26
Galen Erso is alive, and
everything has changed
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Writers: Chris Weitz and Tony Gilroy
Director: Gareth Edwards
Jyn Erso grew up thinking her father had left her. That he had abandoned her for the Empire and was maybe even, hopefully, dead. It was just easier that way. He had never been fully present during her life due to his work on the project that would become the Death Star, but he had been there. There was a bond. So Jyn Erso had definitely felt the loss.
It wasn’t the truth, mind you. Galen Erso did not abandon her. He was forcibly pulled back into the clutches of the Empire, but Jyn, all of eight at the time, was too young to understand what had really happened when she witnessed the murder of her mother and that the man in white, Director Orson Krennic, gave her father no choice. All she knew was that she was alone.
On the run and being raised by the extremist rebel Saw Gerrera who knew how to teach her to fight but nothing much more, Jyn Erso lived a tough life. Her criminal rap sheet was long. She had fought, killed, and lost many friends. Her pain and point of view were fueled by the resentment she had built up against her father. She avoided the Empire, wanted nothing to do with the Rebels, and the last thing she wanted to face was the news that her father was alive. However, the Rebellion forced her hand and she was first sent to face the father figure that had abandoned her at sixteen.
And now she was standing before a hologram that was not only the proof that her father was alive and loved her, it was, worse, proof that she still loved him.
Galen Erso was alive and everything about him was not what she built up in her mind. He had been a prisoner, done everything in his power to protect her wherever she had been taken by Saw, and his final act of defiance, the all-important flaw in the Death Star, was designed to pay back his captors. And she now had the responsibility of making it happen. It’s a father and daughter reunion like no other in Star Wars and one of the finest acting performances in the franchise.
Felicity Jones takes us on an emotional escapade. This is the moment in which Jyn Erso’s worldview is forever altered. It’s a complete change of her point of view. Just moments earlier she’s telling Saw Gerrera that the flags of the Empire flying across the galaxy don’t affect you if you never look up. She arrived at that mindset because everything (and everyone) she had believed in was gone because of the oppressive Empire and the violent Rebels trying to take them down. Her mother was shot dead before her eyes, she believed her father abandoned her for the Empire, Saw left her to keep fighting, and her first love Hadder Ponta died after being caught in the crossfire of a space battle. All of that pain resides in her eyes.
Yet, as she stands before a recorded message from her father, Jyn Erso starts to change. Felicity Jones peels the layers back one emotion at a time. It’s the shock and disbelief at seeing her father after all these years. That morphs into the discovery of the truth. Jyn wasn’t abandoned by him, she was protected by him. And beyond that, this is the realization that she had been wrong about everything that sent her down her path, except the powerful truth: her father had always loved her. The tears streaming down her face now, formed years ago, and the walls she built up to survive no longer needed to be there. She feels every bit of the weight this message brings. Jyn Erso was now part of everything she had been running from.
It’s a testament to those scenes in which Star Wars gives you so much packed into one moment, but all it wants is for you to connect to one quiet truth. Amongst the impending doom of the Death Star, the Empire, and the very walls coming down around her, Jyn Erso learns that the one truth is hope. First, it was about her running from it for her survival, but now it was about running toward it for the survival of everyone.