Mon Mothma is a human female from Chandrila, senator of the Galactic Republic and then of the Empire, founder and political leader of the Rebel Alliance, and — per the StarWars.com Databank — the first elected Chancellor of the New Republic in two decades. She was introduced in Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi (1983), played by Caroline Blakiston, and later by Genevieve O'Reilly.
Two minutes that became a career
Her original appearance is a single briefing scene. Everything since — the prequel deleted scenes, Rebels, Rogue One, Andor, the Aftermath novels — has been the franchise realising it had built its most interesting politician by accident and going back for her.
The Ghorman speech
The Databank now fixes the turning point precisely: after the massacre on Ghorman she denounced the Emperor from the Senate floor, calling it "an Imperial genocide orchestrated by Emperor Palpatine," and that speech forced her into hiding and catalysed the formal creation of the Rebel Alliance. It is the moment the Rebellion stops being a conspiracy and becomes a declaration.
Working with Bail Organa
The two of them, with Padmé Amidala before them, are the Republic's loyal opposition — the Delegation of Two Thousand, the petition against emergency powers, the slow discovery that constitutional means have run out. Bail dies with Alderaan; Mothma inherits the whole thing.
The cost is the point
Recent material has been unusually willing to show her paying for it: the funding networks, the family she compromises, the sheer administrative grind of financing an insurgency from inside a legislature. It is the most convincing portrait of a revolutionary the franchise has, precisely because it is so unglamorous.
She authorises Rogue One
In the 2016 film she is the one who gives Jyn Erso her hearing when the council will not, and she is the one left to explain afterwards what the mission cost. In Return of the Jedi she delivers the Bothan briefing — the speech that sends the fleet to Endor.
Legends and canon
Both continuities keep her, and both make her the New Republic's first head of state. Legends took her further into the post-war era, including a long illness and a handover of power; canon's Aftermath trilogy and Bloodline instead use her to show the New Republic making its founding mistakes with the best intentions available.
