How did killing Han weaken Kylo Ren?

The clues are all there for a scenario where Ben Solo was kidnapped/coerced to become Kylo Ren, although it is scattered across several canon materials:

1. Force sensitives get kidnapped, captured and turned to the dark side at various ages (TCW , Rebels)

2. The Imperials have used torture to turn people to the dark side. (Secret Academy novel)

3. It is possible to change even a powerful force sensitive to the dark side with torture, give them a new name and identity etc. (Dark Disciple novel)

4. Sith artifacts can be used to possess people, mess with their minds (Aftermath novel, Obi-wan and Anakin comic)and make them kill even loved ones (Lando comics)

5. A manchurian candidate scenario has been explored when Temmin Wexley's father returns after being a prisoner of the Imperials, acts strange and leaves the house mysteriously, is given a weapon by a stranger and attempts an assassination. Also, his confrontation with his son on the bridge mirrors the Kylo and Han scene. (Aftermath:Life Debt novel)

snufkin wrote:

ISeeAnIsland wrote:

motherofpearl1 wrote:

snufkin wrote:I'd say the Force as it's something Snoke has convinced him by manipulation that he needs to do in order to prove his strength and pass a test of loyalty/denial of the sentimentality that supposedly led to the Empire's fall. His whole persona is an attempt to suppress the part of him that's "weak and foolish," which is likely the light/love that makes him like his father. Also if so far it's shown that force bonds exist to some degree between family members, he has something with Leia (Hell, she carried him for 9 months so of course there's a bond) and when she feels it, he feels her pain/anguish.

The part about what Han hopes that he forgives him for is curious. Hopefully it'll be explained in the backstory. One possibility I've entertained is that if there was a kidnapping/coercion element to his fall and his family thought he was at fault and didn't come rescue him, that's sort of a betrayal on Han's part of what was done for him. When he was frozen in a slab and hauled off to Jabba, his loved ones came after him and got him out of there. He's alive because of them. Even probably made in further in life meeting these people thanks to Ben's namesake. So if they just said "oh well, kid is way too much like Vader, too bad" and washed their hands of him, that's maybe what he hopes will be forgiven. They sure made the point of saying the bridge was the first time Han had seen Ben as a grown man and not a boy.

@snufkin

Hell - if that is what happened to Ben, then he really and truly is a victim. And his family didn't just let him down, they betrayed him big time. How awful.

@motherofpearl1

*Ding Ding Ding* And this is how you get the GA on Kylo Ren's side/remove most objects to he and Rey becoming romantically involved.

@ISeeAnIsland

Not that it's going to justify murder, but if they went that route and maybe Max Von Sydow's character was unfortunately involved (his wish to "make things right" as recompense to Leia), that would be enough to provoke a lashing out. "You think I'm so horrible, do you? OK then I'm going to be horrible."

@snufkin

It also explains Lor San Tekka's 'something much worse has happened to you' comment.

I still have my doubts if Ben Solo fell, only by Snoke's manipulations, or some greater purpose (some particular mission, some kind of revenge in the name of the grandfather). In the novel, Snoke accuses Vader of being carried away by the "feelings", he did not show any respect for his Sith achievements, but only accused him of collaborating for the decline of the Empire ... it is at least strange that, Kylo Be so obsessed with the grandfather's being in the service of someone who has no respect for his memory ... What do you think about it?

@Magnolia_3.0

i think there is some greater purpose to what he's doing and i think he chose this and he chose the sacrifices he's making.

and if you are portraying vader as a great man who was brought down by his terrible weakness, i think it sort of makes sense? if it's something ben ben hates about himself and learnt to hate about himself, he'd identify with this from snoke's version of events, no?

guardienne wrote:@Magnolia_3.0

i think there is some greater purpose to what he's doing and i think he chose this and he chose the sacrifices he's making.

and if you are portraying vader as a great man who was brought down by his terrible weakness, i think it sort of makes sense? if it's something ben ben hates about himself and learnt to hate about himself, he'd identify with this from snoke's version of events, no?

@guardienne

I see the character of Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, as the most intense and interesting of this plot (and it's not a fan thing), it's the conditions and expressions we notice throughout the film, the books ... it's interesting to note How he seems to be so sincere with his feelings and at the same time be so distant ... it's a clear conflict (he hides something devastating ... I do not think it's just immaturity ...). Sometimes I get the impression that he went through such difficult situations as Rey, but he just made a wrong choice and thinks it's too late to go back.

I am absolutely sure something bad happened to him, we still don't know what mistakes Han and Leia have made in his life, but also exactly what went down at the Jedi academy.

Magnolia_3.0 wrote:

guardienne wrote:@Magnolia_3.0

i think there is some greater purpose to what he's doing and i think he chose this and he chose the sacrifices he's making.

and if you are portraying vader as a great man who was brought down by his terrible weakness, i think it sort of makes sense? if it's something ben ben hates about himself and learnt to hate about himself, he'd identify with this from snoke's version of events, no?

@guardienne

I see the character of Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, as the most intense and interesting of this plot (and it's not a fan thing), it's the conditions and expressions we notice throughout the film, the books ... it's interesting to note How he seems to be so sincere with his feelings and at the same time be so distant ... it's a clear conflict (he hides something devastating ... I do not think it's just immaturity ...). Sometimes I get the impression that he went through such difficult situations as Rey, but he just made a wrong choice and thinks it's too late to go back.

@Magnolia_3.0

i think moreover the story makes more sense if it was his choice, a very very difficult choice but he feels that no one else can do it. it leaves the door open to make other choices. outright manipulation doesn't. i have read people imagining this in fanfiction and it's valid of course, but it leaves much to be desired in terms of agency and i'm not really buying the hapless victim.

i and others have fairly extensively (i think) written about possible trauma. one intriguing possibility is leadership betrayal. it'd be most likely something that happened around luke, as luke is someone ben would have looked up to presumably? i also think that leadership betrayal (broadly speaking it's a combination of a high stakes situation and your leader essentially putting your life needlessly at risk - such as would happen in a battle situation) means that he lost faith in 'his side' so devastatingly that the dark side came to him easily.

likely snoke would have stipulated that he renounces his family and their politics and whatnot wholesale, and it's a commitment he is trying to fill rather than something he is trying to reject. this makes more sense to me with the film anyway.

if you want more, i can probably point you to the relevant sources.

and, yes, he is an intriguing dude

I know this is a bit off topic but...
I've just watched TFA again..
Everyone is convinced he's thumping his wound at the end to gain strength through pain. But I actually think he was just trying to stop it hurting - I remember that wince during the fight with Finn; he hit himself just after it.

motherofpearl1 wrote:I know this is a bit off topic but...
I've just watched TFA again..
Everyone is convinced he's thumping his wound at the end to gain strength through pain. But I actually think he was just trying to stop it hurting - I remember that wince during the fight with Finn; he hit himself just after it.

@motherofpearl1

Or he was trying to disguise a bigger pain (emotional, probably). It's common to inflict pain in parts of your body to make a chronic pain disappear, for example.

Tell me about it.
Believe me I've had experience of that.

Piper Maru wrote:

motherofpearl1 wrote:I know this is a bit off topic but...
I've just watched TFA again..
Everyone is convinced he's thumping his wound at the end to gain strength through pain. But I actually think he was just trying to stop it hurting - I remember that wince during the fight with Finn; he hit himself just after it.

@motherofpearl1

Or he was trying to disguise a bigger pain (emotional, probably). It's common to inflict pain in parts of your body to make a chronic pain disappear, for example.

@Piper Maru

Oh my gosh, I've never thought of it that way, although it makes sense. I always thought he was trying to draw out the Darkside through pain, as it wasn't something that was coming to him as easily as he had hoped.

I'm going to go a little personal but I have experience with an absent father and when I was younger I hero-worshiped him. When he came around, I wanted to be with him. I always looked forward to whenever I would see him next. As I got older though, that illusion of who I thought he was cracked. I began to resent him and then that bred into hate him. I can actually see Kylo feeling the same way in that sense, it's one of the major reasons why I can relate to him so much. Kylo probably thought his dad was the coolest person ever, I mean he was a smuggler who raced around the galaxy getting into adventures. It's like he was a superhero, I'm sure. But as he got older, become more self-aware, I'm sure where absence once made the heart fonder, Han's absence now cut like a steel knife. It fed onto any insecurities he may have had and I'm sure Snoke used that to his advantage to boot. 

The problem is that I don't think Kylo ever hated Han. Kylo actually loved his father and that made the hurt so much worse when it came to Han not being around. He thought that killing his father would make him stronger because he convinced himself that he hated him. So killing him was never going to make Kylo stronger, in my opinion.

nemapasara wrote:I'm going to go a little personal but I have experience with an absent father and when I was younger I hero-worshiped him. When he came around, I wanted to be with him. I always looked forward to whenever I would see him next. As I got older though, that illusion of who I thought he was cracked. I began to resent him and then that bred into hate him. I can actually see Kylo feeling the same way in that sense, it's one of the major reasons why I can relate to him so much. Kylo probably thought his dad was the coolest person ever, I mean he was a smuggler who raced around the galaxy getting into adventures. It's like he was a superhero, I'm sure. But as he got older, become more self-aware, I'm sure where absence once made the heart fonder, Han's absence now cut like a steel knife. It fed onto any insecurities he may have had and I'm sure Snoke used that to his advantage to boot. B

The problem is that I don't think Kylo ever hated Han. Kylo actually loved his father and that made the hurt so much worse when it came to Han not being around. He thought that killing his father would make him stronger because he convinced himself that he hated him. So killing him was never going to make Kylo stronger, in my opinion.

@nemapasara

After re-watching the first movie and also learning about the Dark Luke scenario that both Mark Hamill and Lawrence Kasdan had wanted to see happen at the end of the trilogy, I think that we'll eventually see a lot of "he has too much of his father in him" when it comes to Ben. And the major character arc for Luke (which also gets hinted at in Bloodline as a likely theme for him in the ST) is that Obi-Wan's initial lie very much feeds into his need for a heroic father he can look up to. Which he gets in the end of RotJ, being able to save his father and prove that "there's still good in him."  It's also not that hard to figure out (you'd think) that's why he's carrying around a burned up death mask and talking to the imaginary heroic deceased grandfather while being manipulated by Snoke. He also has this very bad need for some kind of accepting and heroic father figure. Which at some point in the past, Han let him down badly. Which also ties in with Han's overall character arc, his death was his redemption in trying to save his son after previous failures as a parent. The will (we hope) play out over the course of the ST. But in the meanwhile, Ben's complicated feelings towards his father is a big part of the 'weakness' Snoke is manipulating. Even after the realization of what he's done by murdering Han, you'd expect that Ben will continue to double down because Snoke has presented himself and Vader as the father figures Ben needs to live up to/satisfy.

It's also another way he contrasts with Rey. While she does clearly look up to Han because of his reputation as a smuggler, her need is more basic. She simply needs to believe that somebody somewhere loved her and values her enough to come back for her. It's why she puts up with her miserable existence on Jakku long after she's old enough and self-reliant enough to get the Hell out of there. Finn's inadvertant appearance in her life actually fulfills that role, by getting her off Jakku and coming back for her.

@snufkin

Oh, he'll definitely double down going forward. He's aware of his weakness moreso than ever before and I'm sure he's smart enough to realize that Snoke knows it, too. He'll be hellbent to prove his loyalty to Snoke after his defeat but instead of his hate being focused on Han or even Luke, it'll be focused on Rey. Obviously he's not going to kill Rey, so something's got to give. I truly think this image of Snoke that he's built up in his mind will come crashing down. Just thinking about Adam playing that, it gets me giddy.

nemapasara wrote:@snufkin

Oh, he'll definitely double down going forward. He's aware of his weakness moreso than ever before and I'm sure he's smart enough to realize that Snoke knows it, too. He'll be hellbent to prove his loyalty to Snoke after his defeat but instead of his hate being focused on Han or even Luke, it'll be focused on Rey. Obviously he's not going to kill Rey, so something's got to give. I truly think this image of Snoke that he's built up in his mind will come crashing down. Just thinking about Adam playing that, it gets me giddy.

@nemapasara

The image is aleady compromised and his offer to her is sort of a betrayal of Snoke. But that's going to be a big part of TLJ, he feels trapped and like he has nowhere to go other than Snoke and the FO, so he'll do whatever it takes to maintain that position. It sounded from the DVD commentary that was a big motivator in him following through Snoke's orders to kill Han, to not just demonstrated his loyalty but regain Snoke's trust (the meeting/confrontation with Hux shows that Snoke has no patience with Ben after his two botched attempts to get the map). It has to be a big part in both the backstory and whatever happens on Ache-to, how this other individual (does that term apply to non-humans?) managed to find an opening to exploit Ben's insecurities. It might be kind of like the relationship Young Joe has with Abe in Looper, the need for a father figure. My best guess is that Han's eventual role in the ST isn't just to torment his son with guilt over the murder, but to serve as the eventual father figure/role model of self sacrifice and love.

In terms of Rey, he's going to be angry/hurt over the perceived rejection and you know there will be an order from his boss to take her out because she's a perceived threat. What'll be interesting will be to see how they play out his issues with his father and Snoke with how Rey comes to terms with whatever happened with her parents. That's a big part of why my best guess is that Snoke won't just target Rey b/c she's a FS threat from the other side. But that what happened to her and her parents is his unfinished business from putting together the FO. And that'll eventually be part of what finally makes Ben have the courage to break from his fear/insecurity and finally understand what Han did for him.

nemapasara wrote:I'm going to go a little personal but I have experience with an absent father and when I was younger I hero-worshiped him. When he came around, I wanted to be with him. I always looked forward to whenever I would see him next. As I got older though, that illusion of who I thought he was cracked. I began to resent him and then that bred into hate him. I can actually see Kylo feeling the same way in that sense, it's one of the major reasons why I can relate to him so much. Kylo probably thought his dad was the coolest person ever, I mean he was a smuggler who raced around the galaxy getting into adventures. It's like he was a superhero, I'm sure. But as he got older, become more self-aware, I'm sure where absence once made the heart fonder, Han's absence now cut like a steel knife. It fed onto any insecurities he may have had and I'm sure Snoke used that to his advantage to boot. 

The problem is that I don't think Kylo ever hated Han. Kylo actually loved his father and that made the hurt so much worse when it came to Han not being around. He thought that killing his father would make him stronger because he convinced himself that he hated him. So killing him was never going to make Kylo stronger, in my opinion.

@nemapasara

Love and hate are very close, and yes,I believe Kylo adored Han- the deleted scene where he practically hugged his father's seat on the Falcon broke my heart. I think he felt as if his father was disappointed that he wasn't more like him; you could see the hurt in his face when he looked into Rey's mind and saw how quickly she had bonded with his father.

It seems like Han was a father to everyone except his own kid.

@motherofpearl1 - I've wondered if they might go with showing that part of what was painful about seeing Rey's bond with his father is the suspicion that she's likely the type of kid Han would've liked to have had.

snufkin wrote:@motherofpearl1 - I've wondered if they might go with showing that part of what was painful about seeing Rey's bond with his father is the suspicion that she's likely the type of kid Han would've liked to have had.

@snufkin

What would he have thought if he'd found out she was Force sensitive, I wonder?

snufkin wrote:

nemapasara wrote:@snufkin

Oh, he'll definitely double down going forward. He's aware of his weakness moreso than ever before and I'm sure he's smart enough to realize that Snoke knows it, too. He'll be hellbent to prove his loyalty to Snoke after his defeat but instead of his hate being focused on Han or even Luke, it'll be focused on Rey. Obviously he's not going to kill Rey, so something's got to give. I truly think this image of Snoke that he's built up in his mind will come crashing down. Just thinking about Adam playing that, it gets me giddy.

@nemapasara

The image is aleady compromised and his offer to her is sort of a betrayal of Snoke.  But that's going to be a big part of TLJ, he feels trapped and like he has nowhere to go other than Snoke and the FO, so he'll do whatever it takes to maintain that position. It sounded from the DVD commentary that was a big motivator in him following through Snoke's orders to kill Han, to not just demonstrated his loyalty but regain Snoke's trust (the meeting/confrontation with Hux shows that Snoke has no patience with Ben after his two botched attempts to get the map). It has to be a big part in both the backstory and whatever happens on Ache-to, how this other individual (does that term apply to non-humans?) managed to find an opening to exploit Ben's insecurities. It might be kind of like the relationship Young Joe has with Abe in Looper, the need for a father figure. My best guess is that Han's eventual role in the ST isn't just to torment his son with guilt over the murder, but to serve as the eventual father figure/role model of self sacrifice and love.

In terms of Rey, he's going to be angry/hurt over the perceived rejection and you know there will be an order from his boss to take her out because she's a perceived threat. What'll be interesting will be to see how they play out his issues with his father and Snoke with how Rey comes to terms with whatever happened with her parents. That's a big part of why my best guess is that Snoke won't just target Rey b/c she's a FS threat from the other side. But that what happened to her and her parents is his unfinished business from putting together the FO. And that'll eventually be part of what finally makes Ben have the courage to break from his fear/insecurity and finally understand what Han did for him.

I agree that Han's eventual role won't be one of guilt, though we'll probably feel Kylo's torment over what he did even more so. Han touching his face after being killed was probably the biggest hint that Kylo would be redeemed. In that one touch you get a sense of forgiveness, remorse and love. If Kylo continues to slip into the deep end, Han's death would be in vain. And yes, he's definitely trapped - he said as much to Han with "it's too late". He is loyal to the First Order because he doesn't think he has anywhere else to go and that's the tragedy of it. I want Kylo to save himself in the long run but he needs someone to show him that there's another option. That's where Rey comes in, someone who he has a strange and unexplained connection to. That's not for nothing. I always go back and forth on whether I think Snoke will order Kylo to kill Rey or to kill Luke. Mostly because I think Kylo might go to Ahch-To with the main objective of killing Luke but instead gets sidetracked by Rey. And if that happens than it's a direct violation of Snoke's orders. Either way, Snoke's probably not going to be happy with him by the end of TLJ because Rey's definitely not dying and I doubt Luke's dying .

@nemapasara

i think my general problem with 'someone showing him the path' is that this is what han is doing. he is offering a way out.

i don't think it's about being saved. i know it's being banded about, but either it's going to be very repetitive, what is rey supposed to offer him? a return to jedihood? her undying love? it's a little unlikely.

i have just rambled about this whole thing to a friend...

i'm having this vague idea that because he kills his own father, that his path is going to be interesting. i feel like they could have played this in so many different ways, but they chose one that isn't about submission to snoke really (i guess that one is debatable) and that isn't a triumph for anyone, it's steeped in a lot of melancholy. i imagine a scenario for example where han comes in guns blazing and demands that he come home. i imagine a scenario where he sort of almost does and then turns against his father. and i feel like whichever scenario i play with, they went with, nope, not going to do that. like, it's pitched in a place that alludes to all these but never really goes there. we could have, but chose not to.

i feel like reylo is nice an all but the meat of kylo's story is with this scene.

This is not to say that character death cannot be done well. The death of Han Solo in Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a notable example of a good character death. At the end of the line, having grown as much as it was capable for him to grow, Han Solo’s doomed attempt to reach out to his wayward son represented an unusual step for the character—an assumption of responsibility by someone who was generally prone to shirk it. His death posed no threat to future narratives and, in fact, served as a jumping off point for a multiplicity of possible stories. It was a crucial step on the heroic journeys of the series’ new protagonists, Rey and Finn, as well as a further fall from grace for the series’ primary antagonist, Kylo Ren. In other words, his death achieved things. Unlike the bad deaths of Trip, Pietro, and Abbie, which lessened the possible avenues of exploration, Han Solo’s death opened up a number of paths for the franchise writers to investigate.

https://saysaraelle.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/sparing-and-being-spared-avoiding-character-death-in-captain-america-civil-war/

but i feel like because han's death wasn't an accident and because it hints at so much history, it means they cannot simply rewrite ben in flashbacks into this good boy who always wanted to please everyone or whatever.

like it wouldn't actively make any sense. but i also cannot imagine that snoke was ever in a position to so completely make ben believe that his parents were people who it was alright to kill or something. if he was brainwashed or mind-controlled in some other way, why bother with so much dialogue. why so much hesitation.

i feel like he has been offered and he refused and that is a fact. and it's not a refusal that means something trivial, it's an irreversible refusal.

i keep trying to think where i have seen anything like this before. and nothing comes to mind.

but i think any idea of him being redeemed through rejecting snoke would have to be motivated through something that runs against his own values. not because someone such as rey suggests it to him because he's not interested in external motivation, we know this. and i don't see how he can be internally motivated. sure, they could crank up his relationship to rey to 11 and he would heroically save her but i'm honestly not that interested. perhaps i'm in the minority but i don't want him to simply save her and ride into a sunset because of how awesome that was. i feel like the more interesting pitch would be to investigate how that is not possible.

but anyway, i'm probably sounding like a broken record now.

@guardienne - Time for me to torment you again! While I'm reasonably confident having seen RJ's previous work/writing that it will be being a choice/agency, I don't think it's a matter of just "he was given an out and rejected it..." That's the sort of logic you see in play with arguments that he doesn't deserve to be given a sympathetic treatment at all. He rejected the offer, ergo it's off the table. It's all or nothing thinking. The option Han offers him is to return to his family. He doesn't see it as a way out, he sees it as being allowed back into his family, ergo the situation which wasn't working for him and which caused him enough misery to flee and accept Snoke's offer. Han's only failure is in being inarticulate enough to not realize/express this enough to his son until it's too late. Which is the moment when he caresses his face and then Ben realizes on some level what that means, "what happened is in the past and what I am offering to you is the love and acceptance you always wanted and didn't get." He didn't get that from his family and it's not presented to him as the actual offer. Hence he doubles down and rejects it. He can't back to who he was and despite how bad the situation is with Snoke, it's a classic Sunk Costs/Throwing Good Money After Bad scenario. If he goes back now, he becomes even more self loathing and alienated from the family and society he feels rejected him.

In terms of Rey, it definitely has to be more complicated than just "he did it for a girl." That's the logic which ran the PT into some pretty shallow waters and undercut Padme's role. But unlike Han, Rey is not somebody from his family or his previous life. She's completely independent of those groups and has none of the baggage associated with either one. She's also somebody who's from his future and a situation with new potential. That's one of the details from the Forceback vision, everything that happens in their two interactions is depicted from Left to Right. This is the technique for showing progression in time. She's also the only character shown to share both his unique set of emotional/psychological issues, in terms of isolation, alienation, loneliness, longing for belonging, and Force Powers. She offers him a path (one he very much starts trying to pursue and control from the moment they collide on Takodana) out that's probably more attractive and likely to happen than what Han tried to offer him. Han was able to finally get through in demonstrating his love and acceptance. But part of the clash and interaction he will have with Rey, it will be about the both of them forging a new path together. And what she offers him is the path that he needs, regardless of just taking the option of following either branch of his family, be it returning to his life as Han and Leia's son or his current situation as Vader's heir. They both have to find out who they are in and of themselves, not just as parts of their family. Which ties back to RJ's comment about TLJ being a coming of age story, that's a pretty common theme.

@snufkin enough with the torment

i agree that she represents more than his family (which is why her being luke's daughter would be counterproductive to that scenario) and i agree with you how that would change things. it's not that i disagree with this *cough* ... i think my problem is with that changing things to the point where he is acceptable. i don't think he is. like, within that universe.

i don't think luke is acceptable either. or rey.

but i feel like what she's got is inheriting things he already knows from his uncle and a skill set akin to his. i mean, that's great, but it'll take some creative writing to get sexual tension to the point where they aren't just fighting to something where there is mutual respect. and part of me gets depressed at the thought that she'll learn something endearing about him to make him more palatable. like, i think that's part of the appeal for me, that it's not a palatable character. the othering is very strong with the dude. it's good. let him be other. i feel like he needs to go forward, i think we agree on this, but i don't see rey being keen on that (WITH HIM ??!!) and i can also see her character selling out for simply siding with the more powerful force dude.

equally, i'm utterly uncomfortable discussing wanky power levels of any sort.

it's unsolvable at the moment for me. which is ok.

i think i'm just looking at that particular scene because it's special because he doesn't simply shut that door but sort of throws a grenade into the hallway. just to be on the safe side. i think that's some strong statement from his side. and it's going to be interesting to see to what degree that will be justified.

@guardienne I think that Rey will learn something tragic about Kylo, rather than endearing. A character can be tragic without it making him more loveable.

I tend to think that, by killing Han, Kylo did slam shut the door on him ever becoming a part of the normal society again, and though it's not a popular opinion, I do think it closed the door on him riding into the sunset with Rey as well. Which of course doesn't preclude either redemption or a complicated love story.

@guardienne 

A part of me sees it as Rey having a subconscious effect on him. Not that he could get redeemed because of Rey's love but that a situation that involves her might make him have an epiphany that makes him want to change. I think there was too much hurt with him and Han for him to leave but the fact that he was even considering it was a stepping stone. That scene was huge in terms of Kylo's development, no doubt about it, but there's moments throughout the movie that shows he's capable of good. Him letting Finn go on Jakku, saying that he still feels the pull to the light, his (arguable) hesitance to use SKB on the Hosnian system, the immediate regret he feels after killing Han. 

Kylo was manipulated, I think that's clear. Leia says it, Han says it. It's not black and white with his character. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong but the reason Kylo killed Han wasn't because he was trying to please Snoke. He killed him to snuff out the light that he still felt inside of him. He thought it would strengthen him in the DS but it had the opposite effect, it says it in both the script and the novel. I don't think he's a good guy, nor do I want him to become some wholesome hero. I think that's why so many people like the idea of Kylo and Rey merging into something new, not a Sith or a Jedi. They both don't fit on either side and, to me, it feels like the Force was never meant to be either. There has to be a convergence, hence why there is so much yin and yang symbolism with them. I see Kylo and Rey as two sides of the same coin that will merge together in some way. It's up to TPTB on how they see that happening, I guess.

ETA: I feel like one of those people who try to excuse his behaviour, trust me I'm not. I like him how he is, too, but I also would like to see some kind of growth in the future. If he stayed the same through the trilogy, I'd find that equally as boring. He could become worse, he could become better. I guess it just comes down to our own interpretations and values. Obviously, I love a good redemption story but I'm not into seeing him becoming Han 2.0. I also feel most connected to him out of the new characters so that plays a part in wanting to see more for him than being a Vader clone.

@Guardienne - I will never yield!

nemapasara wrote:@guardienne 

A part of me sees it as Rey having a subconscious effect on him. Not that he could get redeemed because of Rey's love but that a situation that involves her might make him have an epiphany that makes him want to change. I think there was too much hurt with him and Han for him to leave but the fact that he was even considering it was a stepping stone. That scene was huge in terms of Kylo's development, no doubt about it, but there's moments throughout the movie that shows he's capable of good. Him letting Finn go on Jakku, saying that he still feels the pull to the light, his (arguable) hesitance to use SKB on the Hosnian system, the immediate regret he feels after killing Han. 

Kylo was manipulated, I think that's clear. Leia says it, Han says it. It's not black and white with his character. Maybe I'm interpreting it wrong but the reason Kylo killed Han wasn't because he was trying to please Snoke. He killed him to snuff out the light that he still felt inside of him. He thought it would strengthen him in the DS but it had the opposite effect, it says it in both the script and the novel. I don't think he's a good guy, nor do I want him to become some wholesome hero. I think that's why so many people like the idea of Kylo and Rey merging into something new, not a Sith or a Jedi. They both don't fit on either side and, to me, it feels like the Force was never meant to be either. There has to be a convergence, hence why there is so much yin and yang symbolism with them. I see Kylo and Rey as two sides of the same coin that will merge together in some way. It's up to TPTB on how they see that happening, I guess.

ETA: I feel like one of those people who try to excuse his behaviour, trust me I'm not. I like him how he is, too, but I also would like to see some kind of growth in the future. If he stayed the same through the trilogy, I'd find that equally as boring. He could become worse, he could become better. I guess it just comes down to our own interpretations and values. Obviously, I love a good redemption story but I'm not into seeing him becoming Han 2.0. I also feel most connected to him out of the new characters so that plays a part in wanting to see more for him than being a Vader clone.

@nemapasara

Agreed, one of the main points they show in TFA with Rey's burgeoning friendships with both Finn and Han is how she's a natural influencer. Left to their own devices, each one of them wants to run away and avoid the problems they face. But it's through their friendship with Rey and her influence that they each step up to face the biggest thing they fear and do what's right, regardless of the consequences. Han doesn't survive, but Finn does and likely will emerge stronger and wiser in his battles. But neither of them would've reached that point (and Rey wouldn't have escaped SKB) if it wasn't for her influence. Fully expect that theme to continue in the TLJ as she interacts with Luke and Ben.

Also the part with killing Han, it is because he believes that's what he needs to do and that's what it will take to "destroy" the "weak and foolish" part of himself which he clearly loathes. That's a major part of what Snoke is manipulating and holding out this ideal of a ruthless strong man grandfather as the ideal he should be striving for. He's a product of both of these iconic characters, which ideally you hope how he figures out the issues of their respective legacies and his path in life, he'll emerge (in conjunction with Rey) as something unique and true to himself. It's certainly interesting that he's trying to be Vader 2.0, makes you wonder if in his old life, he was trying to be Han 2.0 or Luke 2.0 and failed because that wasn't true to himself.