ST Adam Driver (Kylo Ren) in Episode IX

A fair number of people do not like having things that have been built up, tossed aside. It can leave them wondering why they should care about any plot point or character if the author is just going to randomly yank the rug out from underneath them. We've spent two films building Kylo Ren up as the big bad so creating a replacement just feels wrong to some people and they can voice their opinion on this forum. No one from LFL is being made to do anything they don't want to do, and they're not even being subjected to harassment just because people on a forum might be dissatisfied with a perceived direction.

For now, my own read of the situation from these 'spoilers' is that Kylo Ren and his loyal forces are in a race against Rey and her friends and allies to find whatever this macguffin is and use it to control this new threat. It's been mentioned that the resistance is just a small force when compared to the FO, so I really don't see the FO being pushed into a scenario where it needs the Resistance forces to bolster it's own vs a new threat. What seems more likely is that whoever controls this threat from beyond will have the advantage in the war.

 

You know there is a reason why Rey looks in a different direction. She is hiding her Sith eyes

 

Is Oscar actually made-up here as Poe, or is he not in character? This doesn't take anything away from such a lovely photo (thank you JJ, more loveliness please) and I'm not sure we could read anything conclusive into it if he isn't in character.

 

I may be wrong but.....I'm pretty sure the writers have already wrote Kylo Ren as the big bad and anything other than that would be specifically for fanfare. The only reason I could see them introducing another threat is to please fans by having Reylo (I'm saying it may not have been completely intended until everyone started talking about it) or because they painted themselves in a corner with Ren's redemption and after treating Hux (the only semi-built up viable option to take over for Ren) like a joke in episode 8, they have to introduce a new threat. I'm still not going to read into the leaks as this new threat bullies Ren out of his big bad role. Eventhough Hux was thrown around in episode 8 I think if Ren is redeemed Hux will be the catalyst for his destruction perhaps with one or all of the KOR. The FO is Hux's army still. His dad helped create it and he still feels its his.

 

I wonder if JJ will take him back to the way he was in TFA... RJ was pushing him towards being a Vader clone. Did Kylo even use his force paralysis in TLJ...does anyone recall??

 

Kylo Ren will end E9 as the new Darth Vader. Remember there's a giant corporation behind this investment.

They need a new toy to sell for the next decade.

 

Your negativity is off the charts today

 

The funny thing is I don't necessarily view it as a negative. Is it creatively bankrupt? Mostly. But do I want to watch a cartoon based off of it? Probably, yes.

 

I could definitely see the trilogy ending open ended with Ren in an iron lung suit keeping him alive. Original? Nope... A money maker? Maybe.

 

I think it'd be pretty easy to have a villain justifiably go toe to toe with Ben. First of all, we still don't actually know it was Ben who killed Luke's students. Luke, the only person so far who could confirm it, was knocked out when it happened. They could easily say the new villain was the one who killed the students, while Ben was just as knocked out as Luke. We also have the constant foreshadowing of Ben having been corrupted through mind games with Snoke, hinting that Ben hasn't exactly been ok in the head with almost everything he's done. Constantly being called to the light, having Han's death destroy him more than resolve him, and his pleading with Rey all hints he's not exactly happy being evil. Even the end, after yelling at Luke, he seemed more lost than ever in the hanger with his fathers dice. Dude is absolutely the main villain, but he doesn't feel like THE main villain. Just like Vader. Who spent two films being THE villain, only to still be a villain, but not THE villain in the final film.

Not to mention, he's lost to Rey in both films. She kicked his butt in TFA, and when they had their tug of war, she won as well. You can say they "tied" but he was knocked unconscious while she was able to get up, steal a ship, leave, and re-connect with chewie in the time it took him to wake up. Certainly sounds more like a loss to me. So this trilogy just ending in a toe-to-toe rematch where the villain is obviously going to lose again? Why even bother at that point. The only way that could be interesting in the slightest is if he actually wins their duel, but they'd have to end up having him not be the villain cause uh... Rey isn't going to get killed. I just can't see them ending the final battle in a win for Big Bad kylo, but still not have him hurt Rey or defeat the resistance.

They could easily just have her win again, kill Ben off, and thats that, but holy crap if thats the finale, we may as well have stopped after TFA and just have had him die in the snow, because what else has happened since then if we aren't building towards anything?

 

Exactly! The only way this stays at Rey v Kylo is if they flight twice in the film and he defeats her in the first duel. Otherwise it would be insanely hard for them to build up significant tension for the final confrontation as he’s never won and she’s never lost.

Whilst Rey’s victory was an awesome moment in TFA, in hindsight it was the wrong move for the rest of the trilogy, especially if they just intend for the finale to be a simple rematch. There had to be more to it.

 

I still find it confusing when people call Kylo Ren “Ben”. Like they are talking about a different character that is not supposed to be the mass-murdering incel that goes by the name of “Kylo Ren” in the ST.

 

are you ok

 

So I think Rey having beaten Ren twice at this point is narratively bad, but I don’t think it makes Rey v. Kylo unsalvageable. They just need to inject real depth (not of the half naked sexual tension kind) into their dynamic that causes Rey to lose to him early in IX. The depth needs to bring out a real weakness in Rey, and not of the “you’re nobody in the story and your parents were losers” variety. That actually was just stuff Rey already knew. She was over it in five seconds. If JJ introduced something, like Kylo killed her parents, or Kylo is her brother/cousin and tried to save her and failed, shaking her faith in Leia and/or Luke and/or Han, or Kylo stranded her on Jakku for Snoke, or literally anything that ties Rey in a substantive way to the central conflict and to Kylo specifically, it creates an Achilles heal in our protagonist specifically with respect to our antagonist that wasn’t there before. You’d think being abducted and tortured by him and watching him main and murder friends would do it, but it didn’t so that ship has sailed.

The only other option I see is neutering Kylo so he isn’t the big bad, but that is narratively destructive to the trilogy considering practically the only thing TLJ built to is Kylo as the ultimate bad guy. Worse, turning Kylo into a hero is redundant as hell. We already have the FO defector that’s pure of heart. His name is Finn. The hero side is cluttered and it doesn’t need “Ben.” Our heroes all still need their big hero moments, including Rey, who’s basically done nothing (narratively speaking) besides beat Kylo in inconsequential isolated fights.

 

Yeah, though I could really use a massage. Are you okay?

 

Personally I call him Ben when I’m too lazy to write Kylo lol but maybe there’s an unconscious part of me that sometimes differentiates the light side of Kylo and his dark side indeed. In the context of Star Wars, it isn't that strange. Wasn't it this good old Ben Kenobi who confused Luke when he told him that "from a certain point of view", Vader had killed Anakin Skywalker when the latter chose the path of the Dark Side? He was wrong, as we know all, since Anakin was still living under Vader's mask, he was just not, what... in control anymore? And still today, when we talk of Anakin in the OT, we always say "Vader"; when we talk of him in the PT, we always say "Anakin". In a way, Anakin and Vader were different characters even if they were the same persons, so the same could be said about Kylo Ren and Ben, "from a certain point of view". It doesn't make "Ben" innocent of what "Kylo" has done, of course. Ben created the monster Kylo Ren, and he knows what he does, so he's responsible for his acts.Just like Anakin was responsible for Vader's acts. That's why Leia never forgave him, unlike Luke.

Kylo told Han: "Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him.": As Kylo, Ben considers himself a different person: he's not Han and Leia's son, and he wishes that this person they knew and loved would totally disappear. That's his main conflict: he can't get rid of his creator. Actually, since Ben is an actual person and Kylo is the character this person created, we should always call him "Ben", and never "Kylo". Kylo doesn't really exist: Ben does.

 

I understand the differentiation between the current identity and past identity like Vader/Anakin, but he is effectively Kylo Ren in this trilogy for the entirety of the movies except for flashbacks.

I guess what I am trying to say is that, when people call him "Ben" (referring to current "Kylo Ren"), it sort of feels like they are pretending that he is not this horrible evil dude that commits atrocities, because "Ben" is his light side identity. But he is no longer that person anymore (whatever that person was like before).

 

If Kylo doesn’t exist, “Ben” is the only one there to commit all that murder and stuff, so there’s no differentiation at all. And Ben prefers to be called Kylo.

 

I think those of us who differentiate are the ones that feel like he is on the path to a redemption story and that Rey will continue to see him as Ben, at least at some point, in Episode IX.

 

I call him by his name often since I still can't take Kylo Ren seriously as a name. Also, yeah, it feels like you're referring to a completely different character.

 

Rey will call him Ben. I think people who hope for his redemption refer to him as Ben. I sometimes do the same in that context. And I use kylo when talking about his bad deeds...

 

I suppose that is a good way to put it.

 

Kylo Ren does exist, from a certain point of view. It’s what they call Ben’s dark, twisted self.
He is always Ben, of course, which is why it always makes sense to call him by that name, but it also makes sense in a way to call him Kylo when he’s unbalanced.
You could say that Kylo is the dark part of the complete person Ben Solo.

You could also say that calling him Ben is asking him to take responsibility for the choices he’s made, while calling him Kylo is buying into the idea that the two are separate individuals; that Kylo Ren is the monster that invaded the body of the innocent Ben Solo and murdered him... thus absolving Ben of guilt.