Hera Syndulla

**General Hera Syndulla** is a major heroine in the *Star Wars* franchise. She is the secondary deuteragonist of the 2014-2018 animated series *Star Wars Rebels* and one of the two protagonists of its 2014 prequel novel (along with Kanan Jarrus) A New Dawn. She is daughter of Clone Wars revolutionist Cham Syndulla, the captain of the *Ghost*, a VCX 100 light freighter, owner of Chopper, and leader of the *Ghost* crew under the callsign **Spectre-2**. Hera is the first to warmly welcome any new members into the crew and she Becomes close with Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger, whom she also mentors and acts as a motherly figure towards. Throughout the series, she becomes the Phoenix Leader and a dedicated fighter in the Rebel Alliance to restore the Galactic Republic while growing romantic feelings for Kanan Jarrus and reconciles with her father Cham. However, after a mission to Malachor that makes Kanan and Ezra lose Ahsoka, Hera and Ezra lead the Ghost and continue to fight in the rebellion. During their adventures, Hera encounters her arch-enemy Grand Admiral Thrawn.

By Season 4, Hera becomes Kanan's lover but loses him when he sacrifices himself to save her, Ezra and Sabine. She later becomes dedicated to liberating Ezra's homeworld from Imperial control, but at the cost of her foster son sacrificing himself to save his friends by ridding Lothal of Grand Admiral Thrawn. By *Rogue One,* Hera is promoted to a General and later, becomes the mother of Jacen Syndulla.

## Biography

### Background

 File:25.jpg
Hera was born on Ryloth in 29 BBY as the daughter of the Clone War hero and revolutionist, General Cham Syndulla, and his wife. Additionally, she had a younger brother, who died young . While Hera would inherit her father's freedom fighting spirit and will to help others, she became a dreamer like her mother. She grew up in the Tann Provinces and was loved by both of her parents . During her childhood, Hera grew up on tales of how the Purrgil, large space-dwelling creatures, had inspired people to develop the hyperdrive. As she grew older however, Syndulla came to regard the Purrgil as a menace because they endangered hyperspace travel by crashing into ships. She would later recount to her friend and surrogate son, Ezra Bridger that she lost more than one friend to collisions with Purrgil.

During the liberation of Ryloth, young Hera and her mother hid in Ryloth's catacombs. Despite her mother's interests in hiding her family, young Hera would watch Republic ships fly over Ryloth as they liberated her homeworld and following this, inspired Hera to become a pilot. During this battle, Hera found an old C1 astromech droid, C1-10P, from the wreck of a Y-wing that had crashed during the final days of the Clone Wars. Seeing him damaged, Hera fixed C1-10P and nicknamed him "Chopper."

Tragedy struck when Hera's mother was during one of Cham's freedom fighting campaigns. Her death caused too much pain for Cham, who fought harder to fight in the rebellion, putting him at odds with his daughter. Because of this, Hera spent more time with Chopper than with her father, who she was driven away from due to neglecting her. At age seventeen, frustrated by her strained relationship with her family, seventeen-year-old Hera left Ryloth to fight for others, acquiring the *Ghost*, a modified VCX-100 light freighter, and taking Chopper with her.

### Meeting Kanan Jarrus

At least six years prior to the series, Hera met Kanan Jarrus on the planet Gorse, a bar tender who unknown to her was once a Jedi Padawan Caleb Dume. He once saved her life using the Force but Hera found out and promised not to tell anyone. After successfully finishing the mission, Kanan chose to join her crew. In the following years, in addition with Chopper, they acquired three more members: a Lasat warrior Zeb Orrelios, the Mandalorian girl Sabine Wren and a Lothalite boy Ezra Bridger.

### Grand Admiral Thrawn

While on Ryloth, she encountered the Grand Admiral Thrawn, the deadliest foe the revels ever faced.

## Appearance

At the time of Star Wars Rebels, Hera was twenty-four years old in season 1 and 2 (possibly twenty-five in season 2), 26 in season 3 and 28 in season 4. and was a beautiful Twi'lek woman who stood 1.76 meters, had apple green skin, emerald green eyes and red lips. Hera's eyes would sometimes look blue-green in the light.

Her Lekku had a pattern that was a lighter shade of green and hung from her headgear. Hera wore a pair of goggles, but she only wore them whenever she was out in the open air or for protection when it best suited her.

Instead of having a Ryloth accent, Hera instead had a human accent and would only ship into her accent whenever she was stressed out with her father or angered. Most of the time, Hera wore a white, orange and brown flight suit and boots. She went through with a minor redesign in season 3, where she was given a patch to signify her role as the Phoenix Leader in the Phoenix Squadron.

## Personality

Among the members of the Ghost Crew, Hera Syndulla is considered the mother figure of the bunch. Bringing together six rebels, her fellow crewmembers treat Hera with the utmost respect and authority. She is the only one who can keep Chopper in line and reprimand Zeb whenever his actions are questionable. Like all the other members of the *Ghost*, she was sympathetic toward those who fell victim to the Empire and helped bring about inspiration to her followers. Whenever she was infuriated with Zeb or Chopper, she would occasionally call Zeb by his full name, Garazeb Orrelios and Chopper, his real name C1-10P. When she first meets Ezra Bridger, she was mildly impressed with the boy's resourcefulness and how his personality reminds her of Kanan when he was younger. She was the first to warmly welcome him on the Ghost when he got into conflict with Kanan, Zeb and Sabine.  After learning he was an orphan and had no parents, she felt sympathy for him.

Hera is an outspoken young woman who is not afraid to call people out on their actions, such as pressing Kanan on to train Ezra and later, reprimanding Ezra when he disobeyed her orders. Like Ezra, Hera tries to see the best in everyone and attempt to bring it out. According to Kanan, some of Hera's traits were picked up on by Ezra. Hera is also an ace pilot, being able to outmaneuver even Darth Vader, despite him being one of the better pilots. Because of her talented skills, Hera stayed on the Ghost most of their missions because she could fly away faster. When she does go on missions, Hera proves to be capable of looking after herself on the battle, being an excellent fighter and markswoman. Apart from her idealistic nature, Hera was the first Rebel to see that Senator Gall Trayvis was a traitor and a spy for the Empire.

As the series goes on, Hera becomes more involved and loyal to the Rebellion, acting less flirtatious with Kanan and more in command of the Ghost crew, but still remaining the fiesty, motherly figure of the bunch. She becomes invested in the rebellion so much, that she does not even consider what life she wanted to live once it was over, letting her personal needs not get in the way of things. However, after their losses on Atallon, Hera realizes that she could not let the Rebellion control her life. At the end, she wanted to continue her life with Kananand decided that is what she wanted when the war was over. Even being a mother to her toddler son, Jacen, Hera still participated in the battle of Scarif in *Rogue One*.

After losing Kanan, Hera feared lthat she would lose someone else she cared for, as she protested to Ezra not to surrender to Thrawn, insisting there was another way.

## Abilities

* **Leadership:** Hera is a capable leader, being able to take command of Phoenix Squadron, being a notable leader in the rebellion, a trait she shares with Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren.
* **Piloting:** Hera is one of the most famous pilots, being able to out-fly Darth Vader, but probably because of his TIE being caught in a star destroyer's tractor beam She honored her skills during a relief mission to Ryloth following her father's failed assassination attempt on Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. She flew the Ghost, the Phantom, a protoype B-wing starfighter and a T-b X-wing starfighter. On another occasion, she was able to escape Thrawn's forces by jumping into hyperspace while flying through an Imperial construction module
* **Skilled mechanic**: Hera is a bit of a skilled mechanic, being able to help Sabine with her inventions.
* **Teaching:** Hera was also able to pass on her teachings to young Ezra Bridger, who became a skilled pilot thanks to her. She also acted as a mentor to Ezra and Sabine.
* **Better Strength:** Despite her small stature, Hera is actually strong, possibly stronger than a normal human. She was able to punch the Imperial agent, Gall Trayvis in the face with little to no effort, effectively knocking him out with one punch to the face.
* **Strong Will/Stubbornness:** Hera was one to never give up. She fought effortlessly for the freedom of everyone in the galaxy. While Hera was a capable fighter who could come up with ingenious escape plans, she was no match for the Force powers of the former Sith Lord Maul. Despite her strong will-power, Hera could not stop Maul from retrieving information on the location of Kanan Jarrus' holocron from her mind.
* **Bravery:** Hera was considered one of the bravest pilots in her generation, having fought up against Grand Admiral Thrawn and refusing to surrender to him.
* **Expert Markswoman:** She is shown to handle a blaster well.

## Relationships

### Kanan Jarrus (Lover)

Hera met Kanan on Gorse, where she found him as a drunk. Kanan first fell in love with her by the sound of her voice. After working together, Hera was the one who helped Kanan turn his life around and offered him a position on the *Ghost*crew, which Kanan accepted. From then on, they became partners. Though they kept their relationship platonic, they harbored strong, romantic feelings for each other. Together, Kanan and Hera built a family that contained Hera's Droid Chopper, the Lasat Garazeb Orrelios and teenagers Sabine Wren and Ezra Bridger.
They admitted their feelings for each other in season 4 and entered a romantic relationship. Later, Kanan have his life to save her, Sabine and Ezra and looked at her one last time.

## Family

### Ezra Bridger (Son Figure/Close Friend)

Hera and Ezra are very good friends and they have a typical mother/son bond/ relationship. For example, Hera and Ezra will love and protect him as much as she will be stern with him. This was shown in "Rebel Resolve," where Hera cancelled the search for Kanan while she did want to save him, she had to reluctantly suspend it to keep Ezra protected and safe. However, they will have their disagreements as a mother would have with her son, similar to Hera's relationship with Sabine. This was when Ezra disagreed with Hera when she suspended the search for Kanan. He went behind her back and took control while defying Heras's orders.

According to Kanan, Ezra and Hera are alike and mentioned that he took after her sometimes.

### Sabine Wren (Daughter Figure/Best Friend)

Being the only two women on the team, Sabine and Hera are incredibly close, Sharing a mother-daughter/sisterly bond and relationship similar to Kanan and Ezra's. However, like any mother and daughter, Hera and Sabine have their arguments, especially when it came to Hera's informant, Fulcrum, as Sabine felt that Hera didn't trust her and was reminded of her days back at the Imperial Academy, where she often asked questions and Sabine got frustrated with Hera because Fulcrum's identity was on a need-to-know basis. However they reconciled when Hera and Sabine worked together on an asteroid by defeating the Fyrnocks that lived there and in the aftermath, Hera revealed that she trusted Sabine, just as she did on the asteroid and Sabine accepted her friend's reasoning after Hera promised to reveal everything to Sabine and the other rebels when the time was right.

### Chopper (Best Friend)

Chopper is Hera's Droid, companion and best friend. Knowing him since she was a little girl, Hera rescued Chopper by pulling him out of an X-won't that crashed and killed his pilot. Since then, the two were inseparable, both acting like brother she sister. She is the only person that Chopper truly listens to and calls him "C1-10P," his real name, whenever he is in trouble.

Hera is incredibly protective of Chopper. For example, she was infuriated when the Empire hijacked Chopper and paid them back by killing the controller and his entire team.

### Zeb Orrelios (Close Friend)

Zeb and Hera met sometime after Lasan was invaded by the Galactic Empire and Zeb's people were scattered across the Galaxy. She is both a mother and sister figure to Zeb and one of the few to be able to reprimand him and often shouted at him with his full name when Zeb misbehaved. . Hera was aware of his past and his sensitivity to the T7 ion disrupters that were used to kill his people. However, she wasn't aware that Zeb used to be Captain of the Lasat Honor Guard.

## Friends

### Ahsoka Tano (Close Friend)

Hera is the only one who knows that Fulcrum is actually Ahsoka Tano, former Jedi Padawan. It is shown that Hera and Ahsoka trust each other, as Hera heeded Ahsoka' swarning to lay low when the team was trying to rescue Kanan Jarrus but she had to put Ezra's safety. At least, until Ezra told Hera to help rescue Kanan.

## Enemies

### Thrawn (Arch Enemy)

Hera has been enemies with Thrawn ever since they first met in *Hera's Heroes* (the fourth episode of Season 3). He stole her Kalikori, but Thrawn was shown to respect Hera. He also personally visited her in her prison cell during her interrogation, but in truth, Hera knew he was mocking her and only took her kalikori in a piece of honor, a prize.

## References

1. ↑ *Star Wars Rebels - "*Jedi Night"
2. ↑ Star Wars Rebels - "Homecoming"
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Star Wars Rebels - "Hera's Heroes"
4. ↑ The Call