YMMV / Star Wars: Doctor Aphra

---

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Aphra has a constant cycle of backstabbing people close to her, feeling terrible about it, then continuing to betray and use people at the drop of a hat, oftentimes the same people she previously felt bad about mistreating. This invites speculation as to which, if either, aspect of her is more dominant. Is she a genuinely a good person deep down, but one with a ruthless and vicious streak born of her tough upbringing that sabotages her relationships? Or is she an awful person with just enough of a conscience to feel bad about some of the things she does but not enough of one to change her ways? This is discussed in-universe, with her father and Vuulada trying to see her as the former while Triple-zero wants her to admit she's the latter. Along these lines, is her act of burning her bridges to those close to her at the comic's end a selfless sacrifice that keeps them safe from her, or is she wounding them one last time because that's easier than growing as a person into someone who wouldn't mistreat them?
• Ass Pull: The climax of "Unspeakable Rebel Superweapon" relies entirely on Imperial agents neglecting to search Black Krrsantan. The only attempt at explaining why the Imperials would search Aphra and Vulaada but not the highly armed, ill-tempered, well-known bounty hunter is Aphra saying "no one thinks to check the Wookiee", which falls apart immediately since she used that trick not ten minutes before to smuggle a bowcaster past security, which he threatened them with, and they still didn't bother searching him. Even for Imperial standards, that's a new low in incompetence.
• Awesome Moments: In the final issue, Aphra incapacitates Vader by trapping him in the confessional of an ancient temple, tormenting him with his guilt. She then hijacks the speaker in his suit and impersonates him to tamper with probe droid records and slowing down the Empire's search for Echo Base.
• Base-Breaking Character As of the Remastered arc, Aphra's behavior has gotten to a point that some readers have come to dislike Aphra for her jerkass attitude towards other characters, particularly that she lets several of them die for little good reason and that she humiliates Hera throughout the arc, with some readers feeling annoyed that she didn't get any comeuppance besides another callout by Triple-Zero. In addition, many fans are frustrated by how her, despite how much her greedy and sociopathic attitudes end of backfiring, she never seems to learn or grow as a person. On the other hand, other fans have defended her writing with the argument that this is Aphra we're talking about; she's a Villain Protagonist and you're not supposed to be supportive of her actions nor should you consider her a role model nor will she get better any time soon, because multiple characters call her out on her behavior and she acknowledges that she makes little effort to change who she is. The Remastered arc even ends with Triple-Zero telling her that even if she does feel bad for her actions, she's similar to him.
• Broken Base: Si Spurrier's writing of Hera. Either he's writing a very stressed Hera who's off her game after losing her pilots at Yavin and not having her family to help her cope, and thus her more out of character moments are justified in context, or he's just very bad at writing her, making her incompetent, easily cowed by Aphra when she's faced much worse villains, unnecessarily brutal, and sanctimonious in a failed attempt to try and make Aphra more impressive. Her Narmy lines don't help, nor does Aphra selling her to the Empire with a bow on top as a joke, which some fans saw as demeaning and unfunny given Hera's traumatic past with captivity and slavery.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Aphra using a tooka as an Action Bomb. Issue #16 reveals she made at least sixty of them.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Magna Tolvan for being a troubled female Imperial officer with tomboy-ish looks and ends up on the receiving end of Aphra's flirts. She ended up being brought back for the Remastered arc, much to her fanbase's pleasure. And oh boy, does it show.
  • Sister Six for being a cool bisexual gunslinging Xexto that also becomes the Only Sane Man of the crew, and later joins the Rebel Alliance.
  • Tam Posla (and to a lesser extent, Caysin Bogg), for being a ridiculously awesome play on the By-the-Book Cop trope by taking it up to eleven in that he refuses to break any laws even if they're fighting a monster... unless they harm his boyfriend. Also, Tam and Caysin are like an old badass gay married couple.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Quite a number of Rebels viewers found Aphra's humiliation of Hera and mocking the Rebel Alliance after capturing her to be in bad taste and poorly timed, since those issues were released days after the airing of the episode where Kanan sacrificed himself to help rescue Hera, save the Rebel Alliance from a future problem, and liberate Lothal.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • When Aphra's father thinks he's about to die, he spends his last breaths telling Aphra how she can get her doctorate back. Realizing this, Aphra is horrified. Despite their falling out, they do love each other.
  • Tam Posla and Caysin Bogg talk about the life they'll have together after they've captured Doctor Evazan.
  • After the attack on Hivebase 1, Sister Six decides to leave Aphra's crew and join the Rebels because she needs to be around people who believe in something. Aphra isn't offended and is glad that Six got her happy ending.
  • In issue 40, Aphra, knowing she's about to take on Darth Vader, brings her father, Vuulada, and Tolvan together and asks them to look after each other. She also cuts them out of her life to protect them from her moral defects.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Hera is repulsed by Aphra's blitheness, which is amusing since Sabine acts very similar to her, except Aphra is more on the bad side of things.
• LGBT Fanbase: Aphra being lesbian (with confirmed Word of Gay) has attracted this fanbase to her own comic series and is a prominent part of her Ensemble Dark Horse fanbase. Her relationship with Tolvan and the return of her ex-girlfriend, Sana, were also popularly received. Not to mention the fact that Tam Posla and Caysin Bogg are a gay couple, and Sister Six doesn't have a problem with getting involved with other women.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Doctor Chelli Lona Aphra is a rogue archaeologist who believes in guile and might deciding one's way. Working as a brilliant operative for Darth Vader by gathering information and technology, Aphra manages to fool even the Sith Lord into thinking he had killed her before escaping with her life ahead of her. Later betraying Luke Skywalker to the tyrannical Queen of Ktath'atn, Aphra helps him defeat the parasitic monster even as her treachery costs her Luke's respect. Forming an intense relationship with Magna Tolvan, an imperial officer, Aphra uses their relationship to once more fake her death before leaving her for her own safety, going on to play the Rebel Alliance to orchestrate the death of the Imperial minister responsible for her mother's murder. Subsequently ending up in Vader's service again, Aphra sabotages the Empire's efforts to locate the Rebel base on Hoth before escaping his wrath once more. Always with a new scheme in mind, Aphra manipulates and scams everyone she meets throughout the galaxy to get rich and survive another day, while always ensuring her loved ones are safe.
  • Domina Tagge is the charismatic president of Tagge Corporation and head of the House of Tagge, under whose leadership TaggeCo became one of the main assets of the Empire. Recruiting Doctor Aphra as her agent, Domina has her complete missions for the company, from discovering a rival's scam to hunting down her runaway cousin. Learning about Crimson Dawn's infiltration, Domina organizes a board meeting to lure out The Mole and recruit a team of bounty hunters hired to kill her. Working with Sana Staros to lure her treacherous nephew Ronen into a trap and kill him, Domina has Sana and her team released from her service, proudly declaring that TaggeCo will outlive Crimson Dawn.
  • Lapin Tagge is Domina's cousin and right hand, put in charge of discovering and eliminating Crimson Dawn spies. Helping Domina organize a board meeting, Lapin stands their ground to protect interns during Boushh's team's raid. Faking a defection to the treacherous Ronen Tagge's side, Lapin has him lured to Domina to unwittingly confess his crimes before sedating him and leaving him at Domina's mercy.
• Narm:
  • Hera calling Aphra a "dreadful woman". Not only is the wording hard to take seriously (especially from the normally snarky Hera), but Hera, who's met some of the worst villains the galaxy has to offer, appears genuinely shocked and appalled that the woman currently trying to sell her to the Empire would do something as evil as hack her tracking device.
  • Issue #22 gives us an even worse example of the same, sounding more like something the Scotsman would say rather than anything that could conceivably come out of Hera's mouth.
    Hera:...that blackmailing, tech-tinkering, tomb-tossing, queen of all she-devils!
• Tear Jerker:
  • Issue #17 features Hera Syndulla and is the first issue published after the death of Kanan on Star Wars Rebels, which was clearly a Cynicism Catalyst for her.
  • Caysin Boggs mind-controlled by Aphra and sent to get killed by the Hivemind in Issue #18 so that Posla can have a reason to protect the others.
  • Tolvan bluntly telling Aphra that she's only saving her because she was blackmailed, then correctly guessing that Aphra used and betrayed Sana in Issue #23. Sana says it best: Aphra will inevitably ruin everyone she loves, then move onto the next target learning nothing, and everyone she cares about will catch on to that eventually.
  • While recording a mission log, Tam Posla says out of habit "As always, I accompanied by my partner..." then turns to stare at Caysin's empty chair.
  • While fleeing Milvayne police with Aphra, Triple-Zero orders BT-1 to destroy them out of habit before remembering that Darth Vader destroyed him and stares blankly ahead for a panel.
• Unexpected Character:
  • A location rather than a character, but no one expected Vader and Aphra to go to Tython.
  • Durge being reintroduced to canon through the series was a pretty big surprise.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Everyone finds Aphra obnoxious or an obstacle, if they don't outright despise her. In the Star Wars fanbase, she's an Ensemble Dark Horse, which is how she got her own comic series in the first place.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?:
  • This series is the first installment of Star Wars in which the Empire is explicitly called "fascist."
  • Aphra mocks the Rebel Alliance for being a useless hypocritical progressive movement in one issue. At the time the comic came out, the American political climate was one where being called "progressive", "liberal", "conservative", etc. became more common of an insult, especially on social media.

---