a footnote for the rest of the galaxy. But for us, the audience, when Luke destroys the Death Star... well, now there is even more weight to that moment. Now we understand what got sacrificed to get those plans, who died and how and why. (That doesn’t mean we need to make a movie about these guys getting butchered by Darth Vader. You don’t need to explain everything.)

Like Leia and Alderaan, this family we meet makes it even more personal. Rogue One is just as much about family as it is about standing up to oppression. It's a Star War, those are like the main tenets of any Star War. Not to quote a meme and make it serious, but maybe the real Star War is the family we found along the way.