Star Wars: The Last Jedi Offers the Harsh Condemnation of Mansplaining We Need in 2017

This article contains considerable spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. If you want to go into the movie pure as the driven salt on the mining planet of Crait, you should wait until later to read this. Otherwise, join us for a closer look at how, even though it’s set long ago and in a galaxy far, far away, The Last Jedi dished up a vital 2017 lesson about sexual politics in the workplace.

The Last Jedi opens with a familiar sight. A cocky flyboy—fan favorite Poe Dameron—zipping around a big, evil ship taking out cannons with the help of some Red, Blue, or Gold leaders. Defying a direct order from his boss, General Organa, Dameron leads the rebel air force into victory, yes—but also a lot of fiery casualties. The toll of this mission is driven home by the poignant death of Paige Tico—and while Poe expects to be greeted as a conquering hero, he instead finds his boss enraged. She tells him he needs to understand the chain of command and what it takes to lead. “I need you to learn that,” Leia lectures him. He gets a slap and a demotion for his trouble. It’s only the first of many such lessons in a movie that takes time away from the light and dark battles of Rey and Kylo to deliver a stinging referendum on gendered office politics.

The Poe-Leia relationship may be somewhat fraught, but The Last Jedi writer-director Rian Johnson really doubles down on this theme when Leia goes into a coma and is replaced by Vice Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern). Poe, clearly hoping to be tapped to stand in for Leia, immediately criticizes his new superior. “That’s Admiral Holdo?” he asks a fellow resistance fighter while taking in his new boss’s gown, purple hair, and jewelry. “Not what I was expecting,” he almost sneers.

That Holdo is kind yet dismissive of Poe only enrages him further. She urges him, for the safety of all concerned, to “stick to your post and follow my orders.” He doesn’t; as a result, many rebels die. Speaking about her character’s stylish-yet-firm leadership, Dern told Vanity Fair: “[Rian is] saying something that’s been a true challenge in feminism. Are we going to lead and be who we are as women in our femininity? Or are we going to dress up in a boy’s clothes to do the boy’s job? I think we’re waking up to what we want feminism to look like.”

One might argue that if Holdo had filled in Poe on her plan—to evade the First Order fleet long enough to get within range of an old base on Crait—Poe would have listened and fallen in line. But to borrow a phrase from Poe himself, this mission was a “need-to-know.” And as soon as a frustrated Holdo and Leia let Poe in on the plan, he blabs about it over the comms to Finn loud enough that Benicio del Toro’s D.J. can hear—and, later, sell them out. If Poe had just listened to Leia and Holdo from the start, the rebel fleet wouldn’t have been quite so decimated by the end of the film. Poe does clearly learn his lesson by the final frames of The Last Jedi—and only then do his admiration for Holdo, his respect for Leia, and his realization of just how much he doesn’t know position him to finally become the leader these powerful women hoped he’d be.

It’s clever for Johnson to have put this story on the very likable Poe. (Both Leia and Holdo are careful to reassure audiences that they, too, like the guy.) We expect dismissive sexism from the First Order (how many times do they refer to Rey as “The Girl?”), but to see it from a friendly face is even more instructive. Any female boss in 2017 or American still nursing the hangover of the 2016 presidential election can tell you that even nice guys often have trouble taking orders from women.

This message—women being largely right, and men being mostly wrong—extends to most but not all aspects of The Last Jedi. Rose Tico was certainly right to insist that Finn stay and fight, and right again to save him when attempts to needlessly sacrifice himself. Rey and Leia were right that Luke should join the resistance. But Luke still has some things to teach his young student. When they fight on the rainy cliffs of Ahch-To over her desperate hope that she can save Ben Solo, Luke is correct in telling Rey that “this is not going to go the way you think.” And in the end, no matter how Poe and Finn may have stumbled—or Holdo, Leia, Rose, and Rey may have triumphed—it’s still Luke Skywalker who gets the film’s big damn hero moment.

But by in large, The Last Jedi’s examination of gender politics does fit into this trilogy’s message that the true heirs to the power in this universe are not white men like Hux and Kylo but women and people of color. Though The Last Jedi began filming in early 2016—in other words, long before a referendum on Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton informed every aspect of American storytelling—it’s impossible to ignore the parallels on screen here.

The film’s progressive ideology is already ticking off some calcified corners of the fandom—the kind of fans who dismissed Ridley’s heroic Rey as a too-powerful “Mary Sue” after the last film. But just because some Star Wars lovers are out of reach for the message this movie delivers, there is still hope for a new generation. Just like that kid at the end of The Last Jedi, holding his broom aloft and wearing the resistance jewelry left behind by Rose, an entire generation of young Star Wars watchers will remember the brave, smart, capable women of The Last Jedi—and the consequences of doubting their leadership.

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.

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