How did killing Han weaken Kylo Ren?

nemapasara wrote: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.

@nemapasara

In the end, many redemption stories are resolved with a character making a decision and taking action in some sort of climatic moment... because draaamaaaa

If you look at the OT, Vader was never going to leave with Luke when Luke first tries to appeal to him, not just because of internal reasons but also because a change of heart in that moment just doesn't create the amount of drama that the eventual scene with Palpatine does. Han's scene in TFA is in a way a bit like that first Luke/Vader scene where a character tries to persuade someone to come back but fails.

This was probably discussed a thousand times already, but I just re-watched TFA and something clicked inside my head.

When Kylo says "Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him." I believe Ben Solo tried to do the right thing once, tried to be the good guy and save someone, and he failed. His weakness (compassion and overall feelings) probably screwed him big time and he decided to atone for this becoming "evil" and destroying this part of him.

What if he accepted to become Snoke's apprentice because he was convinced there was no other way?

guardienne wrote:@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
I think you might be underestimating just how much emphasis they could put on the impact of Han's murder on his son. It was a big deal for everybody, but I feel it was a huge deal for Kylo. I'm a believer that it represented the first - and from a certain point of view the most important - step to Kylo's salvation. The writers need only show that clearly, because Han's death going ignored (or Rey simply saving Kylo instead in a repeat fashion of what already happened) would be hard for any audience to buy. As long as Han's sacrifice is given the proper narrative weight and respect there will be no problem with Rey carrying on in his stead and finishing what he could not. As always it largely depends on effective storytelling.

@saracene i was being a bit sarcastic with the 'endearing' comment. i remember some cartoon somewhere... kylo going, do you wanna know about my tragic backstory and then stabbing han and now he's the dude who has some kind of ad hoc tragic backstory it's a bit mind-boggling.

i think i'm just mindful that he's already done the thing that screws up everyone else's reaction to him. but then my guess that that was kind of always the case anyway. so, i find it interesting to hold these ideas in my head, if that makes sense. he'll keep being that dude but then we'l learn something else that cannot overturn anything we already know about him because that's not how this piece of information will work.

@nemapasara (i'm gonna have to learn that name! it does sound a bit like a yoga pose.)

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.

oh i do want the development. i want ALL the development. but i don't want it at the expese of neutering the character. i no longer read much commentary here, so i'm going by a lot of imagined stuff, sorry for that. i'm also not really interested in a redemption. i have argued myself silly around this, purely on the basis of hat kind of narrative we are getting mostly, and i'm feeling decidedly biased towards pretty much anything non-redemptive. it's icky. i hate attaching moral value to actions and i hate the tendency to think that people have to sacrifice themselves to be acceptable. they'll have to put in the hours to sell that to me. and if it's done well, i'll be okay, but somehow there's a real danger of cheapening the characters and to make things easily palatable. all the stuff that i hate.

i think the problem wrt manipulation is that in my eyes, just from the movie, i don't see it happening. he might not know everything he could and should know and so on but i feel that he makes tough choices and that is pretty cool with me. that was my jumping-off point, that he's not controlled. he's always shown to make his choices and he knows they are his as well. so, at the moment the movie isn't delivering on that. i'm not doubting it per se, i'm just not seeing it.

it's difficult, i'm trying not to spoil myself and not heaping expectations on the story, so 'm just rambling here

@snufkin

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.

ohhh i like that!



(i have many talents but finding pics to illustrate my reactions isn't one of them. i'm so sorry)

@piper maru

I believe Ben Solo tried to do the right thing once, tried to be the good guy and save someone, and he failed. His weakness (compassion and overall feelings) probably screwed him big time and he decided to atone for this becoming "evil" and destroying this part of him.

What if he accepted to become Snoke's apprentice because he was convinced there was no other way?

hmmm... i believe snoke offered something no one else did and he also offered to do away with his 'good' identity seeing as it was probably something that ben at the time felt he didn't want anymore (i think he assumes the new name more or less voluntarily) but i can't see him simply going to the dark side for failing to be good in that sense.

i think there is some dirty secret that involves luke and being asked to do something that goes against ben's values. so, it'd be the other way around. i feel that he's holding on to some crooked version of values, the way he keeps mentioning treason. it's bothering him when people violate values ... and it makes sense that because his value system was violated (through being ordered to kill someone for example) that destroying the resistance is then something that comes to him relatively easily because they are clearly corrupt.

i don't feel he went to the dark side to atone, as in to become the person everyone always thought he was anyway... but it's a possibility. i haven't entertained that in a while.

@frolickingfizzgig

As long as Han's sacrifice is given the proper narrative weight and respect there will be no problem with Rey carrying on in his stead and finishing what he could not.

it's funny because i'm failing at seeing this from rey's pov, i don't know whether that is the movie's failure or mine, and so seeing as kylo is the hero, i kinda go, but he's ok, he doesn't need rescueing and/or saving because he's only reacting to a world that probably always found him inacceptable. but, at any rate, they'd be silly for not giving han's death weight. it'd be a proper waste.

Weak and foolish. It could be that he couldn't save somebody (weak) or was betrayed by somebody (foolish to believe). I have seen people think of him as under performing, lonely outcast with no friends in his teenage and young adult years. That was why I decided to forget about Reylo after watching TFA in the first place - reading all those speculations about the Jedi academy and how Ben was just jealous of Rey.

But is there actually evidence that support him having no friends? And if we some flash-backs to the time of training with uncle Luke it could be interesting to see Ben Solo quite different from one could imagine. Or see him change.

Obviously what happened was painful enough to want to destroy the real Ben Solo. It could be betrayal and lies (and hypocrisy), could be weakness - both ways seem possible.
Maybe, just maybe, he also tried to "run away" from Ben Solo, run away from what he did or who he was by becoming Kylo Ren. "Stop running, come home, we miss you." In the end it was Han, who decided not to run anymore and face his son. So he gave him a lesson, Luke could never give (because Han is his father) by showing him, that you can be strong enough to face your failures and work to make them right.

But I also like the interpretation of him making choices to achieve his own goal. In that way he also could mirror his parents - obsessed with their own selfish agendas.

SkyStar wrote:Weak and foolish. It could be that he couldn't save somebody (weak) or was betrayed by somebody (foolish to believe). I have seen people think of him as under performing, lonely outcast with no friends in his teenage and young adult years. That was why I decided to forget about Reylo after watching TFA in the first place - reading all those speculations about the Jedi academy and how Ben was just jealous of Rey.

But is there actually evidence that support it? And if we some flash-backs to the time of training with uncle Luke it could be interesting to see Ben Solo quite different from one could imagine. Or see him change.

Obviously what happened was painful enough to want to destroy the real Ben Solo. It could be betrayal and lies (and hypocrisy), could be weakness - both ways seem possible.
Maybe, just maybe, he also tried to "run away" from Ben Solo, run away from what he did or who he was by becoming Kylo Ren. "Stop running, come home, we miss you." In the end it was Han, who decided not to run anymore and face his son. So he gave him a lesson, Luke could never give (because Han is his father) by showing him, that you can be strong enough to face your failures and work to make them right.

But I also like the interpretation of him making choices to achieve his own goal. In that way he also could mirror his parents - obsessed with their own selfish agendas.

@SkyStar

That is an excellent interpretation about Ben facing his own mistakes eventually, just like Han did at the very end. I've never seen it conveyed like that before, and it's very intriguing. As far as Rey being at Luke's academy when it all fell apart, that was debunked in Bloodlines (author Claudia Grey). Rey was on Jakku 9 to 10 years before any of that happened. As a matter of fact, there was no mention of Rey at all in the novel, which was written from Leia's point of view. That book put the final nails in the Reywalker coffin for many people.

Yup, I know, that is why I returned to Reylo with all my heart <3. I was just thinking maybe he had a friend or a person who he cared about, other than his family. That he could not save or was betrayed by. But that would be to much detail for one movie.

guardienne wrote:@nemapasara (i'm gonna have to learn that name! it does sound a bit like a yoga pose.)

oh i do want the development. i want ALL the development. but i don't want it at the expese of neutering the character. i no longer read much commentary here, so i'm going by a lot of imagined stuff, sorry for that. i'm also not really interested in a redemption. i have argued myself silly around this, purely on the basis of hat kind of narrative we are getting mostly, and i'm feeling decidedly biased towards pretty much anything non-redemptive. it's icky. i hate attaching moral value to actions and i hate the tendency to think that people have to sacrifice themselves to be acceptable. they'll have to put in the hours to sell that to me. and if it's done well, i'll be okay, but somehow there's a real danger of cheapening the characters and to make things easily palatable. all the stuff that i hate.

i think the problem wrt manipulation is that in my eyes, just from the movie, i don't see it happening. he might not know everything he could and should know and so on but i feel that he makes tough choices and that is pretty cool with me. that was my jumping-off point, that he's not controlled. he's always shown to make his choices and he knows they are his as well. so, at the moment the movie isn't delivering on that. i'm not doubting it per se, i'm just not seeing it.

it's difficult, i'm trying not to spoil myself and not heaping expectations on the story, so 'm just rambling here  

(My username is, sadly, the result of my bored 13-year-old self thinking that the first and last letters of each of my given names would be cool mashed up together. I've become attached to it.  )

Okay, I understand what you're getting at and I actually agree about him making his own choices. The thing about the manipulation is that it's something that happened when he was younger, not to say that he's being manipulated now. I'm going to go Disney on you but I compare it to young Kovu being essentially indoctrinated by his mother to avenge Scar by killing Simba. She literally describes it as training and that she's taught him well. That's what I see the Snoke and Kylo dynamic as. Someone who whispered in his ear when he was little, molding him into a weapon that he could use. It doesn't mean that Kylo's controlled or has no agency, it's more along the lines that he was trained to believe certain things. It sucks that the movie doesn't make that clear, I hate that they cut young Ben/Snoke from the forceback, that would've done SO much for the narrative. Now I'm grumbling.

Kylo's choices are one of the most interesting things about his character because they often contradict with what is good for his side. I can't actually think of one thing that he did that ended up helping the First Order in any way. They're rooted in selfishness and his desire to serve a personal goal and they end up being his undoing in the end. He's definitely on a tight rope with Snoke and in TLJ, he's going to be stuck in between a rock and a hard place because I don't see things going the way he wants them to.

One of the things I always have to remind myself of is to temper my expectations. There's so much dialogue going on in this fandom, which I love, but it's easy to get swept into believing everything. I'm just going to hope they do the story justice. 

SkyStar wrote:Weak and foolish. It could be that he couldn't save somebody (weak) or was betrayed by somebody (foolish to believe). I have seen people think of him as under performing, lonely outcast with no friends in his teenage and young adult years. That was why I decided to forget about Reylo after watching TFA in the first place - reading all those speculations about the Jedi academy and how Ben was just jealous of Rey.

But is there actually evidence that support him having no friends? And if we some flash-backs to the time of training with uncle Luke it could be interesting to see Ben Solo quite different from one could imagine. Or see him change.

Obviously what happened was painful enough to want to destroy the real Ben Solo. It could be betrayal and lies (and hypocrisy), could be weakness - both ways seem possible.
Maybe, just maybe, he also tried to "run away" from Ben Solo, run away from what he did or who he was by becoming Kylo Ren. "Stop running, come home, we miss you." In the end it was Han, who decided not to run anymore and face his son. So he gave him a lesson, Luke could never give (because Han is his father) by showing him, that you can be strong enough to face your failures and work to make them right.

But I also like the interpretation of him making choices to achieve his own goal. In that way he also could mirror his parents - obsessed with their own selfish agendas.

I believe there's evidence supporting the opposite. I can't remember what tie-in novel it was, but there's a moment where Leia talks about a younger Ben coming in from playing with friends.

Leia did remember him playing with friends in Bloodline. Dunno if that means something, but it is canon  

guardienne wrote:@saracene i was being a bit sarcastic with the 'endearing' comment. i remember some cartoon somewhere... kylo going, do you wanna know about my tragic backstory and then stabbing han and now he's the dude who has some kind of ad hoc tragic backstory it's a bit mind-boggling.

i think i'm just mindful that he's already done the thing that screws up everyone else's reaction to him. but then my guess that that was kind of always the case anyway. so, i find it interesting to hold these ideas in my head, if that makes sense. he'll keep being that dude but then we'l learn something else that cannot overturn anything we already know about him because that's not how this piece of information will work.

@nemapasara (i'm gonna have to learn that name! it does sound a bit like a yoga pose.)

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.

oh i do want the development. i want ALL the development. but i don't want it at the expese of neutering the character. i no longer read much commentary here, so i'm going by a lot of imagined stuff, sorry for that. i'm also not really interested in a redemption. i have argued myself silly around this, purely on the basis of hat kind of narrative we are getting mostly, and i'm feeling decidedly biased towards pretty much anything non-redemptive. it's icky. i hate attaching moral value to actions and i hate the tendency to think that people have to sacrifice themselves to be acceptable. they'll have to put in the hours to sell that to me. and if it's done well, i'll be okay, but somehow there's a real danger of cheapening the characters and to make things easily palatable. all the stuff that i hate.

i think the problem wrt manipulation is that in my eyes, just from the movie, i don't see it happening. he might not know everything he could and should know and so on but i feel that he makes tough choices and that is pretty cool with me. that was my jumping-off point, that he's not controlled. he's always shown to make his choices and he knows they are his as well. so, at the moment the movie isn't delivering on that. i'm not doubting it per se, i'm just not seeing it.

it's difficult, i'm trying not to spoil myself and not heaping expectations on the story, so 'm just rambling here

@snufkin

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.

ohhh i like that!



(i have many talents but finding pics to illustrate my reactions isn't one of them. i'm so sorry)

@piper maru

I believe Ben Solo tried to do the right thing once, tried to be the good guy and save someone, and he failed. His weakness (compassion and overall feelings) probably screwed him big time and he decided to atone for this becoming "evil" and destroying this part of him.

What if he accepted to become Snoke's apprentice because he was convinced there was no other way?

hmmm... i believe snoke offered something no one else did and he also offered to do away with his 'good' identity seeing as it was probably something that ben at the time felt he didn't want anymore (i think he assumes the new name more or less voluntarily) but i can't see him simply going to the dark side for failing to be good in that sense.

i think there is some dirty secret that involves luke and being asked to do something that goes against ben's values. so, it'd be the other way around. i feel that he's holding on to some crooked version of values, the way he keeps mentioning treason. it's bothering him when people violate values ... and it makes sense that because his value system was violated (through being ordered to kill someone for example) that destroying the resistance is then something that comes to him relatively easily because they are clearly corrupt.

i don't feel he went to the dark side to atone, as in to become the person everyone always thought he was anyway... but it's a possibility. i haven't entertained that in a while.

@frolickingfizzgig

As long as Han's sacrifice is given the proper narrative weight and respect there will be no problem with Rey carrying on in his stead and finishing what he could not.

it's funny because i'm failing at seeing this from rey's pov, i don't know whether that is the movie's failure or mine, and so seeing as kylo is the hero, i kinda go, but he's ok, he doesn't need rescueing and/or saving because he's only reacting to a world that probably always found him inacceptable. but, at any rate, they'd be silly for not giving han's death weight. it'd be a proper waste.

@guardienne

I don't know really what to think about "weak and foolish like his father" because like Han is a very complex character,  it can equally refer to some of his qualities or some of his defect. About the way Snoke could ultimately corrupt Ben after years of brainwashng in the shadows, I came to some supposition through cross-over between different character Kylo parallels:
- Beast
- E.T.
- Simba

Until I read Bloodline, I was convonced that Ben would have turned to the DS as a teenager. However, we all know that Bloodline make it clear that things were still "alright" until the whole galaxy and Ben himself learnt that Anakin Skywalker actually became Darth Vader, the most feared man across the galaxy and responsible for the death of millions of persons. We know that it literally destroyed Leia's chances to become Chancelor because the Senators couldn't accept the idea to have Vader's daughter holding that power. So, Bloodline reveals what happened at the political level but keeps the reader voluntarily in the dark about what happened at the Jedi Academy. How did Luke's student ever react when they learnt the truth about their mentor and his nephew? One can imagine that there was general confusion and even anger because after all this conflict led to the death of so many people.

In this regard, @gwendy85 wrote a chapter about this in her compelling fanfiction What She's Worth:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6665920/chapters/20212048
I don't think that Rey was present since she was already supposed to be on Jakku but still I think it raises an interesting point about how people might have react toward the Skywalker/Vader's spawn. I don't necessarily want to excuse Kylo's crimes but sometimes monsters exist because we (un)voluntarily create them. I can perfectly imagine that Ben was already quite solitary given his incredible Force powers and that a lot things fell into place in people's mind when the truth about his lineage was revealed. So the question is: could it be that Ben could have killed his mates because they wanted to make him pay - either by humilating him or even perhaps by killinghim - for his grandfather's crimes:?:


I have begun - finally - to read Aftermath and the very first pages of the book describe literally how the crowd becomes a "mob" as people try to make the Emperor's statue fall. What if the Jedi students had become some mob and that Kylo had to defend himself against a whole mob while Luke wasn't there:?:

If one applies the crossover between the different stories that TFA paralleled, it could make sense:

Beauty & the Beast: Kill the Beast

This song is about prejudice. People don't know anything about the Beast but assume that he's evil anyway because of his appearance. Leia was judged by the others not in regard to her actions but in regard to her bloodline. What about Ben?

E.T. the Extraterrestrial: Abandoned & Pursued

E.T.'s journey begins precisely when he's pursued through the forest by a mob of scientists who want to get him and must hide. When I was young, I used to be scared by this scene especially because of the music and E.T.'s screams of distress

Lion King:

There again, there is a chase. Given the similarities between Hamlet and both TFA & the Lion King, Kylo might be considered as some prince in exile. The question is to know: why would the prince have gone into exile? In Simba's case, the exile was caused by a "misunderstanding" with some conspiracy behind. In Kovu's case, the exile was cause by treason but largely based on the prejudice that Kovu couldn't be any different than Scar. Could it be that Kylo's "exile" was some mix of both? There was dome huge misundestanding around the destruction of the Jedi academy, which led his own uncle and father to assume that he lose his temper after learning the truth about his lineage and that there was definitely too much Vader in him?


So now, how could Snoke have entered the scheme very concretly? If we apply again some crossover there, there are this time interesting similarities between E.T., Simba & BB8:



1. They are all alone, pursued & in grave danger
2. They are found by people who save them and keep them save
3. These saviors" meabn them no harm and had no bad intention toward them
==> What would have happened to E.T. if Elliott would have sold him to the scientist instead?
==> What would have happened to Simba if Timon & Pumbaa would have gone their way?
==> What would have happened to BB8 if Rey hadn't saved him from Teedo, would have refused to keep him safe or sold to Unkar Plutt?
Things would have gone very differently and probably ended very bad for them all if they had crossed the path of some malicious human being.

So the question is: what if Snoke had precisely entered the scheme at this moment to introduced himself as Ben's only salvation after years of brainwashing? If it happened so, he chose the right time: Ben was wounded physically and a total mess emotionally not only because of what would had happened but also terribly confused about the meaning of his lineage and probably angry about the secret kept by his family. Snoke could have played both the role of the sympathetic "uncle" and Force mentor, a sort of dark version of Maz Kanata making him believe i.e. that neither the galaxy nor his family would ever forgive him for what he is and what he's done.


So if this really happened so, it's quite understandable why Ben would have some dilemma to leave Snoke since he's the only one who would have helped him when he needed, perhaps even saved his life. Plus, it could explain why he calls the Republic/Resistance/Light Side users "murders & traitors" because he would have personally experienced their desire of revenge toward his grandfather, which would have led him to think that the Jed way/Light Side/Good is hypocrite. What if Kylo called Ben "weak & foolish" precisely because Ben believed blindly in the Jedi way/Light Side/Good, had some naivety toward human nature and just couldn't let go. It doesn't sound very much like Han at a first sight but it seems to me that Ben was someone too idealist, honest and sensitive to not be upset/hurt by the reality of human nature. If one think about it, what does Kylo want? He wants to supress any emotions and extinguish any light within him. Perhaps, he thinks it's the only way to make him not care anymore about the way people behave in general and/or think about him. However it causes pain because the boy precisly can't help but care about the way people behave and just can't let go of that.

The way he treats Rey is so strange and so telling at the same time: he idealizes her; he can't help but tell her the truth; he can't help but be honest with her; he can't help but care about the way she sees him (creature in a mask, monstah, etc...). No matter what we think about his behavior, I don't think that one can say: Kylo abused of Rey's confidence by manipulating her. There is even a sort of naivety about his behavior toward her, especially when he asks her "You still want to kill me?" tilting his head like a puppy. He was even so honest with her during the Force moment that it led him (apparently) to keep his promise to show her the ways of the Force, which ultimately led Rey to take advantage of the situation by using his own energy/power to crush him very badly and in a quite humiliating way. That's why I think that he might be a hurt Beast  in TLJ and behave toward hurt coldly because she might have been the only person who he was ready to trust after so many years and she might have (un)voluntarily broken him in some very personal way that she hasn't realized yet. Plus, if we take account of the fact that he behaved around her exactly the way he doesn't want to and that it left him just defeated & humiliated, no doubt that Snoke will exploit that and make him feel that his compassion for the girl wasn't worth.

@guardienne - do not provoke the California Bear!

Spoiler:

Finn & Han were warm-up for what will happen when Rey is stuck on an island with Luke and Ben, who are going to be more complicated/tougher situation. She already did start to influence to Ben with how far he went off target once she came into the picture (and got called out by Hux in front of their boss).

Would redemption really mean sacrificing himself though? I don't know if that really lines up with the story we've already been given at all. The writing seems to stress that Kylo doesn't even see Ben as a real individual ("your son is gone"), that from his perspective they are separate entities, one of which he wants purged. He isn't even allowed to speak "Ben's" name, and just for simplicity's sake I'm not totally unconvinced that we aren't going to get something along the lines of Kylo dying and Ben living. This is more likely to occur if Kylo is just a totally deluded dude who thinks he's doing the right thing for some delusional reason and who is going to be painfully smashed over the head with the fact that he was wrong (very likely, IMO). As much as I think the whole notion of Kylo being a necessary part of Ben is very interesting from a psychological point of view, it might ultimately be too complicated and convoluted for a 3-part narrative like this. Sometimes characters really are just wrong, and with that in mind it would be hard for me to call Kylo dying a sacrifice on Ben's part, not if Ben is wrong and it's Kylo who was not real all this time.

Piper Maru wrote:This was probably discussed a thousand times already, but I just re-watched TFA and something clicked inside my head.

When Kylo says "Your son is gone. He was weak and foolish like his father, so I destroyed him." I believe Ben Solo tried to do the right thing once, tried to be the good guy and save someone, and he failed. His weakness (compassion and overall feelings) probably screwed him big time and he decided to atone for this becoming "evil" and destroying this part of him.

What if he accepted to become Snoke's apprentice because he was convinced there was no other way?

@Piper Maru

Interesting idea.  I guess I just assumed that the "weak and foolish" referred to Han the shady smuggler.  It didn't occur to me that it could have been referencing Han the rebel hero.

@guardienne

i think there is some dirty secret that involves luke and being asked to do something that goes against ben's values. so, it'd be the other way around. i feel that he's holding on to some crooked version of values, the way he keeps mentioning treason. it's bothering him when people violate values ... and it makes sense that because his value system was violated (through being ordered to kill someone for example) that destroying the resistance is then something that comes to him relatively easily because they are clearly corrupt.

My major stumbling block with this is that I imagine it would have to be a pretty terrible violation in his eyes to lead to the killing of his father, whom he clearly loved.  And I just can't quite make the leap to the filmmakers being willing to portray Luke, the hero of Star Wars, as having done something horrible.  Showing Luke to be human and flawed and mistaken, yes, that I can imagine.

reylo1992 wrote:

guardienne wrote:@saracene i was being a bit sarcastic with the 'endearing' comment. i remember some cartoon somewhere... kylo going, do you wanna know about my tragic backstory and then stabbing han and now he's the dude who has some kind of ad hoc tragic backstory it's a bit mind-boggling.

i think i'm just mindful that he's already done the thing that screws up everyone else's reaction to him. but then my guess that that was kind of always the case anyway. so, i find it interesting to hold these ideas in my head, if that makes sense. he'll keep being that dude but then we'l learn something else that cannot overturn anything we already know about him because that's not how this piece of information will work.

@nemapasara (i'm gonna have to learn that name! it does sound a bit like a yoga pose.)

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.

oh i do want the development. i want ALL the development. but i don't want it at the expese of neutering the character. i no longer read much commentary here, so i'm going by a lot of imagined stuff, sorry for that. i'm also not really interested in a redemption. i have argued myself silly around this, purely on the basis of hat kind of narrative we are getting mostly, and i'm feeling decidedly biased towards pretty much anything non-redemptive. it's icky. i hate attaching moral value to actions and i hate the tendency to think that people have to sacrifice themselves to be acceptable. they'll have to put in the hours to sell that to me. and if it's done well, i'll be okay, but somehow there's a real danger of cheapening the characters and to make things easily palatable. all the stuff that i hate.

i think the problem wrt manipulation is that in my eyes, just from the movie, i don't see it happening. he might not know everything he could and should know and so on but i feel that he makes tough choices and that is pretty cool with me. that was my jumping-off point, that he's not controlled. he's always shown to make his choices and he knows they are his as well. so, at the moment the movie isn't delivering on that. i'm not doubting it per se, i'm just not seeing it.

it's difficult, i'm trying not to spoil myself and not heaping expectations on the story, so 'm just rambling here

@snufkin

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.

ohhh i like that!



(i have many talents but finding pics to illustrate my reactions isn't one of them. i'm so sorry)

@piper maru

I believe Ben Solo tried to do the right thing once, tried to be the good guy and save someone, and he failed. His weakness (compassion and overall feelings) probably screwed him big time and he decided to atone for this becoming "evil" and destroying this part of him.

What if he accepted to become Snoke's apprentice because he was convinced there was no other way?

hmmm... i believe snoke offered something no one else did and he also offered to do away with his 'good' identity seeing as it was probably something that ben at the time felt he didn't want anymore (i think he assumes the new name more or less voluntarily) but i can't see him simply going to the dark side for failing to be good in that sense.

i think there is some dirty secret that involves luke and being asked to do something that goes against ben's values. so, it'd be the other way around. i feel that he's holding on to some crooked version of values, the way he keeps mentioning treason. it's bothering him when people violate values ... and it makes sense that because his value system was violated (through being ordered to kill someone for example) that destroying the resistance is then something that comes to him relatively easily because they are clearly corrupt.

i don't feel he went to the dark side to atone, as in to become the person everyone always thought he was anyway... but it's a possibility. i haven't entertained that in a while.

@frolickingfizzgig

As long as Han's sacrifice is given the proper narrative weight and respect there will be no problem with Rey carrying on in his stead and finishing what he could not.

it's funny because i'm failing at seeing this from rey's pov, i don't know whether that is the movie's failure or mine, and so seeing as kylo is the hero, i kinda go, but he's ok, he doesn't need rescueing and/or saving because he's only reacting to a world that probably always found him inacceptable. but, at any rate, they'd be silly for not giving han's death weight. it'd be a proper waste.

@guardienne

I don't know really what to think about "weak and foolish like his father" because like Han is a very complex character,  it can equally refer to some of his qualities or some of his defect. About the way Snoke could ultimately corrupt Ben after years of brainwashng in the shadows, I came to some supposition through cross-over between different character Kylo parallels:
- Beast
- E.T.
- Simba

Until I read Bloodline, I was convonced that Ben would have turned to the DS as a teenager. However, we all know that Bloodline make it clear that things were still "alright" until the whole galaxy and Ben himself learnt that Anakin Skywalker actually became Darth Vader, the most feared man across the galaxy and responsible for the death of millions of persons. We know that it literally destroyed Leia's chances to become Chancelor because the Senators couldn't accept the idea to have Vader's daughter holding that power. So, Bloodline reveals what happened at the political level but keeps the reader voluntarily in the dark about what happened at the Jedi Academy. How did Luke's student ever react when they learnt the truth about their mentor and his nephew? One can imagine that there was general confusion and even anger because after all this conflict led to the death of so many people.

In this regard, @gwendy85 wrote a chapter about this in her compelling fanfiction What She's Worth:
http://archiveofourown.org/works/6665920/chapters/20212048
I don't think that Rey was present since she was already supposed to be on Jakku but still I think it raises an interesting point about how people might have react toward the Skywalker/Vader's spawn. I don't necessarily want to excuse Kylo's crimes but sometimes monsters exist because we (un)voluntarily create them. I can perfectly imagine that Ben was already quite solitary given his incredible Force powers and that a lot things fell into place in people's mind when the truth about his lineage was revealed. So the question is: could it be that Ben could have killed his mates because they wanted to make him pay - either by humilating him or even perhaps by killinghim - for his grandfather's crimes:?:


I have begun - finally - to read Aftermath and the very first pages of the book describe literally how the crowd becomes a "mob" as people try to make the Emperor's statue fall. What if the Jedi students had become some mob and that Kylo had to defend himself against a whole mob while Luke wasn't there:?:

If one applies the crossover between the different stories that TFA paralleled, it could make sense:

Beauty & the Beast: Kill the Beast

This song is about prejudice. People don't know anything about the Beast but assume that he's evil anyway because of his appearance. Leia was judged by the others not in regard to her actions but in regard to her bloodline. What about Ben?

E.T. the Extraterrestrial: Abandoned & Pursued

E.T.'s journey begins precisely when he's pursued through the forest by a mob of scientists who want to get him and must hide. When I was young, I used to be scared by this scene especially because of the music and E.T.'s screams of distress

Lion King:

There again, there is a chase. Given the similarities between Hamlet and both TFA & the Lion King, Kylo might be considered as some prince in exile. The question is to know: why would the prince have gone into exile? In Simba's case, the exile was caused by a "misunderstanding" with some conspiracy behind. In Kovu's case, the exile was cause by treason but largely based on the prejudice that Kovu couldn't be any different than Scar. Could it be that Kylo's "exile" was some mix of both? There was dome huge misundestanding around the destruction of the Jedi academy, which led his own uncle and father to assume that he lose his temper after learning the truth about his lineage and that there was definitely too much Vader in him?


So now, how could Snoke have entered the scheme very concretly? If we apply again some crossover there, there are this time interesting similarities between E.T., Simba & BB8:



1. They are all alone, pursued & in grave danger
2. They are found by people who save them and keep them save
3. These saviors" meabn them no harm and had no bad intention toward them
==> What would have happened to E.T. if Elliott would have sold him to the scientist instead?
==> What would have happened to Simba if Timon & Pumbaa would have gone their way?
==> What would have happened to BB8 if Rey hadn't saved him from Teedo, would have refused to keep him safe or sold to Unkar Plutt?
Things would have gone very differently and probably ended very bad for them all if they had crossed the path of some malicious human being.

So the question is: what if Snoke had precisely entered the scheme at this moment to introduced himself as Ben's only salvation after years of brainwashing? If it happened so, he chose the right time: Ben was wounded physically and a total mess emotionally not only because of what would had happened but also terribly confused about the meaning of his lineage and probably angry about the secret kept by his family. Snoke could have played both the role of the sympathetic "uncle" and Force mentor, a sort of dark version of Maz Kanata making him believe i.e. that neither the galaxy nor his family would ever forgive him for what he is and what he's done.


So if this really happened so, it's quite understandable why Ben would have some dilemma to leave Snoke since he's the only one who would have helped him when he needed, perhaps even saved his life. Plus, it could explain why he calls the Republic/Resistance/Light Side users "murders & traitors" because he would have personally experienced their desire of revenge toward his grandfather, which would have led him to think that the Jed way/Light Side/Good is hypocrite. What if Kylo called Ben "weak & foolish" precisely because Ben believed blindly in the Jedi way/Light Side/Good, had some naivety toward human nature and just couldn't let go. It doesn't sound very much like Han at a first sight but it seems to me that Ben was someone too idealist, honest and sensitive to not be upset/hurt by the reality of human nature. If one think about it, what does Kylo want? He wants to supress any emotions and extinguish any light within him. Perhaps, he thinks it's the only way to make him not care anymore about the way people behave in general and/or think about him. However it causes pain because the boy precisly can't help but care about the way people behave and just can't let go of that.

The way he treats Rey is so strange and so telling at the same time: he idealizes her; he can't help but tell her the truth; he can't help but be honest with her; he can't help but care about the way she sees him (creature in a mask, monstah, etc...). No matter what we think about his behavior, I don't think that one can say: Kylo abused of Rey's confidence by manipulating her. There is even a sort of naivety about his behavior toward her, especially when he asks her "You still want to kill me?" tilting his head like a puppy. He was even so honest with her during the Force moment that it led him (apparently) to keep his promise to show her the ways of the Force, which ultimately led Rey to take advantage of the situation by using his own energy/power to crush him very badly and in a quite humiliating way. That's why I think that he might be a hurt Beast  in TLJ and behave toward hurt coldly because she might have been the only person who he was ready to trust after so many years and she might have (un)voluntarily broken him in some very personal way that she hasn't realized yet. Plus, if we take account of the fact that he behaved around her exactly the way he doesn't want to and that it left him just defeated & humiliated, no doubt that Snoke will exploit that and make him feel that his compassion for the girl wasn't worth.

@reylo1992

Great analysis! Maybe, it could be a situation ala Credence Barebone where he could not control his powers and he destroyed the temple but not by his will. Situation that was triggered by others turning against him. Maybe Snoke helps him to control his dark side powers.

some notifications don't turn up in my inbox??

@sacrebleu

i agree that it's a leap... i'm thinking that one thing doesn't have to be equal to the other.

the moral injury supposes that luke does something/asks him to do something... this means alienation from the family. but it doesn't mean a desire to kill any of them? it's clearly a difficult thing for him to do. i think it might mean that luke has become morally bankrupt i.e. a religious fanatic.

in my head it sort of works as an unfortunate coincidence. snoke wants him on the dark side, and he's ready to be on the dark side and in my head snoke is pretty upfront about possibly having to kill people close to him and at the time that might sound okay. i mean, it's not like kylo and/or ben isn't morally compromised. but i think he's compromised because of events rather than personality.

@frolickingfizzgig

i think that is where we differ, but i can see that making ben *not wrong* might be a bit of a tall order to tell in 3 movies. i'm thinking it's a waste of story if he is wrong because it would be more interesting (to me) to merge the moral with the spiritual plot and argue that dark side and the light are both legit.

nemapasara wrote:

guardienne wrote:@nemapasara (i'm gonna have to learn that name! it does sound a bit like a yoga pose.)

oh i do want the development. i want ALL the development. but i don't want it at the expese of neutering the character. i no longer read much commentary here, so i'm going by a lot of imagined stuff, sorry for that. i'm also not really interested in a redemption. i have argued myself silly around this, purely on the basis of hat kind of narrative we are getting mostly, and i'm feeling decidedly biased towards pretty much anything non-redemptive. it's icky. i hate attaching moral value to actions and i hate the tendency to think that people have to sacrifice themselves to be acceptable. they'll have to put in the hours to sell that to me. and if it's done well, i'll be okay, but somehow there's a real danger of cheapening the characters and to make things easily palatable. all the stuff that i hate.

i think the problem wrt manipulation is that in my eyes, just from the movie, i don't see it happening. he might not know everything he could and should know and so on but i feel that he makes tough choices and that is pretty cool with me. that was my jumping-off point, that he's not controlled. he's always shown to make his choices and he knows they are his as well. so, at the moment the movie isn't delivering on that. i'm not doubting it per se, i'm just not seeing it.

it's difficult, i'm trying not to spoil myself and not heaping expectations on the story, so 'm just rambling here  

(My username is, sadly, the result of my bored 13-year-old self thinking that the first and last letters of each of my given names would be cool mashed up together. I've become attached to it.  )

Okay, I understand what you're getting at and I actually agree about him making his own choices. The thing about the manipulation is that it's something that happened when he was younger, not to say that he's being manipulated now. I'm going to go Disney on you but I compare it to young Kovu being essentially indoctrinated by his mother to avenge Scar by killing Simba. She literally describes it as training and that she's taught him well. That's what I see the Snoke and Kylo dynamic as. Someone who whispered in his ear when he was little, molding him into a weapon that he could use. It doesn't mean that Kylo's controlled or has no agency, it's more along the lines that he was trained to believe certain things. It sucks that the movie doesn't make that clear, I hate that they cut young Ben/Snoke from the forceback, that would've done SO much for the narrative. Now I'm grumbling.

Kylo's choices are one of the most interesting things about his character because they often contradict with what is good for his side. I can't actually think of one thing that he did that ended up helping the First Order in any way. They're rooted in selfishness and his desire to serve a personal goal and they end up being his undoing in the end. He's definitely on a tight rope with Snoke and in TLJ, he's going to be stuck in between a rock and a hard place because I don't see things going the way he wants them to.

One of the things I always have to remind myself of is to temper my expectations. There's so much dialogue going on in this fandom, which I love, but it's easy to get swept into believing everything. I'm just going to hope they do the story justice. 


Maybe, just maybe, he also tried to "run away" from Ben Solo, run away from what he did or who he was by becoming Kylo Ren. "Stop running, come home, we miss you." In the end it was Han, who decided not to run anymore and face his son. So he gave him a lesson, Luke could never give (because Han is his father) by showing him, that you can be strong enough to face your failures and work to make them right.

But I also like the interpretation of him making choices to achieve his own goal. In that way he also could mirror his parents - obsessed with their own selfish agendas.

@nemapasara

i think there was value in forging this new identity. i'm very interested in that and i haven't come to any particular conclusion. wrt your earlier point about manipulation, i'm headcanoning that snoke was overt about the order, that he was also overt about it being a sacrifice and that it would be honourable. i think he thinks of it as an honourable pursuit that means he can no longer live his old life and that somehow coincides with luke's betrayal? that's how it works in my head anyway. it's interesting when you compare it to anakin's initiation. i think it's interesting that both of them were already jedi and then turned to the dark side. like, does anyone get recruited to the dark side off the bat??!!

@snufkin

didn't even realise california and the bear was a thing??!!

guardienne wrote:some notifications don't turn up in my inbox??

@sacrebleu

i agree that it's a leap... i'm thinking that one thing doesn't have to be equal to the other.

the moral injury supposes that luke does something/asks him to do something... this means alienation from the family. but it doesn't mean a desire to kill any of them? it's clearly a difficult thing for him to do. i think it might mean that luke has become morally bankrupt i.e. a religious fanatic.

in my head it sort of works as an unfortunate coincidence. snoke wants him on the dark side, and he's ready to be on the dark side and in my head snoke is pretty upfront about possibly having to kill people close to him and at the time that might sound okay. i mean, it's not like kylo and/or ben isn't morally compromised. but i think he's compromised because of events rather than personality.

@guardienne

I certainly agree that whatever his grievance he wasn't actively looking to kill his father.  In the film he can sense his father's presence as soon as the Millennium Falcon lands, so it's reasonable to assume that he was aware of Han hiding only a few feet away.  You see Kylo hesitate and then turn and walk away towards the catwalk.  I think he was trying to avoid a confrontation.

Furthermore, we were never specifically told that he wants to find Luke in order to kill him.  That was the assumption and it may indeed be true, but it's not yet been established.

Where I think I agree with @FrolickingFizzgig is that while Kylo may have known in the abstract that his cause/mission might necessitate killing family members, the reality may land on him in ways he didn't anticipate when the abstract becomes reality.

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

That's how I see it too, and I don't think that means woobifying him but just seeing what the movie wanted you to notice? There's a reason why I feel a certain way towards a character like Kylo, but I don't have the same thoughts about Hux for example (your standard villain and evil guy), and I don't care about what will happen to him.
Mte about Rey: "the belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead", and for Kylo the past means Snoke/the FO but his family, too. Rey is not his past, and in the future he won't do the same mistake when it comes to her. As KK said Kylo is a lost boy, and in tfa, right after Han's murder, we see him unconsciously beginning to make his first steps (quote by Obi Wan lol) towards the right path. Also agree about Rey and Kylo finding their own way together,  when it comes to the Force too (since I can't see either of them becoming Jedi); to me they're basically two sides of the same coin or two missing puzzle pieces: on surface one represents the Light side while the other is the Dark Side, but they are made compatible by the fact that they're both ying & yang, dark & light, princess & prince, beauty & the beast (just in different measures) and especially by the fact that they've spent their whole lives feeling lonely, abandoned, unloved and seeking belonging.

I'm sure this is something noticed by most of you and discussed previously, but it just occurred to me that Kylo/Ben is so emotional and wrapped up in the moment after killing Han that he's completely unaware of Chewie taking that shot. We've seen him stop blaster shots previously, so there's really no reason he should have been shot there except he was so crippled emotionally.

(I should be studying, but here I am re-watching TFA).

I find the ST to be the opposite of the PT....in as much as rewatching them has the opposite effect on me. The more I watch the PT the more I realise that although entertaining,and with some good performances and interesting ideas, they were not very good films.
The more I watch the ST, the better they get on repeated viewings.
I am absolutely sure years from now people will realise that not only is TLJ the best of the SW saga (up till now), but the film, and Mark and Adam's performances, were unfairly snubbed at the 2018 Oscars.