#i'm sure there's probably more trauma in resistance reborn but i got too mad at the book to try and finish it so i just included

[userpoe]

alright so I've used the tag 'poe dameron and the no good, horrible, awful, terrible bad week' frequently on this blog regarding the events of tfa/tlj but I've never really expanded on this and usually when I see people mention Poe's trauma, it's usually only the fact that he was tortured (valid). So, without further ado, let's take a look into the amount of trauma my poor kid went through in the span of like...a week and a half (if I had to hazard a guess).

Almost dies pulling a ridiculously dangerous stunt to escape the Colossus with Kaz (Resistance)

Finds the remains of an outpost destroyed by the First Order, is the one to find a tooka doll in the wreckage (Resistance) and realizes what happened

Has to watch Lor San Tekka (a man Poe has spent a long time looking for and greatly admires) be brutally murdered. 

Is frozen with the Force and roughed up by some stormtroopers who take the advantage of the fact he couldn’t move 

Is taken captive and has to watch as another outpost full of civilians be slaughtered - unable to do a damn thing about it but cry out “no”

Is taken aboard the Finalizer where he is confronted by the fact that the First Order is more powerful/has more resources than he realized

By my estimate, he’s held there for a couple of days: it’s nighttime when he’s captured and we see Rey go through two days on Jakku in between scenes with Poe. So, I reckon he was tortured for most of the first night/most of the next day. His wounds suggest physical torture (bruising around his head, bunch of cuts on his cheek/nose and a busted lip) and the Poe Dameron Flight Log also states that he was tortured by an interrogation droid who was given orders to use any methods available to get him to talk, including neuroshocks (yay). The droid apparently asked Poe where the map/Luke was 813 times and he never broke.

By the end of the second day is when Kylo comes in. As far as I’m aware, there’s no detailed explanation of what Poe sees when Kylo goes through his head but I think it’s safe to assume from what we saw of Kylo doing the same thing to Del in Battlefront II that Poe likely to relive some of his pre-TFA trauma while Kylo searched for the location of the map.

Poe is actually unconscious by the time Kylo leaves the room.

In the Flight Log and in the Poe comics, it’s revealed that Poe believed he was a) going to be killed, b) thought he’d doomed the Resistance and the Galaxy. 

It’s day #3 that Finn comes to break him out. Poe’s so out of it still that he looks like he’s barely conscious when Finn comes to collect him. Obviously, things don’t go well and they crash.

Mid-crash, Poe ejects Finn out of the TIE Fighter, but is unable to eject himself out because his flight jacket got caught on the mechanism. He’s thrown out of the TIE Fighter (more physical injuries, yay), and stays unconscious for the rest of day 3.

Wakes up that night and wanders by himself for the night and some of the next day before he meets a scavenger who begrudgingly helps him out. Poe makes his way back to D’Qar, where he informs Leia of all the dozen ways he feels like he’s failed the Resistance, her, and the galaxy

(he never tells her who tortured him, though)

The New Republic is then destroyed. This is the government Poe believed in, served for years. It’s incredibly likely that Poe probably lived on one of the planets that was destroyed during his time in the fleet, and even more likely he lost old friends when it was destroyed.

Despite undergoing several days of torture + duress, Poe is sent to Takodana. When everyone returns to D’Qar, we see that it doesn’t appear he’s even visited a medbay at this point: he still has a busted lip and a lot of bruising.

When Starkiller sets its sights on D’Qar, they have to come up with a plan quickly. The Resistance is noted several times in the Poe comics to only have a handful of pilots: hell, there’s only about 400 people to evacuate in TLJ. They are officially the only people standing in between the galaxy and utter tyranny: no pressure or anything.

Since the bombing squadrons are out on a mission, the Resistance has to send twelve fighter pilots to take on a planet.

Only seven out of those twelve make it back alive (that shot of Poe growling mid battle? Yeah that’s after one of his pilots is killed).

Poe then discovers that Finn was gravely injured - Finn, who Poe probably feels a lot of responsibility for, since he’s there because of him, and who Poe already cares for a lot.

Not necessarily trauma related but it makes me emotional thinking about it: he hesitates long enough to make sure Rey is physically okay before taking off after Finn (you can spy Jessika and Snap watching after Finn worriedly in the crowd too!), and we later don’t see him leave Leia’s side: likely, he’s trying to keep an eye on her since he knows she’s grieving. 

The Resistance doesn’t get very long to celebrate, though. Shortly after Rey leaves for Ach-Too, they discover the FO has already recovered enough to launch an attack on D’Qar. 

As the Resistance discusses how to evacuate, Poe offers himself up as bait - knowing full well he could die by doing so. He’s scared, and Leia is too (we see this in TLJ, she’s actively nervous while on the comms with him). We even see him trying to calm himself down before he engages (”happy beeps”) once he has a moment to himself after calming Leia and BB-8 down (”c’mon buddy, we’ve pulled crazier stunts than this”).

Gets to listen to Hux threaten Leia, who Poe has spent the last sixteen years admiring and is one of the most important figures in his life/a surrogate mother figure. Literally, Hux calls Leia “[his] precious princess” 

(maybe if you’d kept your pasty mouth shut you’d still have a dreadnaught, Hux).

It’s worth noting that almost everyone Poe has loved and lost has died in a space battle, including his mother. The entire Resistance, everyone he has left, is currently vulnerable to dying a similar death.

Poe strapped on a pair of experimental boosters to Black One, knowing full well that they could possibly kill him: they’d never been tested before. In fact, the blow back when he does activate them is so bad, he’s almost knocked unconscious in the TLJ novelization.

Rounding back to Starkiller for a second, it’s easy to see why Poe misjudged the Dreadnaught situation: they managed to take down a freaking planet with twelve starfighters and a ground team of five. A dreadnaught should have been nothing in comparison (and his line of thinking is very similar to Lu’lo’s, the man who helped raise him after Shara died, who’s loss catapulted Poe from being cautious into more freely engaging with the First Order).

Instead, he loses....a lot of his pilots. It’s stated in Spark of the Resistance he was friends with Paige, who - you guessed it - he’s on comms with when she dies. They take out the Dreadnaught, so he tries to focus on that instead - but it’s obvious that it’s eating away at him.

He’s then demoted but barely gets time to process that because then the FO finds them. He offers to go “jump in an x-wing and blow something up” but instead arrives in the hanger just in time to see it go up in flames...with a bunch more of his friends (pilots and techs who were already there) dead. To make matters worse, he was on the comms with Tallie when she died. Please give him a break.

Immediately after this, all leadership is killed in an attack. Poe, Kaydel and Finn are watching from a window when Leia pulls herself back to the Raddus: which likely means they were staring in horror before Leia ever came to. He’s the first one to catch Leia when she reaches the airlock, and doesn’t leave her side until he has to, to attend the meeting with the surviving members of the Resistance.

He then has a CrisisTM when he mentally freaks out, wondering if Leia still left him in charge because he knows she’s been trying to mold him into her replacement (although he believes he’s not worthy and is just a soldier/pilot, nothing more). Look at his sigh of relief when Holdo is called instead! He was terrified.

Kind of thrown by her speech, which I reckon reminded him a lot of the officials he dealt with in the New Republic Navy. [smash cut noises] in Poe Dameron #14, after Lu’lo dies, Leia grounds Poe so he has time to process his grief instead of just throwing himself into the next mission because “Everything’s easy for Poe Dameron, right?” I imagine that’s why Poe was immediately at Holdo’s side: looking for something to do, something to distract him from his own regret, grief and fear. However, it doesn’t work, and he’s again reminded of the things he hasn’t time to process: namely, his demotion -- which likely bothers him less than the fact that it reminds him that the last conversation he had with Leia, she was disappointed in him and it was...essentially an argument.

However, when Holdo makes it clear she doesn’t want his help...Poe backs off. He listens to her, and finds something else to do.

Which is keeping an eye on Leia, apparently, since the next scene we see him, he’s in her quarters. I’m guessing he stopped long enough to get dressed after the meeting, and immediately went to go keep an eye on Leia after this.

After Finn and Rose detail the plan to him, he takes a moment to himself to hold Leia’s hand: no doubt trying to gather up the courage to step into a leadership role. This plan is exactly the kind of thing Leia has come up with for Black Squadron, which is probably why he agrees to it. He’s pulled stunts like this before, this should go well, right?

(Spoiler Alert: no one has any luck in this movie so It Does Not Go Well)

BB-8 goes with Finn and Rose, which leaves Poe on the Raddus without any of his usual support system. Black Squadron is on a mission to gather allies, so he officially has no one to talk to or lean on at this time. He’s utterly alone and the cracks start to show.

(TLJ Poe is a Poe very close to losing hope for the first time. He’s desperate and scared)

In the TLJ novelization, Poe helps evacuate the medical frigate before Holdo grounds him from aiding in future evacuations (??? for reasons never explained). Despite his own growing concerns, Poe greets all the newcomers and spends his free time trying to raise spirits around the Raddus. 

After seeing so many of his fellow Resistance members so desperate and without hope, Poe starts to worry everything Leia built is going to be destroyed. He even tells Holdo this, and her response is literally “Captain Dameron. If you’re here to serve a princess, I’ll assign you to bedpan duty.”

which...nice ableism there.

The Day Just Gets Worse and Worse and Poe has absolutely Nothing To Do with no idea how to help, and just a lot of waiting, and he hates that, he hates not being able to actively do something to protect the people he loves so he just gets more and more agitated until he eventually has a meltdown on the bridge.

Despite ALL OF THIS, he doesn’t even want to mutiny. It’s an attempt to buy Finn and Rose a little more time, it’s a last ditch effort, one that he doesn’t Remotely Look Happy About, and was never originally part of the plan.

He then hears Finn and Rose (over the comms, hooray I’m sensing a pattern) be found aboard Snoke’s ship. He realizes they didn’t make it, but doesn’t get time to focus on that because Leia shows up and stuns him.

He wakes up in a panic aboard the ship and (imo, because fellas I’m intimately aware of what one looks like) has a panic attack when he realizes they’ve abandoned ship. At this point, he doesn’t even know there’s a nearby planet to go to (Crait is uncharted), as far as he’s aware, the escape would’ve just been to drift in the weaponless (?) shuttles until they ran out of fuel again. Leia calms him down from it and gently explains the plan to him.

He gets to watch several other shuttles be destroyed, and tries to find out if theirs can go any faster (Leia’s on the ship with him). He then gets to watch Amilyn sacrifice herself and is the first to realize what she’s doing.

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize this but his line “Finn! Rose! You’re not dead! Where’s my droid?” yeah, Poe had no idea they were even alive, he probably thought they were immediately killed or died when Holdo did The Thing.

When they realize they’re trapped, the camera pans up on a worried looking Poe. Just before it cuts away, he’s starting to smile: he’s already prepping for a inspiring speech, despite his own fear. He doesn’t get a chance though, because Finn beats him to it: and then we get the heart eyes shot from Poe, because he realizes he isn’t alone any more (no this isn’t trauma related it just Gets Me In My FinnPoe feelings so)

They begin their run on the battering ram canon. After losing more pilots, Poe orders them to fall back, but Finn disobeys him in a direct parallel to Poe at the start of the film. This move is largely considered a suicide run on Finn’s part...[coughing] maybe the start of the movie was too [coughing]

Poe continues to get everyone to retreat and is the last one back on base. He runs with the medic team to check Finn and Rose, and also bolts to Leia’s side when Luke is fired upon to comfort her.

He panics again when he realizes they can’t get through the only other exit, but luckily they’ve got Rey on the other side.

Shortly after all this, Poe  has some drinks with Finn and Rey on the Falcon. He’s still mulling everything over and admits he wishes they’d all met earlier and wonders if things would’ve gone differently if the three of them met after Takodana (Poe Comics)

After Finn asks Poe what happened after the TIE crashed in TFA, Rey encourages Poe to tell them his story as she thinks it would be a “good distraction” from everything else. Poe hesitates, but goes through and literally retells a very traumatic series of events that’s barely a week old, so they have a distraction from everything. He plays it all off light-heartedly, cracking jokes (even says he went through a “little light torture”). 

It isn’t until Rey mentions that Kylo also tortured her that Poe treats it a little more seriously “he did that to me too!” and holds his drink up for her to cheer with him and calls them “torture buddies” because he’s Poe Dameron and trying to cheer people up is what he does.

Finn even calls out Poe’s insistence that everything will work out several times in the few issues set post TLJ. He can’t believe Poe has so much faith, but honestly? As much as Poe keeps saying everything is gonna work out, I wonder if he’s trying to convince Rey and Finn or himself.

Finn then asks Poe to catch him up on what happened while he was unconscious post Starkiller.

Let me reiterate that Poe literally just retold with some ease being held captive for three days to distract them.

But after he tells Finn he offered himself up as bait, Poe skirts around the rest of the story with a “well you know the rest!” He can’t even bring himself to talk about the Dreadnaught run. Talking about Kylo running through his head is easier for him than that.

He then receives a recording from Jessika retelling the events of what Black Squadron was up to during TLJ. When he starts the video, he almost immediately pauses it and asks Threepio how it ends. Poe admits he doesn’t know what he’ll do if the video ends with Jess going up in a fireball. Luckily, it doesn’t end that way, but he still has to watch the videos with no idea what happened to his closest and oldest friends.

All of this happens in, like, a week at the most. This doesn’t even BEGIN to touch on the trauma Poe goes through in the Poe comics or even Freefall, but if we did want to touch on that, I’d say that a lot of the events in TFA and especially TLJ probably triggered some bad memories for him. Poe Dameron deserves nothing but fluffy things and also a lot of hugs.