ST Rey & Kylo Ren in Episode IX

Well, people seem to have excuses for Luke thinking of murdering his nephew in his sleep...

 

That isn't an excuse. That's reading what a film shows. A charachter says something that he doesn't mean and doesn't believe himself anymore.

Kylo Ren: I'll destroy her. And you. And all of it.

Luke Skywalker: No. Strike me down in anger and I'll always be with you. Just like your father.

Luke didn't say "she\they will stop you." He says "you can't destroy pain and past by killing it, and you're already know it after killing your father. This is my last lesson, and you'll learn from it."

Crait was catharsis for both Luke and Kylo.

 

This so much. It was such a poignant scene, it was somewhat difficult to watch because it had so much emotional weight.

 

Which also comes from experience that Luke's OWN choices (withdrawing to Ahch-To/wanting the Jedi to end) didn't succeed like he originally thought they would. A true teacher who learns from his mistakes and passes them on!

 

Before TLJ, I always thought that Luke would be teaching Rey. Now I think he'll be a part of Kylo's training. Either way, light or dark, Ben Solo didn't complete training on either side of the force. Still is several credits shy of graduating from anywhere. I really think this was Lesson One, not Lesson Last for Ben and there will be other lessons from Luke in IX.

 

Ooh, okay so this has got me thinking... Rey & Luke's tense relationship seemed to be mended by the end of TLJ. With Kylo's rage against Luke seemingly tired out, what effect do you think Luke will have on Rey & Kylo's relationship in 9? (Besides Luke potentially teaching them as a Force Ghost) Do you think Rey will tell Kylo Luke's side of the waking up to a lightsaber story? Do you think Kylo will think Rey's whole coming to the Supremacy was a plan in cahoots with Luke and thus make him more angry at her (thinking she betrayed him/set him up)?

 

The previous discussion about growing bond between Kylo and Rey got me thinking. So, it's very likely that at least Kylo can see Rey's surroundings. We know that at the end of TLJ they are not angry at each other. Rey is disappointed by Ben, and he is disappointed by himself. The connection is closed by Rey, but it's too interesting to just not use it in the next episode. So there must be something that will make Rey open herself to that connection again. What would that be?
Leia's funeral.

Ben will feel when Leia is gone and he still loves his mother, so he would want to be there during the final goodbye (especially since he couldn't be there for his father). But he obviously can't be there in person. Rey is one of the most sympathetic characters in a new trilogy, so if there is one thing that would make herself open to the connection with Ben, it would be the funeral. It would be also another opportunity to make us feel sympathetic to Ben. It would also remind him, that after his mother death, Rey is truly the only person who knows him and does not hate him, maybe even feel something more for him. All of this would give him even more reasons for his final redemption.

 

Not sure if it is necessary for plot points of the film, but I would really love to see more sharing of memories such as Ben understanding what happened the night Luke almost killed him from the standpoint of understanding Luke's regret.

I'd also love for him to share an early memory of when Snoke started communicating with him such as glimpses of the small boy he used to be.

The more you understand them, the more they are not the enemy.

That said, I'd love to see another snippet from Rey's childhood.

 

I think Kylo needs to learn to NOT reject his light side.

Kylo's training failure is same as the Jedi, they rejected the dark side.

Snoke wanted to extinguish his light.

He needs to accept both.

I think Luke will help Kylo heal and have his faith restored in his family.

Bcoz Kylo's problem is his family, he has lost trust in them.

Now that Leia will probably be gone its upto Luke to reconcile Kylo to his family.

Otherwise this saga will be a waste.

 

Well, it is an excuse. Luke didn't even seem to comment on Kylo's promise to kill Rey - she's not part of his past. It is an excuse for saying that you're going to kill someone with the justification that he was angry and betrayed because of her rejection after he called her nothing. I'm not sure if abusive relationship parallels are allowed on here, but it's all over that scene.

 

"Abusive relationship parallels" is how the most important dramatic relationships work in SW. It's part of genre, and in case Rey\Kylo it is Foe Romance.

Every negative confrontation between man and woman does not create "abusive relationship" if one doesn't see all women a priori as victims.

Kylo is unstable person who worded his proposal the worst way possible and Rey showed him what she thinks about it.

All hell broke loose after this for him, and on Crait he got a catharsis with Luke's help. Driver played "I'll destroy her, and you..." as Kylo himself wasn't sure he will be capable of doing it.

Kylo was trying to "kill" past because he wanted to "destroy" pain.

"I want to be free of this pain."

Rey is part of his pain now.

 

Yeah, you're not really helping your case. Murdering people who reject you isn't very admirable. Doesn't help that TLJ told us that Kylo killed Han for no real reason other than attaining more power. That's pretty sick and twisted if you ask me.

 

Something like this stunning fan art of Rey/Kylo Force Bond at the funeral?



We don't know how they'll handle Leia's departure but whatever they do it has to include Ben's reaction because that's where the strongest emotional resonance lies. Luke and Leia said their goodbyes, so now it's really about Ben and Leia.

 

I'd love for force ghost Luke to show and console him about mis mother's passing. Doesn't have to be much dialog but just being there.

 

It's possible that they'll bring back Luke ("see you around kid" almost guarantees it) to take the part of Leia's role. Since I don't believe in PlotGate (I don't buy it that they didn't have at least a broad vision for the OT characters and Rey and Kylo) I think they had an idea what Leia would have been doing in IX and that part of it may be transferred onto Luke. We'll see.

 

I do not need "helping my case," thank you.

Dramatic relationship does not need to be admirable. Murdering people who reject you is bad and useless - that's the message. That's why Kylo only tells that he will destroy all of it and Luke answers "No." After this "promise" and Luke's sacrifice all that's left for Kylo is regret.

All ST is built around "son killed father." Motivations for such act and Consequences.

TLJ told us that Kylo killed Han because no matter what he needed him and loved him and couldn't stop doing it. Kylo wants to see the full Dark Side as "freedom without pain" ("Pull to the Light" = ability to feel pain and compassion) but now he can only use the Dark Side as weapon to "kill" pain - because, of course, there is no "side" without pain.

Snoke used (or even created, who knows) a conflict between Kylo and Luke to get what he wanted. Kylo's main motivation all this time was to destroy Luke who betrayed him. That incident clearly was the last nail in the coffin "Ben vs Family." Kylo needed to be stronger in the Dark Side to do this; he is an idiot, of course, but not that much "idiot" to think that it will be easy to kill Luke. So Kylo "have given everything he has to Snoke… to the dark side."

 

The thing that I love about Kylo is that he is representing feelings that we all can have. The difference is, he is actually in a position where he can do whatever he wants. Sometimes we want to make someone suffer but we can't (and after time we learn to let it go.. After a looong time). He can.
And it was amazing having him breaking his mask after Snoke humiliated him for being torn apart by killing his father.
Like Adam Driver said, he's a kid with so many things in his head and doesn't know what to do with all of that, but when he puts his mask on, suddenly he's playing a role.
And when he broke it, to me, it was like, "I'm not gonna play anymore, this is who I'm meant to be, I'm embracing the dark now" and then we have him going out there as the big bad guy. And the last scene we have him on his knees.. Soooo...
To me, this saga is also about his journey, through both sides. He knows darkness better than anyone, and yet he is not enough for it... Why else would we be here discussing about him?
And we don't know what kind of leader he can be. Cause by now we have only know him surrounded by his family drama, and with someone (Snoke) who has been pushing him to believe he must do 'this and that' to become "who he is meant to be".

 

I'd just like to point out a character that I think is a better fit to the whole dark prince narrative than Ben is and one that I think does the whole villain with sympathic story better. So I'm not sure how many of you watch the new series Voltron Legendary defender, (If you don't you should, great show with a lot of interesting dynamics in regard to both the heroes and the villains, but I digress), but for those of you that don't I hope that this doesn't go over your head too much as I'm going to have to summerize a lot due to the history of the Character.

So in the recent season we were finally introduced to Prince Lotor, the son of the main villain Emperor Zarkon. Now the thing that's interesting here is that Lotor is a subversion of his actual character from the original series. Lotor, from the original american release of the show, was a whiney self entitled brat, who actually suffered a lot of abuse at the hands of his father. His counter part of Sincline from the series Go Lions was far worse and fell off the deep end when it was revealed that he was half Galra (the main baddies of the show -I'm using the Legendary defender name here for simplistic sake) and half Altean and that his birth came from his father, er, conquesting his mother who was his prisoner. This is all important to note because the new version of Lotor manged in his few apperences to actually take hold of the story and seems to have, in a lot of ways, over shadowed the main heroes.

When Lotor first shows up in his first episode we immediatly get the idea of who this guy is. He's smaller then the other characters, and is treated with distane for his stature. Yet he manages to take down a larger opponent. When he reveals himself, there are those that can't stand him because of his half status. Something that he's grappling with himself due to him being the son of Zarkon and his wife Honverva -whom he presumes is dead or something -and we aslo get to see how nobel he can be percived as well. Within his group of four warriors, who are all women, we see that they are all halflings like himself and are one of the most elite groups in the Galra empire. Not only that, but he gives a rousing speech after challenging one of his detractors to a fight. He spares him, it seems, and you think that maybe this guy is someone who's very noble. Then he turns around and shows how ruthless he is by setting the guy up to be sent off to some random corner of the universe as punishment for dissing him.

Lotor throughout the series is shown to be clever but also not always good at choices. He's trying to build a machine to cross over to a different dimension, possibly to find his mother or something, and is doing this behind his father's back while he is in a coma. Later, when zarkon awakens, we find out that Lotor is regarded as something low and useless by his father. Even during this time he uses his wits to make a solo gambit, which doesn't pay off and we see his vulrablity on full display as he realized he's failed, only to have his team betray him. He's chased down and again shows skills and the know how to avoid capture, pushing his ship to the point that he nearly burns up in the sun. Then, on the fly when he hears about an attack on his father's ships, uses that to help out the heroes as a means of gaining new allies to use to crush his father and get closer to the robot Voltron, the thing that he wants so he can cross over the dimensions.

The reason I bring up this character is that, like Ben, he's a legacy person. He's got a whole long history with a family that has, apparently, treated him poorly, and what's interesting in all of this is that even with that lack of recognition or love, he's manged to pull himself up and become a character that you both sympathize with and also distrust. Something that Ben hasn't, in my opinion, been able to do. One could point to Allura as a Rey like character who, as the leader of the team, must come to terms with her own bias for the Galra (they appeared to have killed her people and she and her guard are the solo survivors of the attack on their castle), but also she could be the key to helping him embrace the idea of family as there are hints that he may be related to her in some fashion or another.

Again there's some very serious comparisons to be made between these two. Ben may have been abused by Snoke, but Lotor's been dealing with it since he was a child and it's his own father. There is no loving hand to help him back from the dark, and yet, he still seems to have the reasonability to see that the empire he's part of is not the best and is working to change that, or forge a new path for himself. If we're going to talk dark princes, I would certainly use Lotor as an apt comparison to Ben and use him as a counter of Ben being a very deep character with a lot of complexities.

 

Who thinks Rey and Kylo will share scenes/communicate with each other in some earlier part of Episode 9, or will they only interact with each other in the final act/climax of the movie?

 

Was this ever discussed? Is it even real?

 

But you listed here mostly actions and intentions, not feelings.

Feelings Kylo represent: anger, hatred, fear, loneliness, helplessness, selfishness.

Kylo can't process these feelings in a healthy way (same happened with Anakin) because of many reasons and his journey as a villian, which are very unique, to learn how to deal with them adequately. We don't need to relate to his actions, we can relate to the source of his bad decisions.

I personally think it's a great message for teens. Destroying and killing something\somebody will never work, your conflict will never end. And it's good that ST shows in detail that such feelings exist and only you can save yourself.

Rey as his antagonist is a great example for him how to find the best among the worst, and Kylo as Rey's antagonist is a great example for her that family can be a burden and can "define" you in the worst way.

 

Haha i would be worried if you ever felt like "killing your parents".
No, what he has done has been triggered by his feelings.. Feelings like, abandonment (I don't care if he wasnt, he felt like that), betrayal, and this idea that he must follow other peoples steps (Vader's or Luke's)
My point is... He is in a position, where he can reach and do something about that. And since he's on the dark side now, well, his firsts moves are gonna be bad... (Let's not forget this is a sci-fi movie, so everything must be portrayed on a big scale)
But he doesn't feel joy or pleasure by doing it. When he first commands to shoot every gun on Luke, he sits down with relief... Cause he thinks by killing he is healing... And we have already seen what really happens.
My guess is, he's going down now, he is gonna try to go full dark. And let's see if that's gonna be end game...
Yeah, we have a villain struggling with his villainy... Only to get the conclusion he must be killed... Really? Well, THAT would be disappointing...
Anyways.. If he indeed starts to enjoy being evil, well then I'll sit down and enjoy a good lightsaber duel like old times...