Podcast: Play in new window | Download
We’re back with another look at Star Wars: Bloodline, the novel by Claudia Gray, and this time, we’re looking at what’s revealed about the Resistance.
Here’s your official spoiler alert: If you haven’t read the novel and plan to, skip this podcast and post for now. If you have read it, or don’t plan to but want to know about how the Resistance was formed, then stick with us.
What we learn is comparatively minimal, but still significant. Thanks to the utter gridlock, corruption, and polarization in the Galactic Senate, and thanks to the word getting out about Darth Vader being Luke and Leia’s dad, Leia is forced to resign from the Senate even as she discovers a shadowy organization rising into power – and a well-funded one at that. So she steps away from it all, puts in a few calls to some close friends, and gathers them together at the end of the novel.
The Resistance begins with some familiar faces – Nien Numb and Admiral Ackbar, as well as Major Ematt, who we’ve been seeing more of in The Force Awakens and the novels Smuggler’s Run and Moving Target, to name two. Also joining up are a handful of pilots: Leia’s aide and former hotshot-pilot-turned-bloodburn-victim Greer Sonnel; her partner on missions during the novel, Joph Seastriker; and a couple others mentioned, including Snap Wexley from TFA and Star Wars: Aftermath, and Zari Bangel, whom we only meet for the first time in this novel. Ello Asty from TFA also appears briefly in Bloodline, but is not mentioned among the pilots. Lastly, Harter Kalonia, the same one who treated Chewie’s wound at the Resistance base on D’Qar in TFA.
These folks are the founders of the Resistance, and the irony of course is that First Order sympathizers are the ones who smeared Leia and forced her to drop out of the Senate. As a result, Leia is going to hand the First Order’s hat to them, so to speak, in the movies to come.
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: BB-8
Today’s question: Who was the first to spot the impending arrival of the First Order on Takodana?