ST Were you disappointed that Rey and Finn's relationship never became anything romantic?

I don’t know about percentage wise but the most stable and long lasting relationships came from friendships, or they became friends and romantic at the same time.

 

No, we didn’t. At all. I’m pretty sure there have been conversations with you here in the past about not mansplaining to women what we like or what we want.

Don’t worry about it. The poster above loves to stereotype women in the most vapid and shallow ways possible.

Nothing at all wrong with Finn and Rey, in fact, if it had been allowed to play out, it would have rivaled Kanan and Hera for a great Star Wars romance.

 

I think its more that Johnson and LFL came to believe in Rey and Kylo as a romance option out of numerous, though usually dubious and often hypocritical, reasons, and that Abrams was likely leaning towards Rey and Finn in TFA... which Johnson and LFL deliberately tried to move away from for the sake of the Rey and Kylo relationship, which Arbams hadn't laid the groundwork for at all and almost certainly hadn't thought about when making TFA. The weird way that Rey and Kylo kiss in TROS is almost certainly the product of Abrams having to execute a romance he doesn't believe in at all, but can't avoid because LFL demands it.

I think the main reasons behind the Rey and Kylo relationship from LFL's perspective (and I am ranking them from first to last), goes like this:

1. LFL, and Kathleen Kennedy in particular, always wanted Driver as the male lead (and maybe as the main star) over Boyega (and probably outshining Ridley as well.) It feels pretty obvious that Kennedy and LFL valued Driver over their other actors in terms of assets, and to their credit, they were right to see him as a major star about to break out... but they also seem to have viewed Boyega as Finn as a threat, and they didn't seem to focus on Ridley enough for her role in comparison. That's probably why Palpatine came back - they wanted Driver as Ben Solo to be a major hero in the last episode, best-villain-for-Rey-is-Kylo be damned, and its almost certainly why LFL seems to be intentionally apathetic towards Finn.

2. Kylo being the last Skywalker means they felt he HAD to be treated special and given intense focus from Rey. This is the storyline reason they'd give Kylo such special treatment... but it arguably shows why Rey should have been a Skywalker instead, since it introduces a *bad* double standard he enjoys that preys on Rey being a kind of "award" for him to get for being redeemed, and clearly supplants Finn because now Kylo is "the Skywalker of the ST" instead of Rey, and that means Rey as the Non-Skywalker lead takes Finn's spot. It also makes the "Rey Random" idea farcical, making it less some egalitarian argument and more a monopoly on legacy character focus for Kylo.

3. ...There might have been some genuine mix of racism or white privilege in their view of romance for the ST. This is pretty simple - if someone looked at Kylo and automatically thought he made "more sense" as Rey's love interest even though he's a mass murderer who's violated her horribly, but Finn, a heroic and true friend for her isn't... I don't think that's "friend-zone" stuff at all - that's just racism valuing a white guy over a black guy regardless of all else. And there definitely seems to be some apathy and white privilege stifling Finn elsewhere...

BUT!!! As to the whole "Reylo was the best way LFL could see to attract women" argument....

I want to dispute that, on the basis that "Summon romance to draw in the womyn-folk" idea, while already a little sexist, also does NOT require a soap opera-style angsty romance - after all, romantic-comedies and screwball romances are just as prevalent... and often more popular. And for what women (and men, lest we forget that a great many writers of soap opera romance are men in the first place) are drawn to dark soap opera romance, they're likely matched and even surpassed by fans of romantic-comedies.

They didn't go with Reylo as the "only" way to bring in women with romance. If romance was the goal, a screwball romance between Rey and Finn would have been just as likely. They went with the soap opera story because that's the only type of romance Kylo could do... so its still more tied into the earlier reasons I gave.

 

It wasn’t.

 

It's actually kind if fascinating, because I think you can kind of see an argument unfolding between Abrams and LFL in TROS and in its production about how much of an impact Ben should have relative to and in comparison with Rey, Finn, Poe, and the others.

LFL rejected Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates script for Episode IX, and it seems it did that more out of a desire to push a Big Bad Ben Solo could fight to sell his redemption; later versions incorporated a new character, Sollony Ren, for him to fight, and Terio has heavily implied Palpatine's return was primarily about giving Ben Solo a Bigger Bad to strike against after his redemption.

But at the same time, Abrams was reportedly trying to give Boyega something worthy of his work as Finn after TLJ's screw-up, and seems to have been against making Kylo Rey's co-lead and romantic partner, albeit still professional enough to fulfil LFL's desires there.

Here's the part of TROS that seems to show LFL's desire for Ben to be a big hero:

1. Rey "can't" defeat and kill Palpatine when she confronts him without being possessed by the Sith spirits inside him... aaaand somehow Ben's appearance changes the tide and allows her to fight back, leading to him slaughtering the Knights of Ren and to a "money shot" of her and Ben standing side-by-side with the Skywalker lightsabers.
2. Rey "dies"/goes-Sleeping-Beauty for a few seconds from being drained by Palpatine and worn out from holding lightsabers together, so Ben solo, also drained but then thrown down a hole instead, can emerge to play Prince Charming, rescue his damsel, and then get a kiss before dying and fading away as a redeemed "hero."

Here's the part where Abrams seemed to be trying to make sure Rey still "ranked above" Ben:

1. Rey is the one who actually defeats Palpatine, and Ben's aid is not the actually defining element she needs for her victory.

And here's the part that Abrams seems to have given Finn *originally* to make sure Boyega got his due:

1. Finn takes down the communications relay that the Final Order fleet needs to escape the skies in a major, D-Day from Saving Private Ryan-type scene.
2. In the original version, it seems Finn does this as a kind of Jedi pirate, swinging between parts of a Star Destroyer on a rope and with a lightsaber in his hand.

Notice that the contributions Ben makes to the victory are still made important for defeating Palpatine and saving Rey... but are also very artificial seeming, and that Rey, while she gets the victory, still has to go "Damsel In Distress" so that Ben can save her.

...And that Finn just got screwed in the final cut, losing the saber likely before shooting even began and then having his action scene chopped up in post-production, for which he seems to blame LFL and not Abrams.

The way I see it, TROS was designed to fulfil LFL's ambitions for Ben Solo, and it looks like Abrams was ordered to cut down some of Finn's heroics to preserve Ben's importance, and that the kiss in the film is likely an LFL mandated move as well to make sure Ben remains the romantic lead of the film.

 

I’m not as interested in ‘shipping communities and their somewhat predictable tastes here; even the handful of legitimately racist morons that have harassed Boyega who happen to be Reylos as well aren’t who I’m interested in (though I’ll confess I’m not surprised by their existence at all, and I would argue that correlation is sadly more likely than anyone would like to think about.) And I don’t think racism/white privilege was the primary factor in LFL as a company pursuing Reylo.

But I definitely feel it was *a* factor, if nothing else than on a subconscious level... as I think most of the diminishing returns Boyega experienced in spite of being an all star actor and marketing asset for them demonstrate, and as he has testified is what he believes happened from his personal experience.

LFL is not a ‘shipping community on Tumblr; while those kind of fan groups are concerned almost entirely with the hypothetical alignments, they aren’t the ones actually controlling the product, nor are they the ones dealing with “coiner-canonical” hypotheticals as their main bread and butter. While a ‘shipper may or may not react to art with unconscious biases, they’re often far enough afield from the actual product they aren’t going to produce the kind of consistent work that can be evaluated to identify it (well, not always, anyway.)

Johnson and LFL have shown a lack or perspective and a somewhat privileged POV that favors Kylo over everyone... but has an exceptional and repeated disengagement from Finn. They seem to have deliberately and purposefully moved to try and kill even speculation about Rey and Finn as a possible romance or even just as coleads, in spite of the former being a pretty easy read of TFA’s intentions and the latter explicitly the facts of the film when TFA came out.

When a ‘shipper immediately moves towards a certain parking, that doesn’t impact the actual product. When the actual creative company and artists behind the product seem to pull out all the steps to minimize and belittle a successful dramatic character with a past as a slave soldier and a well-regarded relationship with the main hero by making him a side character receiving janitor jokes even outside of the film medium and paired with new, less developed female character pretty much the second he’s separated from the main heroine? And that character is black?

We’re talking about, at best, a blindness to the subtextual message and themes being sent that reinforces white privilege.