REY & KYLO REN: IT’S COMPLICATED
After their epic lightsaber battle in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the rivalry between Rey and Kylo Ren seemed cut and dried. Yay for her, boo to him. ❚ But as more of a connection is revealed between the two in the follow-up, Star Wars: The Last Jedi (in theaters Thursday night), it becomes clear there’s more going on than the usual hero vs. villain fare. For writer/director Rian Johnson, their relationship is “one of the most interesting ingredients in the whole stew.”
The Force Awakens introduced and interwove the journeys of Kylo (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley), first with a tension-filled interrogation scene where she surprised him in how strong she was with the Force. Then came the vicious throwdown where Rey scarred Kylo, aka Ben Solo, as a measure of revenge after he murdered his father, Han.
Trailers for The Last Jedi, though, hinted that Kylo — who had once been a pupil of his uncle, Luke Skywalker, before putting on a menacing mask — might be tempting her toward the dark side or that Rey could be his way of finding some redemption, setting the stage for galactic intrigue. (Without saying too much, their destinies do continue to unravel and entwine in the movie, and they even have a few scenes together where they aren’t trying to kill each other.)
The Star Wars faithful will recall that the Luke/Darth Vader dynamic had its complex aspects, too. Luke ended up finding some good within his father, even after Vader chopped off Luke’s hand and tried to kill his friends.
Johnson reminds that Kylo isn’t a strong, imposing monster who needs to be defeated like his Sith Lord granddad. “He skips straight to what Vader became (later in life), which is a villain who has more of a connection to a hero and is not just someone to be vanquished,” Johnson says. “He’s someone who’s going to take a more complicated journey.”
Similarly, Rey isn’t simply the second coming of Luke.
“Luke came to Yoda saying ‘Train me to be a Jedi,’ and I don’t think Rey is at that place, at least not yet,” Johnson says. “She doesn’t have that certainty — she doesn’t know that’s what she wants.”
Ridley argues that Rey doesn’t even have aspirations of heroism. Instead, belonging is more important. “She’s been alone for a long time,” Ridley says. “She just wants to find somewhere she can be still and figure things out — and for her, that is neither the light nor the dark.”
These two characters exist on opposite sides of the Force, Driver says, but in writing them, Johnson “doesn’t shy away from just how unpredictable humanity can be.”