Actress Kelly Marie Tran, who portrayed Rose in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”, has deleted all of her Instagram posts following months of harassment from some angry Star Wars fans.

The Last Jedi was very divisive among Star Wars fans and the one character that received much of the criticism was Rose.

Rose Tico was introduced as a new character in The Last Jedi. She was a maintenance worker for The Resistance, and teamed up with Finn (John Boyega) for a secret mission to Canto Bight. Rose and Finn had hopes of finding a code breaker that could assist them into sneaking onboard of The Supremacy to disable a device that The First Order was using to track Resistance ships through light-speed.

I do agree with many fans that the character of Rose was the worst character in The Last Jedi, and that Rose and Finn’s excursion to Canto Bight did more harm than good for the story. But it was not Kelly Marie Tran’s fault. It was the character of Rose. I can’t understand how anyone would attack Tran for doing a job that she was hired to do. She did not invent the character of Rose. She did not write the storyline of Canto Bight. But it seem like some fans are making her a scapegoat for the problems they had with The Last Jedi. Some people need to leave the girl alone.

If disgruntled fans have issues, they need to talk to Lucasfilm and director Rian Johnson, but in a civilized way. It never helps to approach someone with hate speech if you want things to change. They just need to be rational and polite and maybe Lucasfilm will listen. Lucasfilm will never respond to threats.

Unfortunately, in the world we live in, some people feel that their words are so important that they feel the need to aggressively criticize others through social media. And some of those criticisms are hateful and insensitive, and even worse, some will threaten others with violence.

Not all Star Wars fans are like this, and I am sure that they represent a very small minority that cant distinguish between an actress and a character. It’s OK not to like the character of Rose. It’s even OK to not like Kelly Marie Tran’s performance. But some people just need to learn to be respectful in how they express themselves.

I’m sure Hayden Christensen is relieved that he never had to deal with the hate of some Star Wars fans back when The Prequels came out, due to the lack of social media back then. I’m sure he received some letters in the mail that were not very nice, but more than likely, people back then were too lazy to actually write how they felt and even bother to buy a stamp to mail it to him. Kelly Marie Tran did not have it so easy.

Let’s hope some good comes from this and she doesn’t have to deal with anymore hate.

Source: Star Wars Facts

Joe Hogarty