Rose’s necklace, a hint of her origin story?
@lj-writes and I got to talking the other day about Rose’s necklace and how it might tie into her past and her story in The Last Jedi.
Early on in our discussion the talk fell on Jedha, in part because Rogue One established it as a form of Space Asia and it would not be beyond Star Wars’ usual MO to have another Asian character - or rather two since we must include Paige in this too - and because of what we have of Rose’s background so far makes her seem like a refugee surviving at the fringes of the galaxy. And by extension her sister, Paige, too.
Considering that refugees are often discriminated against - in fact we see no justice for Jedha in extended canon at all - and the fact that the First Order, like the Empire before it, are persecuting and deliberately targeting religious minorities, any Jedhan living in diaspora would be a prime target.
A quick trip to Google by us both revealed several more interesting facts.
First, Kelly Marie is 28 so unless they age up Rose considerably she obviously didn’t survive the destruction of Jedha itself, but Veronica Ngo who plays Paige is 38! Apart from everything else, that’s some age gap between the sisters.
Of course, if Paige along with her family were direct survivors of Jedha, it would take years before they’d feel safe enough to start rebuilding and certainly not while the Galactic Civil War was still on. But if we use Kelly Marie’s own age as a measuring stick, Rose would have been born a few years after RotJ, a time where the galaxy might have felt safer and the Jedhan diaspora would have had hope for the future.
That was, of course, before tragedy struck again, and the First Order destroyed their second home just as the Empire had their world of origin.
While LJ and I were discussing this, we had a simultaneous discussion about “Why a crescent? Why would that specific symbol mean something to Rose?”
Early discussion brought up the Death Star itself, which looked like a crescent from the surface of Jedha when it was doing its destructive work.
(All the following pictures here are dug out or made by LJ. Thank you for doing that legwork)
Here’s the Death Star forming a crescent shape over Jedha as it blocked out the sun:
And here it is seen from the ground as it was firing the beam.
But that is a rather morbid imagery, why would Rose want to carry it? And why the lattice work on its surface?
Here LJ’s Google search brought up an interesting fact about Jedha.
There was a group on the moon that was called the Church of the Contained Crescent. They, at some point in the past, inhabited the catacombs that Saw Gererra uses as a HQ in the movie and when they did, they installed a lattice window.
This image from Rebels does not appear to be the latticed window itself, since it seems to be in a tunnel, but it forms an interesting visual parallel with Saw standing before the window at his base.
In the trailer (Bald Saw) the lattice window was intact, while in the movie it had been shattered, but you can still clearly see the remnants of the lattice work.
(A tragic bit that LJ also dug up, Saw died at that window.)
What’s more, the window must have taken some effort to put in because it is actually a short tunnel through a rock wall, which creates the visual effect that when you look at it from almost any angle - except head on - you see a crescent shape.
A crescent covered in lattice work.
This picture gives a particular good view of the remaining lattice work
Now compare with Rose’s necklace.
When you compare the edgings into Rose’s necklace, they look very suspiciously like what remains of the lattice in the window.
Now we know nothing about this group - The Church of the Contained Crescent - except that they existed, but LJ came up with the idea that they might have been a prophetic/end of days group who foresaw Jedha’s doom - perhaps marked by the crescent shape of the Death Star - and the reason they vacated the catacombs was to make room for Saw’s group. Or perhaps they were trying to prevent their own vision from coming true by vacating.
This remains unanswered as we know nothing about them except the name and the fact they installed that window.
One could object to this theory by pointing out the lack of “Jedhan sounding names” - though given that that is a fictional place then what would that indeed be - but then it wouldn’t be the first time someone was hidden under another name than their birth name for the sake of protection.
Padme Amidala hid in her time as queen of Naboo often under the alias Padme the Handmaiden to protect herself from enemies. Leia was raised under the name Organa, rather than under Skywalker or Amidala or Naberrie to shield her. Even Jyn Erso had numerous aliases in her life because her own name would make her an Imperial target. So why shouldn’t the Tico sisters live under a name not their own if their original names mark them in the eyes of the First Order and those who support them. And possibly even in the eyes of members of the Republic who wish to forget the past entirely.
Of course, if this is true it leads to some very interesting questions and thoughts.
For one thing, Rose possibly being a member of a “Force church” begs the question how she ties into the Force plot, further made relevant by the fact that Kelly Marie had chemistry readings with Mark Hamill indicating that they’ll share some crucial scenes together.
It would also mean an expansion of both Jedha’s role in canon - and maybe that, for once, LucasArts would deal in any kind of depth with one of its multiple instances of genocide - but also an expansion of the many other Force ideologies beyond Jedi that the new canon has introduced. We got the first - the Church of the Force - in TFA when the First Order massacred a village of worshipers on Jakku. We heard of the Guardians of the Whills in Rogue One where two of the last members played a prominent part.
Furthermore, it would deeply affect the interactions between her and Finn. Not only is Rose more likely to be a few years older than Finn, just like Kelly Marie is a few years older than John. They may even have aged the character up compared to the actor, making the age gap even bigger than most people expect.
The ages and personalities would affect her hero worship dynamic with Finn as well. She isn’t a star struck young girl, but a grown woman, “a very practical person” according to actor Kelly Marie Tran’s recent interview with Entertainment Weekly with a very tragic, hardscrabble past. She might see in Finn as much of justice as her people are ever likely to see in the galaxy. After all, the actions of Bodhi, Chirrut and Baze seem to have been as much justice as Jedha ever got, whether under the Empire or the New Republic.
Jedha has always looked to its heroes because many were willing to exploit their resources and culture but few were willing to fight for them. Rose may see in Finn such a hero, and in the process will become another such hero. Whether she will be a Jedhan hero is a matter of speculation and theory at this point, but the crescent necklace hints tantalizingly at that possibility.
