Kelly Marie Tran, who plays Rose Tico, has more screentime in the bonus documentary for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker than she had in the film itself. Introduced in Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Rose was a controversial character, from trolls harassing her online over even being cast in the movie to negative reactions to her role as a love interest for Finn to the Canto Bight sequence - her most prominent role in that film.
Rose was one of the biggest victims of the changes to the story between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. While her role in The Last Jedi wasn’t quite as central as Rey, Finn, or Poe, she was set up as an integral part of the supporting cast. She served mostly as a supporting character to Finn, but with the suggestion that she’d have a more central role in The Rise of Skywalker. When it finally came around, however, her part in the movie was barely more than a minute, mostly being composited into scenes that involved reused footage of Carrie Fisher as Leia.
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The feature-length documentary about The Rise of Skywalker, The Skywalker Legacy, released early on digital due to the coronavirus pandemic, actually features more of Kelly Marie Tran than the movie did. The reasons that she wasn’t heavily featured in the movie aren’t exactly clear, but the fact that she’s in more of the documentary sticks out oddly. This suggests that Rose had a larger role in the story at some point, perhaps even during filming, but it was later cut down. This is supported by Tran saying she had a larger part with the Resistance before the movie came out.
The documentary doesn’t talk specifically about what changed with Rose’s role, leaving everything in the realm of speculation. But it’s not surprising that the documentary doesn’t go into the messy details, as this was primarily about the overarching story. Rose Tico was an important part of that story, but she wasn't the only person. And what this documentary seems to confirm is that Rose’s reduced role came pretty late in the process. She wasn't featured extensively in the documentary, but with how small her role in the movie was, she barely needed to appear in the documentary at all.
It would have felt weird if she wasn’t mentioned, but appearing that much in it feels like a saving throw trying to correct for her absence in the movie. Whether her role was reduced as a response to trolls harassing Tran off of social media or as part of trying to streamline an already overstuffed movie that needed to wrap up 42 years of storytelling, it’s not a great look. After being set up as an important character in The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker marginalized Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, and without a coherent answer about why, everyone is going to assume the worst. The Skywalker Legacy doesn’t help resolve this, instead shining a spotlight on just how much she’s been sidelined.
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