Hera Syndulla is a Twi'lek pilot from Ryloth, owner and captain of the Ghost, and the character who holds Star Wars Rebels together. She debuted in the 2014 tie-in books Rise of the Rebels and Chopper Saves the Day, published ahead of the series, and is voiced throughout by Vanessa Marshall.
She is the one with the plan
The show is structured so you discover this slowly. For most of season one the Ghost's crew look like a family of thieves hitting Imperial supply convoys on Lothal. They are in fact a cell taking orders through an intelligence contact called Fulcrum, and Hera is the only one who knows it. When Ezra Bridger and Sabine Wren push her on it she does not apologise for the compartmentalisation — she explains why a rebellion needs it.
Her crew
She recruited every one of them: Kanan Jarrus, a Jedi survivor drinking his way through the Outer Rim; Garazeb Orrelios, one of the last of his people; Sabine, a Mandalorian teenager with a Imperial Academy history she will not discuss; Ezra, a street orphan; and Chopper, an astromech she has kept running since the Clone Wars. The Ghost is hers. That ownership is the show's quiet argument about who actually builds a resistance.
Ryloth
Her father is Cham Syndulla, the Twi'lek insurgent leader from The Clone Wars, and their relationship is the series' best sustained piece of writing about the difference between fighting for your own planet and fighting for a galaxy. Cham wants Ryloth free. Hera has concluded that Ryloth is not free until the Empire is gone everywhere, and the two positions are not reconcilable on screen or off.
What she becomes
She ends Rebels a general, flies at the Battle of Endor, and turns up in The Mandalorian era in Ahsoka (2023) played in live action by Mary Elizabeth Winstead — still arguing with a New Republic Senate that would rather not hear about Thrawn. She also has a son, Jacen Syndulla, born after Kanan's death.
Why she matters
Because she is the rare Star Wars lead who is neither a Jedi nor a chosen one and is still unambiguously the most capable person in the room. The series never gives her a Force power or a secret parentage. She is simply a very good pilot who is better at organising people than anyone around her, and that turns out to be enough to matter.