I’m still very emotional about bodhi rook. he was just an ordinary dude with a relatively safe job and the relative protection of the ~~law and order~~ of the empire, of being a law abiding imperial citizen, not a rebel or a dissident or a separatist or a jedi. but he looked at that safe and stable life and realized it was wrong. it was wrong and he was in a position to do something about it, to fight back, and he chose to do so, and we don’t even get to see him make that choice. we only meet him after that choice is made

and the very next thing that happens to him is that he is tortured by the partisans and forced to watch the empire destroy his home, because he was from jeddha, a home already torn apart by the empire extracting its resources and destroying the temple and the guardians of the whills and the partisans bombing the empire in retaliation. that had nothing to do with bodhi rebelling! his safe and stable imperial citizenship means nothing because the empire doesn’t care, and the partisans don’t care. the only people that care even a little bit about bodhi at this point are the other members of rogue one. so he makes another hard and impossible choice, to fly them to scarif

he didn’t have to go to scarif, but really he had no choice but to go to scarif. he chose to become a rebel and then his home was destroyed. what choice did he have left? and galen told him he could make it right with himself, so of course the only thing he feels like he can do is follow galen erso’s daughter into the jaws of death

he makes the hardest choice in rogue one, a choice we don’t even get to see, of leaving behind the safe and easy for the unknown and dangerous, and the narrative rewards him by saying “this choice was impossibly hard, and you’re going to lose your family, your home, everyone you’ve ever known, you’re going to be tortured for no reason and then you will be killed because of that impossible choice, but it’s worth it, because this fight is worth it. you can do something greater than yourself, help save other planets even if you can’t save your own, help prevent millions of deaths with your own death”. everyone in rogue one dies, because the narrative says that sometimes there is no reward, there is no happy ending with a medal ceremony and ewoks celebrating, sometimes all you get is the uncertain plan of transmitting the blueprints of the death star to a ship that’s about to be torn apart by darth vader and then the horror of the death star firing on the planet. but if that’s the only option left, then that’s the only option left, and you have to take it

I think everyone starts as bodhi rook, as an anonymous nobody with a safe job and a safe life, not luke skywalker the jedi redeemer or leia organa the princess general or even jyn erso, the daughter of the man who created the death star. you can say nothing bad is happening to me, I’m a law abiding citizen, who cares what’s happening to those other people so long as I’m safe and the people I love are safe

but bodhi rook saw that that’s wrong, and he made a different choice