FINN

The hero who’s special because he’s anything but

LIKE A GALACTIC RON Burgundy, Finn once bragged that he’s kind of a big deal in the Resistance. (No word yet on how many leather-bound books he owns.) But the true appeal of Finn is that he’s not a big deal. Not really. FN-2187, to give him his cold military designation, is a true nobody, just another stormtrooper in a vast faceless army — albeit one who, unthinkably, dares to dream of freedom.

His unlikely rebellion is central to his character’s creation. During the first story meetings for The Force Awakens, original screenwriter Michael Arndt recalls struggling to find a hook for their male lead. Finally, Star Wars veteran Lawrence Kasdan piped up with a pep talk. “You guys, you’re not thinking big,” he said. “What if he’s a stormtrooper that ran away?”

Thus began one of the more fascinating arcs in the new trilogy. Plucked from his family and home planet at an age too early to remember, Finn moves from subjugation and disillusionment to mutiny; from fear and self-interest to heroic sacrifice and the realms of big deal-ery. When we first encounter him, he’s simply desperate to get as far away from the First Order as he can; by the end of The Last Jedi, he’s fully embraced the Resistance as a cause bigger than himself, and proudly accepts his mantle as “Rebel scum”.

He’s the everyman of the series, too: our down-to-earth surrogate for an outof-this-world adventure. John Boyega once explained to Empire that he aimed his performance somewhere between the seriousness of his character Moses in Attack The Block and the charisma of Will Smith in Independence Day. He has a nervous, unearned swagger and a very human reaction to the galaxy’s

wilder moments; and underneath it all, a genuinely good heart. That’s what makes him such a big deal.