Favorite Characters: Jyn Erso (Star Wars)

*Jyn-related spoilers.*

As I was thinking about different possible topics for Star Wars Wednesdays posts, it occurred to me that I hadn’t written about some members of the Rogue One crew yet, and I searched the blog to see what Rogue One posts I’d already made. Color me surprised when I realized that, while I did a Relationship Spotlight for Jyn and Cassian, I never made a post for Jyn herself! So that’s the first oversight that needs rectifying, but there will definitely be other Rogue One characters popping up in the not-too-distant future.

Jyn Erso has a rough beginning. As a child, she witnesses her mother’s murder on the same day that the Empire takes her scientist father away, conscripting him to work for them. She manages to get away, and she’s taken in by Saw Gerrera, a salty rebel fighter who doesn’t play well with other rebels. During her teen years, she and Saw separate, and her attempts to look out for herself get her in trouble. The first time we see her as an adult, she’s riding in a prison transport.

In Star Wars, we’ve seen plenty of reluctant heroes, those who try to refuse the call but get pulled into the fight in other ways. After being raised by Saw, Jyn wants nothing to do with the Rebellion. Her objective is simply to keep her head down, ignoring the suffering around the galaxy if it means she can carve out a bit of safety for herself. This might be called cowardly or selfish, but it’s also a response rooted in her trauma. Jyn runs away from thoughts of the Rebellion, telling herself that the Empire’s oppression won’t bother her if she doesn’t look at it.

When the Rebellion comes a-calling, it’s not specifically to recruit her for the fight. Rather, it’s because of her connections: her father has sent Saw a message, and Saw is too isolationist and paranoid to share it with the Rebel Alliance. As Galen’s daughter and Saw’s former surrogate daughter, Jyn seems likely the most likely candidate for being able to get the information they need.

So Jyn goes along with the mission, and while she gets in on the action—saving a small child on Jedha, showing off her blaster skills against Stormtroopers—her main focus remains this personal, familial connection. Honestly, kudos to her for being able to comprehend the content of Galen’s message, given how overwhelmed she is to see his holo-image after so many years apart. This mission is littered with ghosts for Jyn, forcing her to confront everything that’s been taken from her, and although these weigh her down, she manages to bear up.

When it comes out that Cassian’s true mission isn’t to find her father but to kill him, preventing his scientific genius from benefiting the Empire any further, that could easily spell the end of Jyn’s time with the Rebellion. Even though Cassian ultimately isn’t the one who pulls the trigger, her feelings of betrayal are palpable, and it would be entirely within reason for her to cut ties and return to her old M.O. of looking out for herself.

However, between Cassian pressing her to recognize what they’re fighting for and the knowledge that Galen spent years working to sabotage the Empire from within, Jyn can’t run anymore. She knows she needs to finish what her father started, making his sacrifice worthwhile by getting the Death Star plans to the Rebellion—if they can isolate Galen’s sabotage, they can bring it down. As Jyn makes her case to the Alliance, she’s inspired by Cassian and repeats his words: “Rebellions are built on hope.” When they refuse her, she still believes in this mission so strongly that she does it anyway, with Cassian and some of her new friends behind her.

Jyn Erso gives her life fighting to give the Rebellion the spark of hope it needs to strike an important blow against the Empire. This is a huge change for someone who wanted nothing to do with them only a few days earlier. After years of running, she finds something worth standing for, and she gives her all to accomplish it.

Relationship Spotlight: Jyn Erso & Cassian Andor (Star Wars)

View it how you like – professional, friendly, romantic – the connection between Jyn and Cassian is one of Rogue One’s highlights.  Considering the very limited timeframe in which the film is working and the understandably-fraught dynamic at the start, it’s a huge credit to both the writing and Felicity Jones/Diego Luna’s performances that I completely buy where Jyn-Cassian end up compared to where they begin.  Spoilers ahead.

As things get rolling on the strictly-business end, Jyn and Cassian’s beginning is already kind of fluid.  Forcibly recruited to help the Rebellion, Jyn is busted out of Imperial custody and handed over to Cassian to assist with his mission.  Neither trusts the other, but neither fully distrusts the other, either – when Cassian sees that Jyn has appropriated a blaster from somewhere, he orders her to hand it over but changes his mind after listening to her reasoning.  On Jedha, his “head down, follow my lead, and don’t screw it up” brusqueness softens pretty quickly when everything hits the fan.  As the city explodes in violence, both of them are given a closeup demonstration of the others’ capabilities.  Jyn rescues a young girl and lays an impressive smackdown on some Stormtroopers, and Cassian shoots a member of another rebel group to keep Jyn from getting killed in the rebel’s crossfire.

We see this a lot with these two, an ebb and flow between trust and distrust, leaning on one another and jockeying for authority.  Of course, everything is further (massively) complicated by the fact that, unbeknownst to Jyn, the mission to find her father is actually a mission to kill her father so the Empire can no longer use him in the construction of the Death Star.  When that secret comes out, it’s predictably horrible, and everything that’s hesitantly built up between Cassian and Jyn seems to get washed away in the wake of this betrayal.  Naturally, it helps that Cassian doesn’t end up being the one who kills Galen (he points out how he couldn’t go through with obeying his orders,) but more so, I think it helps that Jyn isn’t the only one of the two with a grievance to air.  In the argument between them, I’m impressed with how much the balance of sympathy tips towards Cassian as he needles her for having had the luxury of ignoring the Empire’s crimes until she had a compelling reason to join the fight, reminding her that he and others like him didn’t get that choice.  Despite Jyn’s efforts to keep focus on Galen’s death and the Rebellion’s hand in it, she can’t fully ignore Cassian’s charges.

In light of this, it makes sense that Cassian steps forward to stand with Jyn when she realizes that they have to get the Death Star plans themselves.  It’s hard to say how much of this is down to Cassian’s admission of his sins committed in the Rebellion’s name, Jyn’s recognition that this is her fight, too, or the knowledge that the mission is so much bigger than either of them, but for the rest of the film, they’re basically a well-oiled rebel machine.  They tag-team the job of organizing and rallying the soldiers who’ve volunteered to go with them, they (and K-2) do a fine job of infiltrating the Imperial archive, and as danger looms, there’s a wonderfully-equitable air to how they both fight.  Though each tries to protect the other, neither loses faith in the other’s ability to hold their own.  When Cassian falls, Jyn’s determination carries her through with a heavy heart, and when, at the last moment, it looks like her luck may have run out and it will all come to nothing, he reappears to give her the final chance she needs to succeed.

Battered but victorious, they lean on one another as they stumble out of the facility, wondering if any of their friends are still alive.  They don’t know what happened to Bodhi, Chirrut, and Baze, and they never will, because once outside, they see the end of the world rolling toward them.  A kind of calm overtakes them, and rather than scrambling for an escape route they won’t find or railing against a demise they can’t avert, they kneel on the beach and wait, holding one another to brace themselves against the blinding light that’s about to envelop and consume them.  Together, at the very end.  I find it so beautiful.