My friend, the wonderful Caitlin Hewes, has written a rebuttal to my post on Vice Admiral Holdo. It’s well worth your time to check out:

Given the recent international box-office performance of the latest addition of the Star Wars franchise has been sub-par at best, I’m pretty confident I’m the only one still talking about The Last Jedi. That said, if you haven’t seen it, it’s coming out on an Apple TV near you on March 13. My lateness to reply aside, a recent debate over the weekend reminded me I was going to write this, so here it goes.

There are many different shades of heroism in this film. I’d certainly agree with Marcus that the film questions the narrative that you must achieve, or fail, at something spectacular enough for other people to notice to be considered a hero.

Consider the mysterious-misadventure-that-reveals-nothing-and-wastes-our-time on the gambling planet Elerion as Exhibit #1. Pandering political commentary aside, WHY was this in the film at all? Rose and Finn go off to get some random guy who might be able to do a random thing that just might save everyone. They completely fail in pretty much every way possible, make it back to the rebellion safe and sound and go on with it as if nothing ever happened. Whoo hoo!? Seriously, if either of them had been a US political candidate in the next election cycle I would have run hundreds of attack adds exposing their wasteful use of Rebellion resources.

No one would argue Rose and Finn are intended to be heroes, but are they? I’m not sure, and for the same reason I don’t believe Holdo is a hero either. Being a leader, and by extension, a hero (whether you can be a hero without being a leader is a question for another day) requires you to get ‘buy-in’ from those you’re leading. The random jaunts by Poe, Rose, and Finn, valuable leaders with strong followership within the Rebellion, are directly attributable to Holdo’s lack of leadership. If Poe, Rose, and Finn understood the purpose of Holdo’s actions, they could have supported her, or at least held back from full scale mutiny. However, Holdo’s lack of action convinced them that Holdo had no plan and therefore they needed to do whatever they could as independent agents aka mutineers to save the Rebellion.

Let’s think about what would have happened if Holdo had involved Poe.

• Holdo: I have this plan where we’re going to sacrifice all the ships but most people survive and we’ll figure out what to do later.
• Poe: That’s completely nuts. We should attack and give people cover to flee.
• Holdo: This is the only way we’ll convince the First Order that there’s nothing suspicious going on. What do you think?
• Poe: I think it could work, but we should make X,Y,Z changes. I’ll get my people on it straight away, they’ll be glad to know what we’re going to do.

Now, Holdo has not only prevented a mutiny she’s enlisted a valuable ally and strategic thinker who can help her to make her plan better. The magic of building ‘buy-in’ with key stakeholders like Poe is that even if he disagrees Poe will likely voice his disagreement to Holdo and try to work it out before doing something that could endanger the entire mission (like a mutiny!)

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and heroes certainly don’t have to go around advertising their plans. But, the greatest heroes are those who didn’t fight alone[1], who were humble enough to ask for advice and help and once in a while, even change their minds.

[1] Even Jesus had 12 disciples who were somewhat ‘in’ on the plan