Rose Tico

The First Order seized control of the Otomok system and began strip-mining Hays Minor and using its cities for weapons testing. Through contacts in the mining industry, the Ticos’ parents sent them to the Resistance. After growing up on a largely lifeless world where you couldn’t breathe outside, Rose and Paige were stunned by D’Qar’s verdant jungles and abundant animal life.

Paige had flown civilian models of StarFortress bombers, and was assigned to a bomber crew as a ventral gunner and relief pilot. She refused to fly without Rose, whose technical acumen qualified her for a spot in a bomber crew as a flight engineer.

The bombers were loaded aboard Vice Admiral Holdo’s ship, the Ninka, for a hurried trip back to D’Qar. Holdo asked Rose to teach her technicians about the baffler technology she had created, in hopes that it might protect other Resistance ships. While reluctant to be separated from Paige, Rose agreed for the good of the Resistance.

Holdo promised the sisters would be reunited after the D’Qar evacuation. With her work aboard the Ninka complete, Rose was temporarily assigned to the Raddus as a maintenance tech. She watched in horror as Paige died in the bombers’ attack run against the First Order.

As the First Order pursued the Resistance fleet, a devastated Rose numbly did mundane tasks on the lower levels of the Raddus. When Resistance personnel began deserting the warship, Rose was issued an electro-stun prod and told to neutralize anyone who approached the escape pods without authorization.

Rose agreed, angry that anyone would desert the ship that Paige had died protecting. She discovered Finn climbing into an escape pod with a packed bag and stunned him, then hauled him to the Raddus’s brig.

Finn woke up and hastily explained that he’d been fleeing because the First Order was tracking the Resistance fleet through hyperspace. Rose understood that the First Order must be using active-tracking technology to do so – and Finn knew the location aboard the First Order flagship where such technology would be housed.

While still suspicious of Finn, Rose reluctantly agreed to approach Poe Dameron with a plan: she and Finn would slip aboard the First Order flagship and shut off the hyperspace tracker, giving the Resistance fleet a few minutes in which to escape. But there was a complication: to board the ship undetected, they would need a codebreaker to get them through the First Order defenses.

Maz Kanata told them to seek out the Master Codebreaker in the gambling resort of Canto Bight. With Poe’s help, Rose and Finn slipped away from the Resistance fleet aboard a transport pod, joined by BB-8. They could identify the Master Codebreaker by the red plom bloom he wore in his lapel.

Rose was surprised to discover the Canto Casino featured fathier races. Fathiers had been Paige’s favorite animals, and she’d died without ever seeing one. Rose told Finn that many of the gamblers visiting Canto Bight were arms dealers, profiting from the misery of systems such as Otomok. She yearned to make them pay for their callousness.

Rose and Finn spotted the Master Codebreaker, but were arrested before they could speak with him and thrown in jail. A grimy thief, DJ, offered to help them sneak into “Snoke’s boudoir,” but they declined. To their surprise, DJ then nonchalantly picked the lock on their cell and strolled out, giving them a chance at freedom.

Rose and Finn fled through the sewers, emerging in a stable. Rose gave her Resistance ring to a stable boy and she and Finn escaped on the back of a speedy fathier. Unfortunately, the Canto Bight authorities destroyed their shuttle before they could reach it. It looked as if Rose and Finn would be recaptured, but DJ and BB-8 rescued them in a stolen star yacht.

Before helping them sneak aboard the First Order flagship, DJ required a down payment for his efforts – and Rose’s Otomok medallion would do. With no choice, Rose coldly handed over this last link to her homeworld.

Rose, Finn, DJ and BB-8 sneaked aboard the Supremacy disguised in First Order uniforms, but Captain Phasma and her stormtroopers intercepted them before they could shut down the hyperspace tracker. Worse, DJ had overheard that the Resistance planned to evacuate its cruiser aboard transports outfitted with Rose’s bafflers, and revealed the plan to the First Order.

Hux ordered that Rose and Finn be executed. But before Phasma’s troops could carry out the sentence, the Supremacy was torn in two by Vice Admiral Holdo’s attack. BB-8 took control of a First Order AT-ST and rescued Rose. The two then offered Finn a much-needed ride.

To Rose’s joy, Finn was determined to head for Crait and help the Resistance – the former stormtrooper had embraced the cause that meant so much to Rose. The two flew ski speeders in a desperate defense of the Resistance’s hideout, only to have Poe Dameron call off the attack run as a suicide mission.

To Rose’s horror, Finn refused to retreat, determined to sacrifice himself and take out the First Order’s battering-ram cannon. Rose crashed her ski speeder into his, knocking him off-course and saving his life. Finn found her in the wreckage, badly injured. She managed to kiss him and tell him the Resistance would win not by destroying what they hated but by saving what they loved.

Rose lapsed into unconsciousness, but Finn carried her back to the Resistance base and aboard the Millennium Falcon. He tended to her injuries as the old freighter streaked away from Crait with the small band of surviving Resistance fighters.

Recovered from her injuries, Rose helped Leia Organa rebuild the Resistance, with her knowledge of starships and talent for tinkering proving invaluable. Like the rest of the freedom fighters, she was shocked to learn that Emperor Palpatine had returned from death to threaten the galaxy once again.

Finn offered Rose a place aboard the Millennium Falcon for his mission to Pasaana to track down a Sith wayfinder. But Rose decided to remain on Ajan Kloss. Aware of Rose’s technological talents, Leia had asked her to study the warships of Palpatine’s Sith fleet in hopes of finding a weakness the Resistance might exploit.

The resulting vigil was an uneasy one for both Rose and the Resistance leader. Every hour brought Palpatine’s Sith armada closer to beginning its campaign against the galaxy, and intensified Rose’s worries about what had happened to Finn and the rest of their friends.

Finn returned, and Rey sent the Resistance course information allowing it to reach Exegol and confront the First Order and its Sith allies. Meanwhile, Rose’s analysis of the Sith fleet had suggested a weakness – a ground assault that took out its navigational beacon would leave the armada stranded in Exegol’s turbulent atmosphere, without shields.

When the First Order transferred the navigational signal from a ground-based beacon to one of its Star Destroyers, the Resistance forces had to improvise by landing on the top deck of the Star Destroyer. Rose was in the thick of the fight, along with Finn and Jannah.

The assault succeeded, and the Resistance won the day at Exegol. Rose returned to Ajan Kloss having helped strike a critical blow for galactic freedom and the cause for which she and her family had given so much.