let’s talk about poe dameron’s badass mom: shara bey

ghouls-beneath:

Shara Bey was a badass pilot in the Rebel Alliance.

Battle of Endor

• She was in Greed Squadron, and helped protect the Millennium Falcon as it made its way up to Death Star II. 
• While up there, she helped take down ships trying escape its impending doom. 
• Shara pursued an escaping Imperial Shuttle – only to have its pilot inform her that it was Luke Skywalker. 
• And then she covered his ass so he could get away.
• Afterwards, for almost three weeks straight, Sara continued to pilot for every possible mission under the sun. 
• So much so that a peer actually advised she take a lighter assignment as her next one. 
• So, of course…

Naboo

• Shara was tasked to be the personal pilot for Leia on essentially a covert trip to Naboo. 
• The Alliance needed Naboo to join the New Republic, but since Naboo was the Emperor’s native planet, they needed a low profile endeavor.
• So it was just the two of them, Shara and Leia, for the entire operation. 
• They successfully made it, and while the Queen agreed to Leia’s offer, there was some serious trouble brewing across the planet.
•  Operation: Cinder. The op was Palpatine throwing a fit of buttrage from beyond the grave. 
• In the case of his death, the Empire was to make Naboo, and a bunch of other planets, uninhabitable. They launched some satellites that could cause some serious damage:

The [satellites were] then used to create hurricanes, and by the time it had reached twenty percent efficiency, three class-five hurricanes (with another dozen forming) had been made.

• Shara Bey, though, figured it out:
• That 1: there were satellites and 
• 2: they needed to be scrambled, or everything was fucked. 
• But– there’s no one that can fight. The Emperor demilitarized Naboo years ago. 
• But the Queen remembered: there was still something left, in their hangers. Relics of an older time: from the Battle of Naboo, almost 40 years prior.
• Yes, the weird little banana ships that Anakin flew in The Phantom Menace: 

  N-1 starfighters.  

• So: Shara flew one. So did the Queen. So did Leia. And do you know which of them was in charge? . 

“I suggest Lieutenant Bey act as flight leader. She has the most experience of any of us.“ 
“I think that’s a very wise suggestion, Princess Leia.“ 
―Leia Organa and Queen Sosha Soruna

• Ok, that one was sort of obvious. But still: Shara led the ladies up into space so that they could save Naboo from imploding.
• Shara started taking out satellites left and right. Leia and the Queen watched her six, destroying the TIE fighters trying to stop her. 
• In the end, they were outgunned and rescued by the Rebel Alliance who had learned of the op via intel– but not before they’d taken out all the necessary satellites by themselves.

The Final Mission

• Unfortunately– Operation: Cinder was not just a one planet thing. 
• They fought this shit for months, and week after week Shara’s hopes dimmed a little more that the war would ever actually, truly end. 
• Because she wanted a life. One with her son. One with her husband, Kes.
• He’d also fought in the battle of Endor as a ground soldier, and when serving, Poe stayed with him. 
• They saw each other rarely, and sometimes only for hours after being away from each other for weeks. 
• Kes has talked before about settling down somewhere, to raise Poe. He put in for his retirement, but she was on the fence. Her boss put in a request for her, and she objected– for now.
• And then… Luke Skywalker wanted her for a mission. The last twig of a force-sensitive tree. The same tree that had thrived in the Jedi Temple before the Emperor turned it into the Imperial Palace.
• (Which is a Big Deal, IMO. I think Luke was looking for this twig because it was going to be the symbolic start of his temple. A place to recreate that which had been destroyed– and he picked Shara, for this. To fly with him. To find this ancient, sacred thing.)
• Despite complications and having to fight their way through stormtroopers, etc, Luke and Shara found not one twig, but two, and make it out fine.
• They talk, some, about her choice between staying with the Rebel Alliance or working on her family. Luke counseled that “living for the future is worth living”. 
• Taking the tree, and his advice, Shara retired from the Alliance. She’d earned it, after all.

Her Legacy

• After all this, Shara retired to Yavin 4, where she planted the force tree and established her new life. 
• She didn’t tell Poe many wartime stories– although she did start taking him up in her ship when he was six years old, and started to teach him how to fly.
• Unfortunately, just two years after that, Shara passed away in sudden tragedy.
• Poe decided to continue in his mother’s footsteps, and became a pilot for the New Galactic Republic.
• After he joined, he looked into his mother’s records and found– with great joy and wonder– all of her heroism. Her achievements. Testimonies of her skill from fellow pilots, and how they’d been saved by one Shara Bey.

Shara Bey was a badass in her own right. She was a pilot, a strategist, a mother. If you want to read them, they are available in comic form, which most of this is sourced from:

Star Wars: Shattered Empire, Part I

As always, if I’ve misrepresented anything or gotten something incorrect, please drop me an ask and I will update it immediately!