Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams once praised The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson for introducing Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose Tico to the Star Wars universe, calling it “the greatest thing” Johnson did. Yet Tran’s character reportedly received approximately 76 seconds of screen time within The Rise of Skywalker’s runtime of two hours and twenty minutes.
It became apparent to anyone who watched The Rise of Skywalker that Rose Tico, a main character in The Last Jedi, was benched throughout the new film. Slate writer Violet Kim watched the film with a stopwatch, noting every time Tico appeared on screen. Kim noted that she tried to be “as generous” as possible, including scenes like “at the end where she hugs Chewbacca at…