oh man DO I WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT
ok look, before we go into anything substantial the reason i have a phasma redemption theory in the first place is i really want to care about someone from the bad guys’ side and so far you couldn’t pay me to give less of a collective flying fuck about kylo, hux and supreme leader snood. phasma on the other hand has the excellent potential of the under-explored and also there’s the whole gwendoline christie in shiny chrome full-body armor thing that speaks directly to my id, by which i mean she has express permission to bench-press me at her convenience
anyway
now that we’ve established that, i bring you: my phasma redemption theory
pahsma went from lawful evil to chaotic neutral in the time it took to say ‘holy shit did a desperately under-staffed, underfunded military offshoot of the republic blow up starkiller base with nothing but a dozen shabby x-wings and four people on the ground??’ drifting among the debris in her damaged escape pod, phasma has a crisis of faith. for the first time ever she experiences bitter disillusionment because she had sincerely, unquestioningly believed in the first order: that it was visionary and righteous, but most of all that it was infallible. phasma was the perfect product of stormtrooper conditioning that had drilled those things into her from an early age. but now it’s all gone. starkiller base, the first order’s greatest achievement, along with most of its command and troops. all blown to pieces in a matter of seconds.
phasma thinks of fn-2187.
she realizes with a dull sort of surprise that she’s not angry with him. not at all. she’s just– curious? why did he walk away from the order? phasma had never really stopped to consider his motives, only to label him as a failure and momentary disappointment, and move on. but something must have driven fn-2187 to the point where he caused the destruction of everything he was conditioned to believe in.
(if phasma knew anything about the force maybe she’d understand this sooner, but she’s about as force-sensitive as half a brick, so)
her escape pod is picked up by pirates/scavengers just as life support is beginning to fail. they very briefly consider turning phasma over to the republic, but then she breaks someone’s legs probably, and then they consider flying her to wherever she wants, no charge, please don’t hurt us we’re just small-time crooks okay? phasma has no idea where she’s supposed to go now. she knows in her heart that she can’t go back to whatever’s left of the first order because Doubt and the uncomfortable beginnings of questioning the ideology she’d submitted to and also a tiny voice that’s telling her hey hey you could do anything and go anywhere, that’s kind of neat, right? it’s a very small voice though, and phasma decides that since her life is meaningless now she’ll just go along with whatever happens.
this is how she ends up in some seedy system in the outer rim where she becomes illegal pit-fighting champion, or something similar. at some point obviously she runs into finn, rey and poe and gets roped into working together sort of grudgingly for the Adventure of the Week.
(and finn knows. the second he lays eyes on her he knows that the first order’s failure broke her and she’s been trying to put herself back together all this time, only it came out different and strange. he gets it. gets it so much it’s pissing her off)
when they part ways they aren’t friends, exactly, but there’s a feeling that when they meet again it won’t be on hostile terms. phasma nods at each of them, nods at fn-2187 and says ‘finn’ before she turns and leaves.
this is where it starts. she has a long way to go.