ST Rey & Kylo Ren in Episode IX

For me, Rey is already the example of balance. That is why she matters. She assimilates the light and dark and makes no distinction between the two.When meditating with Luke in Lesson 1, she goes straight to dark yet is not consumed by evil, hatred, etc. It is just who she is. When she dives into the dark cave, she is neither seduced, corrupted or altered. And it seems like she is using the dark when she is on the offense with Luke as they spar in the rain, yet she is neither cruel, evil, nor vindictive.

Likewise, she taps into the light as well. The moving boulders at the end of TLJ shows that. She is driven by light-side motives--compassion. She is calm, she is centered when she moves them.

But neither completely define her. She is not this image of pure virtue. She is a fluid duality of light and dark. She has not been corrupted the the masters of either side that would try to bleed the light out of her if she followed the Sith or dark masters. She has solid attachments to others and does not surrender her passion, anger or grief like she would if she followed the traditional Jedi education.

She is beyond what the masters seek to mold. I strongly believe that balance is not about suppressing and destroying one half of one's self in order to be purely dark or purely light. That appears to be an artificial construct that ends in destruction of that order. Neither the Jedi nor the Sith are sustainable. Both collapse under their own dogma.

Contrast that with Kylo. He is also the duality of light and dark, but he has been apprentices with both a light and dark masters and never found balance. Each tried to rid Ben Solo of the opposite entity. He was unbalanced when he was Luke's student. The dark part of him was so feared that Luke considered murdering him in his sleep to extinguish it. It was something caused his parents to liken him to a monster. It was something to be ashamed of when it came to his light-side adherent family.

Then he became Snoke's apprentice, Snoke challenged him to extinguish the light within and that became a source of shaming and suffering. Snoke shames and belittles him for his inability to destroy the light. Even killing his own father, which he thought would kill the light, and it didn't work. It was still there.

And then there's the passage in Fry where Snoke intentionally kept him unbalanced through his tutelage, a "vessel that could never be filled."

In each circumstance, his masters reinforced the belief that one half of his existence was wrong and needed to be destroyed. That is why he is a turbulent disaster.

So why does Rey matter?

To me, at least, it is becoming clear that any path forward with an order of force users is going to not be based on strict adherence to one school of thought. If a new order goes through Rey as the example of balance, it will be one that accepts the duality of light and dark and the harmony that can be found where neither attribute is perceived as wrong, where there is strength in using both but never becoming consumed by either one. She is the one to hasten the new order of jedi where light and dark are package deal and equal partners in becoming an instrument of the Force, not an adept using the Force as an instrument.

In other words, she is the paradigm shift and the proto-new Jedi.

Maybe that is what the prime jedi was all about before a possible schism (much like Paradise lost) creating the Force related "fall of humanity."

Perhaps Rey is the one to lead by example, and this is where she interfaces with Kylo (and let's take the romance angle out of this for this discussion) on a potential redemption arc.

And before anyone has a cow, let's agree to the statement: Rey cannot save Kylo. Only Kylo can save Kylo.

But if his journey is one toward redemption, he cannot attain that unless he reconciles the two sides of himself. He needs to accept that he will always be light and will always be dark and stop being at war with himself. He needs centering and balance in order to heal, reconcile and move forward with accountability and atonement.

Yet so far, he has been taught that half of him was "wrong." His masters both failed in helping him find inner peace, but as appears to be a kindred spirit with Rey on several levels, he needs to understand that sort of duality within. It's not something he can learn from a text. And it is something neither of his masters could teach him.

While he wouldn't be Rey's student, there is a hell of a lot he can learn from her example by embracing one's true self and letting the Force move through yourself instead of trying to bend the Force to your will.

She can show him how to "Kill the past", only it isn't a person or a faction, it's an incorrect schools of thought.

That is why she matters. She brings together light and dark without conflict and without judgement. That paradigm shift is what ends the inner conflict of the Force. It is one entity--light and dark definitions go away. She simply uses the entire Force.

 

Your list of Snoke's crimes is really short (shorter than your list of Kylo's crimes) and I notice it only includes the things we've seen him physically do. It's also strange that you left off the destruction of Hosnian Prime even though he commanded it. Yes, Snoke is responsible for Snoke's choices, but are you really only taking into account the things he's physically done onscreen? I think that is seriously the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much power/influence he has had over others without even needing to be there in person. He takes credit for what he's accomplished through his manipulation yet people dismiss the character as a total non-factor. I think it's disingenuous to make statements like "Snoke is responsible for Snoke's choices" while failing to hold him responsible for manipulating the son of Han and Leia, which he takes credit for too, even though that didn't make your list either.

 

I was unaware that Han was Force sensitive. When did Han train his consciousness in this way? Is this in one of the novels as well?

This.

 

Dark and Light.

Action and Inaction.

It’s difficult to tell how much of this of Fry and how much of this is RJ/the SG, but in the novel, when faced with the choice whether or not to kill Kylo, and again at the end when se sits in the Falcon, there’s reference to that - action and inaction, or working your will on the Force vs letting the Force work through you. It’s a far subtler sort of duality in the ST thus far; it’s explored in some depth in “Fishing in the Deluge” from LoLS and is referenced re the Dark Side/mirror cave (which, I believe, “Deluge” directly connects to). I’ll also note that Luke’s final act of heroism was a balance of inaction and action - that, I believe, is essentially what “peace and purpose” means.

Luke ended RotJ “balanced” in the light/dark sense, but not in the action/inaction sense. I believe Rey is ending her “Luke’s OT Arc 2.0” balanced in both senses of the term.

 

Yes, I think this could only happen if Kylo has already made some effort on his part to seek that forgiveness, or at least acknowledge the error of his ways.

You should consider reading the next few sentences in the post I made.

 

Except Leia said, "No, it was Snoke." And there is a passage in the TLJ novel with Snoke's reflections on how he used Ben to get Luke to restart the Jedi order, which aligns with Leia's statement.

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Regarding the question of why Rey matters, Rey is going to pave the way for more Jedi in the future. She's like Prime Jedi 2.0.

 

Well, perhaps it could be dependent on what kind of villain they want Kylo to end as, if a villain at all. I don't remember if any general age was given when Ben was destroying things with the Force? Or what source that was even from?

 

I don't need or want a story about brainwashing or lack of agency. I never said Kylo wasn't personally responsible for his own choices/actions. That's been your accusation toward me. I have been arguing that Snoke has accountability, and you have repeatedly responded by accusing me of saying Kylo isn't responsible. These two things aren't mutually exclusive. If you don't hold Snoke responsible for manipulating the Skywalker family, which again the character takes full gloating credit for, then I must admit that I don't know what you do hold him accountable for.

 

Here's the passage from the novelization (pg 81) as Kylo approaches in his Tie fighter and Leia can sense him:

Adolescence--it's a broad range, speaking from a professional day job standpoint. It's anywhere between about 11 and 21ish. So middle school through the end of college if you want a range.

This is a much different description of an adolescent Ben Solo compared to the younger child that Claudia Gray writes about in a brief passage in Bloodline who is school age, running through the house and happy with a cadre of friends giggling and absolute filthy. That passage seemed intentional in setting up a point in time.

What changed? Isolated, angry adolescent appears to be another time point. Is this the smaller window where Snoke began his influence. What made him go from a happy little boy with friends to an adolescent full of fury?

Snoke had been watching him "from the beginning" if you use the ADF novelization of TFA. So when exactly did watching transform into action? Was it in that window between happy child to isolated tween/teen?

It tells me he was shipped off in adolescence, so anywhere between the the beginning of puberty and and his early twenties. But what was the inciting incident. Getting mad and smashing a vase with your mind can't be it. It had to be something more? Is that sentinel event what we will get as a back story?

 

This is making me wonder if there is a cut off for when people are sympathetic vs. not. For me sympathy isn't really dependent on age, though degree of culpability/agency might be. I imagine that he couldn't have been *too* young because SW generally is about choices and I don't believe this story will deny the villain his choices.

In general though that is how I think of the character as well: stolen.

ETA: @Birkendoc it would make more sense regarding sending him away if he is younger than 18, as past a certain age, he wouldn't respond so well to being "sent away." That kind of implies a kid who is not independent, is what I mean.

 

@oncafar He had to be younger than the age of majority when he was sent away. If you listen to Han and Leia's conversation in TFA about trying to get their son back, Leia makes it very clear that the decision to send Ben to Luke was one she alone made. It was a unilateral decision, one a child could not veto. "That's why I wanted him to train with Luke. I just never should have sent him away. That's when I lost him. That's when I lost you both."

Ben Solo was a minor in some capacity when he was sent to his uncle because the agency to do so solely rested with his mother.

 

Bloodline doesn't say this or even hint at it.

The book is clear that Leia had not told Ben, or even Chewie, because she had such strong negative feelings about Vader. A direct quote: "She needed to explain to Ben that they'd kept from telling him because they'd wanted to find the right moment. She realised now she'd been fooling herself."

Don't make stuff up.

 

I don’t think wobbits deliberately “made stuff up,” though I agree there’s nothing I’ve found that suggests Ben (unaffected by Snoke) had any particularly dark side leanings.

 

Wobbits may be referring to the moments in Bloodline when Ben heard his parents arguing about his outbursts of anger but it’s true that we don’t yet know the history of Snoke’s propaganda and influence over him yet.

 

I think that was in The Last Jedi novelization as Kylo is musing about his parents as he is flying above the Raddus' bridge:

page 82:

No age is given.

 

It's been almost a year since I read it but I got an impression that Leia had seen something force related- tantrums/tendencies etc in Ben and felt she couldn't help him with it from lack of her own training and thus sent him to Luke. I also thought there was a line about "Vader in him" or a convo with Han about concern for the dark side in the bloodline. I could be mashing up a bunch of different books I read but that was the overall impression I got so I'm not "making stuff up" out of some hidden intent or malice. It was simply the explanation I got from it.

I also understood from my reading of it that she wasn't confident about any discussion with Ben because she says something about Luke telling him what happened with Anakin's redemption since she wasn't there she couldn't speak with the same positive feeling Luke had towards their father. I also felt that the reveal in the senate hastened her message to him because she even says to someone, can't remember if it's Casterfo or Carise that she hadn't yet told her son.

You know what, I love the book, it appears I need to re-read it tomorrow in any case.

@Ender_and_Bean I do remember reading that passage from someones posting of the TLJ novel here on the board. I need to remember which book talks about Leia's convo with Han about her worries about dark side in the bloodline.

 

I wouldn’t be surprised if those fits/tantrums/whatnot were caused by Snoke tbh.

 

@wobbits you are incorrect.

Bloodline makes no mention of tantrums or behavior issues. Ben Solo is a happy child. Later he is mentioned off on a radio silent mission as Luke’s assistant when news of the Vader parentage is revealed.

What is never metntioned: why he was sent to Luke. The book does not cover any of the in-between happy child playing with friends running though the house and going Off on this radio silent mission with Luke.

The only book that mentioned potential problems is the last jedi novelization

Worries about a “dark shadow over Ben” come in the Aftermath series. It can be taken two ways: Ben carries darkness or that dark shadow is Snoke upsetting Ben when he was still in utero. It has never been teased out which is the answer.

 

I just vaguely remember something going on because it felt like Leia was still in that mindset from ROTJ where she tells Luke he has a power she could never understand and have. I wondered if she was afraid to try learning more on her own because of Vader? Something gave me the impression that she didn't feel she could help Ben with whatever he was going through.

Darn skippy I'll be reading tomorrow and taking notes.

 

Didn't I just post and say that I could have mashed up a bunch of books as well as concede to Ender that I added in the snippet from TLJ?

Yes I do recall Leia not being able to get in touch with him because she didn't know exactly where he was with Luke.

And if the book does not cover the inbetween childhood play etc then how does it say Ben Solo was a happy child?