ST Rey & Kylo Ren in Episode IX

Your point?

Kylo is factually the big bad of the movies. He has been the main antagonist since day one. His overall story arc, as we were told from day one,
was "birth and rise of a villain." TLJ was literally him supplanting Snoke as the First Order's supreme leader. That's pretty black and white.

The franchise has shown overall that the dark side does not balance with the Force (e.g. ROTS, Mortis). Also, the sequel trilogy has been a case study that the dark side and the light cannot play together since they have mutually opposing goals.

Hmmm.

Sith eyes are not a good gage of one's dark side meter. Maul had them 24/7, but Palpatine was able to hide them when he was the chancellor, Dooku never had them, and Darth Vader switched back and forth. Kylo having his normal eyes proves nothing, esp. since his actions show him to be deep in the dark side.

Maybe, but that doesn't mean that it's going to end well for Kylo. Like him, Gollum was fated to play a role in his war and it didn't end well for him.

 

Sooooo if "we" are trying to be accurate, miserable Kylo sits in despair at the the end of TLJ. Was it regret he was said to experience as his father's dice faded from his palm? The light shines all around him.

It is not the triumphant gleeful moment of Sidious claiming official control of the galaxy. It is heartbreak and pain from someone who gave himself willingly to the dark despite the horrible pain that came every step of the way.

So is Kylo Ren a Darth Sidious sort? No. This is someone else.

I don't make the argument that Kylo Ren isn't the main villain in IX, but I know he is not as dark as Sidious. I know also that if his path is hopeless, it was not that the light was all gone in him, but that his stubborn will would not let it in.

I really think Rey knows something along these lines herself. And I think that will definitely be in the story. If those who want Kylo to end dark and dead get their wish, I expect this story is about how much Rey *doesn't* want to kill this person, and has to in the end because she has no other choice. In doing this she would succeed where his entire family failed, because they loved him too much. They could never harm him. It is the best of attachment, but it is still attachment, and a Jedi cannot afford attachment.

For Rey, the arc would be how she went from wanting to kill him out of hate but having to restrain herself, to wanting to save him out of love but seeing that is not the way either. There can be no hate and there can be no love. And if she surrenders to the balance and the will of the Force, she will suffer no pain. What it came to is simply reality, and all she can do is let it be and let it go.

In this story I wouldn't be surprised if at the end Rey burns the dead body of Ben and lets go in that scene of all the reasons she wanted to save him, and so the sadness about how once he was just a boy who ran into a dark presence he could not overcome, and how this "could have been" in which this family could have been whole and happy, this resolution she longed for, she finally recognizes as an extension of what happened to her as a child. What if her parents hadn't been so poor and psychologically ruined? What if perhaps the Empire had never arisen dragging her family lineage into this poverty and loss? She wanted to save him and reunite this family because she wished so much her own family could have been restored. So in this end, this is the ultimate form of letting that go. And with it, letting go the last of her attachment so that she can begin the Jedi anew with none of that in the way, in the hopes that they can avoid this horror and pain of the dark side taking over moving forward.

 

Also it's "like poetry." In TFA Kylo carries Rey's limp body, having rendered her unconscious. In IX she carries his limp body, having rendered him dead. And after she impaled him or struck him down, she caught him as he caught her, would not let him fall to the ground. This was the only mercy she could offer, as that was the only mercy he could offer.

Perhaps this will occur in the fern forest that resembles Takodana (and Endor).

Rey will return to her friends and their obligatory celebration paralleling the end of ROTJ, but she will not be happy again until she returns to Ahch-to, the heart of the Jedi, where they will begin again. Perhaps she will stand there with the redeemed KOR. They will preserve the balance of the Force.

They will not dictate, or answer to government, doing its bidding. They will not act as the galactic law enforcement. They will not fight wars on behalf of political powers. They will honor the balance and listen to the Force. Their only role is to keep the balance. They only act when they detect the dark side rising and disrupting the balance, in the form of darksiders. It is not their right to overpower others as Anakin and Obi-Wan do in AOTC ("Jedi business" and mind controlling addicts without consent) or Qui-Gon does to Jar Jar in TPM to calm him down. It is not their job to muscle their way in against people who don't even have the Force in the way they do. It is not their job to interrogate people via invasive mind probes as TCW Jedi do against whichever criminal that was. Etc. Etc.

And they should neither kill when someone can be saved nor keep trying to save over and over when they can't save. (Balance.)

 

No way Rey could physically carry 6’4 swole Kylo

 

Do you refer to the junior novelization where she says that to save Ben Solo she has to defeat Kylo Ren, right?
I am a bit confused by the conflict with the Frey novelization where she says that she will wait for the Force to show her the way.
I prefer the junior version, I must say. At least wrt her decision on her future actions.

 

No? Didn't she lift tons of stones that blocked the cave's exit on Crait, allowing the Rebellion survivors to get on board of the Falcon?
Carrying a 6'4 wardrobe of man's piece of cake. It's just her warm-up.

 

I don’t think she could psychically carry those boulders in her arms either ‍♂️

 

No way Rey could overpower Kylo physically and force his arm holding the lightsaber into the ground, like in TFA. She had to use the Force to do that.

Anyway I wasn't sure in which way she would "carry him" - but she would transport him from one place to another, which is carrying in some form.

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Also I don't see Rey as Luke's heir at all.

 

If you mean the reverse of the bridal carry that he did in TFA, the female version would be the pieta carry, which is a bit more dramatic: He would be laying on the ground, a breath away from death, and she would be kneeling next to him, cradling his head and shoulder on her lap.

 

What if...

The Knights of Ren became reformed into a movement that is neither Jedi nor Sith but helps people in the end with Rey as the new leader of a new movement entirely?

 

I think it was meant as in narratively she holds the same function as he did in their respective trilogies.

 

All we know for sure about what Kylo was thinking in that scene was that Rey had betrayed him (TLJ junior novelization). There is zero indication that he was feeling remorse for what he had done. For all we know, he's just sad that his plans to get the Rey on his side, find Luke Skywalker himself and completely destroy the Resistance didn't work out like he had them in his head.

Yeah, Kylo is not a Darth Sidious-like villain; he's one of his own stripe.

 

@Ender_and_Bean Is this like Assassin's Creed ("we work in the dark to preserve the light")? I like Assassin's Creed but it's not very Jedi. A Jedi working in the dark often falls in the dark. Vos in Dark Disciple is a good example. Granted, these "Jedi" wouldn't be doing things like killing snakes to increase their power with the dark side. But even the mission the Jedi sent Vos on was recognized as too dark and that they never should have sent him on it.

@WebLurker I think the regret reference I picked up from an RJ quote about Kylo in that scene. But I didn't mean it as remorse for what he'd done, but more as regret for what he had to sacrifice to get there (e.g. his father, and perhaps also companionship). It's still a very selfish moment for Kylo, IMO, a moment of sheer navelgazing.

 

Technically, this was the moment Kylo was declared Supreme Leader, not the scene of him on Crait.

 

Sure.
It doesn't alter my point.
You can choose ANY picture you like after that moment, they send me all the same message to me.
I chose that moment because it is the very last we see of Kylo in Ep. VIII and there is one more episode to come.
And the other one was the very last we see of Palpatine at the end of the PT.

 

All those pictures of Kylo show are how whiny he is. They’re portraying a different kind of villain. He’s still narratively the big antagonist. You don’t build up a Skywalker as the dark side Supreme Leader just to neuter him 25 minutes into the final installment of the Skywalker Saga. He’s not Dooku here. He’s Sheev and Vader rolled into one, with some Twilight emo added for “depth.”

 

Wow. Adam Driver is an intense actor.

 

This is a false assumption based on number of flawed premises. For one...the idea that good and evil must fuse. Maz said it in TFA, the names and faces change, but the battle between good and evil continues on. When First Order falls (one way or another) something else will eventually rise to champion darkness again. Balancing the force isn't about fusing good and evil together in some kind of moral relativism.

Force-bond does not equal understanding or emotional closeness. TLJ made that brutally clear when Rey and Kylo had a disagreement that resulted in them ending up further apart. This is backed up by Star Wars Rebels, in which Ezra shared a force bond with Maul that ultimately lead to the youths manipulation. It didn't bring Ezra and Maul closer. Here we see in TLJ another subversion of expectation with the forced bond being used to bring it about. Rey goes to Kylo like Luke went to Vader...but Kylo is not Vader and his journey in TLJ has not lead him to abandon his goals. He's just decided to take power, and burn the past...which includes the friends and allies Rey has made. So despite expectations of redemption...Kylo Ren and Rey end up at odds....he chooses power, she chooses her friends...and in the end he orders her shot down without a moment's hesitation.

As for the Force-bond...I find it interesting that it only happens again after Kylo touches the dice Luke made, as if his Uncle was (with him joining the force and becoming more powerful than Kylo could possible imagine) letting his Nephew see just how badly he failed...as the woman he just swore to destroy not only rescues the Resistance Kylo fears....but shuts the door in his face, making it clear his negging/manipulation/etc isn't going to work again.

Or....RJ had that scene play out in a variety of ways and need Driver on set to get it just right. People tend to do better acting when they have a live person to work with. This was in fact a complaint with the prequels and it's CGI characters.

Another false assumption. RJ stated he had Snoke link their minds for TLJ, as he needed them linked for the rest of the plot of TLJ to work. However, beyond that it's up to the next director/writer to decide if they'll make use of it again. It's possible they will as it might be a useful tool for whatever story they want to tell. However, with RJ having the final shot of the 'forced bond' being of Rey shutting the door in Kylo's face, the next director could choose to move on and do something else.

Wrong, he needed her alive to kill Snoke. After that he was capable of ordering her shot out of the sky.

Star Wars morality tends to avoid having it's heroes kill people who are unconscious and unable to defend themselves. If the movie is going to call Luke out for nearly killing Kylo in his sleep, then having Rey do it is going to look like hypocrisy.

Correct, it could be reforged into something new. A new way of doing things that offers redemption, but does not allow people to go on hurting the galaxy if it's rejected. Rey dosen't have to kill Kylo, she could engineer a situation where he destroys himself, or find a way to strip him of the force, rendering him subject to and punishable by the laws of the Republic he sought to destroy and replace. Simply put, Rey has far more options on her plate than 'Kill him' if Kylo continue doing the same thing he's done for two moves....rejecting extended offers redemption

This is the truth. Kylo is the big bad, he's managed to surpass his grandfather by taking control of his masters empire. That means every person that dies, ever boot that stomps down on an innocent is now directly Kylo's fault. He's not being manipulated, he's not being ordered to do anything. He's CHOOSING to have his legions of terror spread darkness throughout the galaxy.

One of the most telling scenes in TLJ is when Kylo faces off against Luke.

Kylo: "Come to save my soul."

Luke Skywalker: "No."

Luke Skywalker, the man who saved Darth Vader, isn't even going to TRY and convince his own Nephew to turn away form darkness. All he does is apologies for his own mistakes and tells Kylo exactly what will happen if he continues down this path...which Kylo does.

Once again, Kylo jumps at the call of darkness....and it is this...more than Luke's mistakes in his training, more than Han and Leia's mistakes in his upbringing, and even more than Snoke's manipulations...is what seals him as the big bad. Kylo Ren WANTS to embrace the darkness....he wants the power it offers....and no matter what he may personally feel for anyone...he'd rather have that power over a connection/relationship to that person.

 

That’s a tough question and I don’t think I can provide a precise answer. The information on the Force that we have are scattered between the saga, the canon and non-canon EU. It’s a holy mess.

That said, I can try to give a very broad concept based on what I have read and what I understood. I haven’t read all the books and saw all the TV shows, so I may miss something important. The following is my personal reading of a very complex matter, which we now very little about.

All beings are born with equal potential of Darkness and Light. In non Force sensitives you’ll have people with different personalities and tendencies: Introvert / extrovert, thoughtful / reckless, active / passive.
In Force sensitive people, these tendencies and personal choices may well determine what kind of Force users they are.

The Prime Jedi, represented by this symbol


were One with the Dark Side and the Light Side. You see the Jedi meditating one half is white, the other one is dark.

But the Jedi, in the course of thousand years, started to privilege the Light Side over the Dark, until they split between the Jedi and the Sith, which are opposite forces who fight constantly against each other until one is destroyed.
The Dark side feeds from passion, anger, pain, hate, resentment. It grows and get stronger in times of war.
The Light side feeds on peace, serenity, selflessness, compassion. It grows in times of peace.
The split between the two brought an endless cycle of times of war and times of peace, where the one destroyed the other.

In times of Darkness (Palpatine’s Empire) the Force searched the Light. Luke and Leia were born and when they were old enough they felt they had to fight and destroy the Empire. And the war rages on.
They destroyed the Empire and the Sith were extinct. Darkness was gone. There was peace, but not for very long.

Because the Force seeks the Darkness as well, after the end of the Sith, Snoke raised, with him he took a number of other Dark Force users, and the cycle of war began again.

And so it will continue for the eternity unless the two parties are brought together and live again in harmony (yin and yang principle) in the Force. To do that, I believe it takes two equal Force wielder with opposite tendencies (Kylo and Rey being almost like two halves of the protagonist: Equal but opposite)

How do they break the cycle I do not know, something we haven’t seen yet, but we will in IX.
What I am sure about: It cannot finish again with the Light destroying the Darkness, or the cycle will continue in an endless loop.

I can speculate: By influencing the midi-chlorian or wielding the Force to bring an accord where there is discord, a “peaceful mood” (sorry for the bad choice of word) in the Galaxy. In the Fry novelization Rey discovers in Chapter 29 that she is an instrument of the Cosmic Force (the Will of the Force) and she will wait (be passive, do nothing) until she understands what the Force commands. But perhaps the Force needs also a more active wielder to execute what the Force commands (Kylo), as @oncafar said, the Jedi will be instruments of the Force and that alone, no more law enforcers, no more politics, no longer involved in anything else except the will of the Force.

That’s why Kylo is so central in this story, a much as Rey is.
Their union can be purely on spiritual level, or on more personal level but the goal is the same: Bringing the Light and the Dark together.

 

But in canon the dark side has been shown as a corruption of the force. The light side is the natural state, and canonically balance was achieved by destroying the sith.

 

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Crait may be the last scene with Kylo Ren in TLJ but that isn't the moment he forced Hux to declare him Supreme Leader, if we are looking for the exact parallel to Palpatine declaring himself Emperor to a captive senate. Going by this logic, Palpatine makes a speech about how the jedi messed up his face so he was playing a victim to an audience, not really showing triumph.

It also is not the last we see of Palpatine. He goes to Mustafar, retrieves burned Vader and takes him back to Coruscant for surgery. The exact last scene was Palpatine, Vader and Tarkin (sort of) watching the Death Star being constructed. Again, looking at parallels, one could argue that Palpatine and Vader standing in front of the death star is a parallel to Kylo and Hux standing in front of the Crait base, getting the door blown up.

 

Look at the images you have posted and tell me what do you see.
Do you see a happy man?
A man who has reached the peak of his power after years of struggle and plotting and finally, finally has reached what he has ever always wanted?
Do you see it?
I don't.
If you see a happy man, a gloating man, fully satisfied, then we must talk about two different men.

 

In case you were confused by what I said in my previous posts, I never said Kylo was happy or gloating. I also don't believe that Kylo needs to follow Palpatine beat for beat to become a villain...... I was simply pointing out to you that the scene of Kylo looking down at the vanishing dice, isn't the moment he was declared Supreme Leader and a parallel to Palpatine declaring himself the Emperor.

 

And my point was that since the moment Kylo usurped the title of Supreme Leader, he does not look like the Bid Bad guys we know, who gloat in their moment of triumph. He seems more miserable than ever.
That is my point.
He may be there where his boss was, but it is not where he wants to be nor what makes him happy.
That is why he cannot be the Big Bad to me.
A Big Bad always rejoices in the highest powers.