Star Wars: The Last Jedi is just around the corner, which means Disney and Lucasfilm are rolling out the big promotional push, including a big spread in the latest issue of EW. One of the Last Jedi covers features Laura Dern's Admiral Holdo, standing opposite Oscar Isaac's Resistance hero Poe Dameron and looking rather stern (you can see the cover here).

The cover caption reads: "Can Poe get along with his new boss?" And the accompanying piece on Dern's mysterious new character offers some key insight into the lavender-haired Resistance leader, who elicited a collective fandom gasp earlier this year when Annie Liebowitz photographed her for a gorgeous character portrait.

“It’s definitely appropriate that they’ve paired us," Issac tells EW, "because a lot of the friction and conflict comes between Poe and that relationship with Admiral Holdo, who is this person that’s been — at least temporarily — put in charge of the Resistance.” And the resistance isn't doing so hot. They may have brought down the Starkiller base, but not before it took out Hosnian Prime, eliminating the Galactic Senate and a huge chunk of the Republic Starfleet.

“She enters the Resistance to shake things up,” Dern says. According to the report, Holdo is meant to be a mystery; a character that fans don't know whether or not to trust. Dameron isn't sure either, despite the fact that they "both learned everything they know" from General Leia Organa. "“I’ve always worked under her for the Resistance, therefore with Leia being the boss,” Dern explains. But even though they share a history with Carrie Fisher's iconic resistance leader, Holdo has a very different approach and both Dameron and the audience aren't supposed to know how they feel about those ideas at first.

Some of that off-kilter nature is translated into her appearance; polished, in gowns and bright purple hair -- a very distinct look among the soldiers of the Resistance. “She doesn’t particularly look like your typical military leader, and so I think there’s a bit of distrust for Poe,” Isaac says. “He’s not sure what to make of her, and then the way she speaks, the things she says.” The report notes that Poe's not alone, and the ailing Resistance isn't entirely confident in their new leader.

But whether she is a villainous figure unworthy of trust or simply an odd duck, Admiral Holdo doesn't sound like the type of character who puts too much worry into what her inferiors think about her. “Sometimes you need somebody to show up and yeah, teach you a thing or two,” Dern says, and the report notes that " admiral barges in and doesn’t care what people think, or whether she’s welcomed or meets approval. She’s headstrong, but not necessarily wrong."

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Image via Lucasfilm

Holdo's tactics may be foreign to a hero pilot like Dameron, but she's a strategic leader who might just play the long game better. “Even if something seems like it’s not the most heroic thing to do in the moment, thinking about the bigger picture is sometimes more important,” Isaac says. “That’s something he’s trying to wrap his mind around, but at the same time, with the Resistance being in such a precarious situation, he wants to do the right thing, and doesn’t want to just wait and let things happen. He doesn’t necessarily agree with the way Holdo sees the role of the Resistance in this particular moment.”

And it seems Holdo's always been a bit of an offbeat character, dating back to her coming-of-age years alongside Leia, which was introduced in  Claudia Gray’s new official Star Wars novel, Leia, Princess of Alderaan.

"She's somebody who's a bit off-kilter, who sees the world through a prism most others don't understand," Gray told StarWars.com of the younger Holdo. "At first Leia thinks she's pleasant but weird, but as time goes on, it becomes apparent that there's much more to Holdo than you might guess when you first met her. We don't really have a lot of true oddballs in Star Wars, so it was fun to introduce one!"

Star Wars: The Last Jedi opens December 15th.