*Bodhi-related spoilers.*
The last of the Rogue One crew—Bodhi doesn’t get as much focus as some of the other characters, but he’s still a crucial member of the team. Like all the others, he’s amazing, and I love him.
Bodhi was an Imperial pilot whose work took him to Eadu, where the Empire held Galen Erso during the development of the Death Star. We don’t really know how well Galen knew Bodhi or what it was that made him trust Bodhi with his secret message. And we don’t fully know what made Bodhi agree to defect. As he explains to Jyn, “[Galen] said I could do right by myself. He said I could make it right if I was brave enough to listen to what was in my heart. To do something about it.”
Whatever brought these two men together, Bodhi takes his duty very seriously once he goes rogue from the Empire. He takes Galen’s message to Saw Gerrera, a dicey situation in and of itself. Saw’s men are quick to brand him as a spy, and the exceedingly paranoid Saw makes no bones about torturing him to suss out his true loyalties. In the face of this suspicion and danger, Bodhi never backs down, refusing to give the message to anyone but Saw and boldly contradicting Saw’s men when they try to paint him as untrustworthy. Upon their claim that they discovered Galen’s message when they searched him, he firmly insists, “That’s for you. And I gave it to them, they did not find it! I gave it to them.”
Saw “interrogates” Bodhi with the aid of a Mairan, a species that can read thoughts at the cost of scrambling minds. This puts Bodhi at a disadvantage for a good chunk of the film; when Cassian, Chirrut, and Baze are imprisoned by Saw, and Cassian asks if Bodhi is the pilot he’s looking for, it’s all Bodhi can do to repeat after him in a daze. But even with his head addled by the Mairan, he’s able to pull himself together enough to escape Jedha with the others when all hell breaks loose.
When we first meet Bodhi, he’s both courageous and a bit twitchy. The after-effects of Saw’s torture definitely up the twitchiness, this nervous energy, but he doesn’t fully lose that courage and resolve. When the team crash lands on Eadu, he steals a new ship to fly them out again, and when they leave Yavin 4 for their unsanctioned mission to Scarif, he’s the one who haltingly comes up with the Rogue One call sign.
On Scarif, Bodhi stays with the ship, but he’s hardly idle. He relays messages on the ground and off the planet’s surface, keeping up with what Jyn and Cassian need to complete the mission as further complications arise. When they need to patch into an Imperial communications tower to reach the Rebel fleet far above them, Bodhi runs through the chaos of the battle around him to connect the cable. He risks his life to get a signal to the Rebel fleet and explain what they need to transfer the Death Star plans. And when he finds himself looking down the barrel of a stray grenade, we see him face his impending death with a quiet sense of resolution. There’s a soft realization that he’s taken the mission as far as he can, and he dies hoping his contribution was enough.
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