Remembering The Dead: The Leaders Of The Early Rebellion
Image Source: CultureSlate
The Rebel Alliance formed slowly, with an early alliance between Saw Gerrera, Mon Mothma, and Bail Organa growing into their separate and intertwined activities against the Empire across the galaxy. But there were other leaders, often military, who left the Galactic Empire, left their retirements, or their individual planets, and joined this burgeoning resistance movement alongside the more politically minded. But many of these leaders also died early in the growing conflict between the Empire and the formal Rebel Alliance, with the events around Rogue One, A New Hope, and the Battle of Mako-Ta seeing the greatest loss of life. Today, we remember these dead leaders and see what impact they left before their ends.
Jun Sato
A native to the Mykapo system, Jun Sato had a run-in with the law due to some time in a criminal gang when he was younger. Despite that, he reformed and ended up becoming a lauded member of his system’s local defense forces sometime before the events of Star Wars Rebels. He eventually joins and comes to lead the Phoenix Cell of the burgeoning Rebel Alliance, with considerable resources and support thanks to assistance from figures like the Specters, Bail Organa, and Ahsoka Tano. He led this group for some time with considerable skill, though he doubted the ability of some of the Specters like Ezra Bridger, given his age, and often casual attitude. But when Ezra became more serious, Sato gave him more responsibilities, though this inadvertently pushed him down the path of the Dark Side which Sato surely had limited knowledge of.
RELATED:
Image Source: StarWars.com
Ezra largely ceased leadership duties within the Phoenix Cell after this experience, learning the limits of his abilities and his more intense mentality, with Sato instead focused on other missions. Later, when the Phoenix Cell linked up with the Massassi Group preparing to raid Lothal and prevent their ability to manufacture the TIE Defender, it was Sato who commanded the space battle against the Imperial ambush alongside Jan Dodonna.
When Ezra was unable to break through the interdictor-supported blockade, Jun Sato made the choice to bait one of these critical ships out of position, before performing a suicide run on the vessel, destroying it, and leaving a gap for the young Jedi to escape the battle. Jun Sato would be survived by his nephew, Mart Mattin, who would fly with the Rebellion for many more years, and Sato’s heroic sacrifice ensured that at least some of Phoenix Cell would live to fight another day.
Luthen Rael
Image Source: StarWars.com
Luthen Rael was once part of the Imperial Military but left it to protect a young woman named Kleya after the Empire devastated her family and likely, her homeworld as well. Soon after, the two resolved to become partners in a fight against the Empire and used the work of antiquities traders as a cover for their rapidly expanding operations. Over a decade and a half, they had special radios distributed to a broad network of contacts, and took funds from other Rebels like Mon Mothma to help fund operations and activities of groups like Saw Gerrera’s Partisans. Cassian Andor became a member of this network, with Luthen becoming known as Axis among the ISB once his influence became known.
Luthen appeared to have something of a rivalry with the Fulcrum-supported groups like the Massassi Group, due to disagreeing with men like Bail Organa, but he was also disliked for his incredible paranoia. He also had a philosophy that was incredibly ruthless, which saw the sacrifice of smaller numbers of lives to help wake up the wider galaxy of billions to the Empire’s evil as acceptable, poking the bear and then slipping away to watch the chaos it would wrought, turning others against it. By the end of his life, however, that strategy appears to have been rejected by the Rebel Alliance as a whole.
Rael was ridiculed, and when he ultimately gave his life so that fragments or truth about the Death Star could reach the Rebellion, Kleya almost wasn’t believed by High Command. Fortunately, he had men like Cassian Andor to strongly argue for the veracity of his information. While he died quietly, without the same mourning as other Rebel leaders, he still helped spark the Rebel phoenix that eventually burned the Empire down, and saved the life of the young woman he had known and guarded for so long, a true engine of defiance, Kleya Marki.
Saw Gerrera
Image Source: StarWars.com
Considered by some Star Wars fans to be the original Rebel, Saw Gerrera has had a long, storied life, from the Clone Wars to the rise of the Empire, to the later period when his Partisans were disliked by the leadership of wider Rebellion for allowing the Empire to paint everyone with the same terrorist brush with ease. While not exactly close to Mon Mothma and Bail Organa, Saw nevertheless did have an initial deal with them to fight against the Empire, and as he did so over the next decade and a half, he began to hear rumors of an Imperial superweapon project.
He started to chase the Death Star, and while he failed to find the construction site, he resolved to attack its supply chain. Setting up on Jedha, where his Partisans rebased, Saw coordinated attacks against Imperial convoys and transports carrying kyber crystals out of the ancient Temple of the Kyber. While he was able to slow the Empire’s acquisition of the material, it was far too late in the long term. The Death Star was nearly finished construction, and when the time came, they targeted the world that had given them so much trouble.
But the Empire was also too late in stopping a key piece of information reaching the Rebellion. Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor and their allies fled as a wave of devastation engulfed the Partisan hideout. While some among their number escaped alive, Saw did not. He stood, and waited, arms outstretched, embracing an end brought about by a machine many had believed him crazy to imagine existed. In his last moments, he whispered the name of his sister, Steela, killed so long ago during the Clone Wars. Saw was ruthless, brutal, and sacrificed many lives in his crusade against the Empire, but for nearly two decades, he fought them with every resource he had, from the highest highest to the lowest lowest. His legacy is complicated, not that of a hero, but still a figure who helped to shape the Rebellion.
Raddus
Image Source: Wookieepedia
Once a local commander to forces on Mon Cala, Raddus’ fight against the Empire began shortly after that state came into being. When a Jedi survivor of Order 66 sought to use Mon Cala as both a shield and a weapon against the Empire, inspiring them to rebel under King Lee-Char, Raddus was put in command of forces in Mon Cala’s southern oceans. A strident military figure, he advocated for conflict and defiance against the Empire, so when his king tried to order all of his forces to stand down, Raddus disobeyed him. Realizing the fight with the Empire was lost, Raddus launched his ships from beneath the ocean, ascending into the stars and the wider galaxy, just as this fallen Jedi had planned. He had foreseen that the Mon Calamari would play a critical role in a revolution against the Empire, and so they would.
Raddus would be a key member of the Rebel Alliance, bringing Mon Calamari ships to the cause with all of their impressive size and ability. Ever an advocate of action, by the time of Rogue One he was an admiral and supported Jyn Erso’s call for a raid on Scarif, and disobeyed the rest of the High Command alongside a good deal of the Rebellion’s naval forces which deployed to attack the secret Imperial installation. He coordinated the space battle, successfully breaking the Scarif shield gate and destroying two Imperial Star Destroyers, but was unprepared for the firepower of first the Death Star, which obliterated the Imperial installation on the tropical planet’s surface, and then an ISD commanded by Darth Vader himself. Attacking the fleeing Rebels in the wake of their successful raid, Vader boarded the Profundity, Raddus’ flagship. He tore through its halls, narrowly missing acquiring the Death Star’s schematics. Vader then left the ship and had it obliterated before he began his pursuit of the Tantive IV, killing Raddus and many other Rebels in the process. Raddus’ memory would live on into the New Republic when a newly commissioned Mon Cala-built ship was named in his honor, and later served a critical role with the Resistance and then, in the destruction of the First Order’s monstrous Supremacy capital ship.
Bail Organa
Image Source: StarWars.com
A longtime politician who served the Galactic Republic as Senator for a number of years, Bail Organa was one-third of a triarchy who met and agreed to core ideas for a rebellion against the Empire. Unlike Mon Mothma, whose support remained financial and purely legislative, and Saw Gerrera, who was highly militant, Bail Organa took quiet, stealthy actions in support of both the remaining Jedi and the burgeoning resistance groups forming against the Empire’s rule. While it is unlikely this initial swell of support for the future Rebel cause led to much in the immediate term, Bail and his wife Queen Breha Organa continued to work toward a future free of the Empire. They used Alderaan as a safe haven, and repeatedly engaged in acts of espionage and duplicity to ensure the Empire would not suspect them of the full extent of their anti-Imperial sympathies. Bail even sent the droids C-3PO and R2-D2 out to perform missions, while he also allowed a young Leia to do the same after she finally learned the truth about what Bail and Breha were doing.
But Bail also had a major supporter in the form of Ahsoka Tano, and the Fulcrum espionage network she helped establish. Knitting together the various Rebel cells, it seems like while Luthen wanted to keep the groups apart and in limited contact, Bail pursued the idea of them strengthening their ties and coming together more and more in unity and mutual aid. Bail alongside Breha ultimately helped to support and generate aid to thousands of oppressed individuals over the years, but eventually their luck ran out. The Empire captured the Tantive IV after Scarif, and having returned to his homeworld, Bail was with his wife when the Death Star appeared in the skies and fired on the planet. He was a hero well remembered in the New Republic, alongside his wife, and was survived by his adopted daughter Leia who carried on the fight for years to come.
Those Massacred At Mako-Ta
Image Source: Wookieepedia
The Battle of Mako-Ta was a devastating loss for the Rebel Alliance. Not only in military hardware, as multiple brand new, fully equipped star cruisers and starfighters were obliterated, but also in lives lost. Many of the military men seen in brief scenes of A New Hope and Rogue One appeared during this comic arc, and we watched as one by one, they died. The following military leaders perished at Mako-Ta, having helped guide the Rebellion until this moment.
Sector Commander and General Vanden Willard aboard the Yavin’s Hope was the first to die, targeted and destroyed by Darth Vader’s Executor
General Bandwin Cor was killed next when he tried to leave the spacedock and reach one of the Alliance ships to tell them of Queen Trios’ sabotage. TIEs were able to overwhelm his small craft, which lacked maneuverability, and he was killed
Commander Lajaie died next, his ship’s shields failing though his crew had gotten close to isolating the problem. While much of that crew abandoned ship, hoping to spread their knowledge to other ships, the Empire purposefully targeted the jettisoned escape pods and slaughtered them.
Sector Commander and General Bob Hudsol was the last confirmed figure to die. He had been proud of the vessel, the first to be completely outfitted and to pass tests, but now he was doomed by those same Shu-Toran improvements.
An anonymous military leader died when yet another cruiser exploded just as Princess Leia began her mission to sneak aboard the Executor to acquire the codes that would free the Rebel fleet. However, with so many ships destroyed, she had lost track of whose vessel it was. The figure who died might have been General Baccam Grafis, or General Pitt Onoran, both of who appeared prior to Mako Ta, but have never been mentioned again.
But the final two deaths were the biggest blows of this battle. First of the major figures was General Davits Draven, a man in charge of various missions focused on theft, sabotage, and assassination. He accompanied Princess Leia in her infiltration of the Executor, and fled alongside her through the Super Star Destroyer’s hallways as Vader steadily pursued the intruders. In the end, he gave his life at a chance Leia might escape, which she fortunately did. Draven was a complicated man, in charge of missions filled with greys, and who made wrong calls at times, but despite that, Leia openly stated she wished the two could have become friends.
Image Source: Wookieepedia
The last notable figure to die was Jan Dodanna. A leader of the Rebel Alliance since even before its formal call for unity, he led Massassi Group at the Battle of Atollon and beyond, using his years of military experience for the force of good after previously serving both the Galactic Republic and the Empire like many of his colleagues. While stubborn and taciturn by the time of Mako-Ta, he was still selfless and willing to listen to the opinions of others. Despite having escaped the battle, he agreed to return, and in doing so, sacrificed his vessel, The Republic, to divide Imperial attention. He died a hero’s death, like so many on this list.
READ NEXT:
Source(s): Reign of the Empire: The Mask of Fear, Rebels, Andor, Rogue One, Star Wars (2015) Volume 9, Wookieepedia [1], [2]
Latest News
Featured
