First thing that needs to be said here: THIS ARTICLE WILL BE FULL OF SPOILERS. AND NOT JUST FOR PART 7. POTENTIAL HUGE SPOILER FOR PART 8 SO READ ON ONLY BEING COMFORTABLE WITH THAT.
So everyone is walking away from The Force Awakens talking about how great it was and how it felt like a real Star Wars movie and how J.J. Abrams did the impossible. But the other thing everyone seems to be doing is making fun of the Kylo Ren character. Calling him whiny and a cry-baby. Sorry, but if you hear ANYONE say this, pull them aside and laugh openly in their faces for ten minutes because they do no understand how a “character arc” works. We are not supposed to get flawless characters, good OR bad, in the first part of what is going to be an on-going story. You get one aspect of their personality. Usually one that will get worked on and advance. But Remy, Rey was perfect. Yes, so far. Kinda like how Luke was pure in the first movie, right? But we will SEE her struggle in the next movie when she finally starts trying to master her force abilities. And in regards to Crylo Ren, the haters will all be eating their words. By the third film, I can promise you, Kylo Ren (or Darth Solo as I pray he is known by then) will be Star Wars baddest, most nuanced and complicated bad guys the series has ever thrown at us.
For all you rolling your eyes, read on please.
Tantrums You Say, As If You Are Foreign To Them….
Yes, tantrums. This is the aspect that haters seem to be focusing on. Oh look, a young man doesn’t get his way and throws a fit. That never happens. Oh wait, I, myself, had punched 8 holes in my drywall between my 15th and 18th birthdays. Am I proud of this? No, but guess what? Young men who are lost and confused and overwhelmed OFTEN act out physically. And you know who puts us into check in our lives when we throw tantrums?
Our parents.
Now, based off Force Awakens alone, we KNOW that Kylo Ren has had some serious issues with the male and female mentors in his life. Things did not work out with his Dad at all. Then they shipped him off the train with Luke, where things went so poorly for him he killed all Luke’s padawans and ended that relationship with another male mentor badly. THEN, he gets snagged up by Snoke and manipulated and insulted to no end with there never being a compliment or kind word given to him for all he does. Also, lest we forget, Luke was whiny as hell (and SPOILER ALERT, Luke is his Uncle) and Anakin was whiny as f#ck, too. The apple never falls far from the tree, people. It is dumb to assume Abrams and Kasdan didn’t factor that in very much on purpose.
So you think his throwing tantrums shows him as immature and whiny? IT IS SUPPOSED TO. THAT IS THE WHOLE POINT! He is a young man who lacks any real father figure or mentor, so he gets pissed off and breaks sh#t. Yeah, sorry but that is brilliant writing. That is every angsty teenager ever, and that is EXACTLY what they were showing us in The Force Awakens. A boy who has great power in the force but has NO control over his emotions, therefore, NO control over his force. But guess what, haters….
Stab Solo: The Force A-Weep-ens
If you paid attention to the movie, his struggle was between his light side and his dark side. He needed to kill one of the sides so he would not be so embattled and emotionally torn. So what does Kylo Ren have to do to ensure he no longer balances on that high wire of emotions?
He has to kill his Dad, Han Solo. Thing is, Kylo is a tortured teen who cannot manage to strength to do that on his own. He can’t. He has too much light left in him. So who does he use to help him kill his father?
HIS OWN F*CKING FATHER!
Oh man, that scene. The death itself may have been telegraphed from a mile away, BUT, the fact that Kylo hands his Dad the saber, hilt facing in. There was a subconscious part of Solo that knew what he was doing but could not stop him because he saw the pain in his own son’s eyes. What people talking about Crylo have yet to say, though, is Crylo DIES in that scene. We NEVER see a tantrum again. That scene was the literal death of that side of him. He may not have mastered his force yet, but at that moment he committed to the dark side and whatever whiny, torn parts of him died with his father’s limp corpse, falling into the fog of space.
You’re mad because you already know I am right. But, buh, buh, wait, it gets worse!
Dude’s Character Arc Will Be INSANE
This is where the character arc comes in. We see him, beaten and bloodied by the end of the movie. The only thing that spared him from Rey ending him was the breakdown of the planet in the wake of the imploding Starkiller base. We then see that Snoke orders Ren brought to him so he can finish training. Snoke knows that he killed his pops (which was the commitment to the dark side they all needed so they could be sure he wasn’t gonna switch teams on them). What you will NOW see because this sh#t is so expertly crafted is, a bitter, angry, vile Kylo Ren. He will no longer be swinging his saber wildly throwing tantrums. He knows his mission now. There is someone out there who is more powerful with the force then him, and he will not have this.
Much like see saw Luke trained and turned into a true Jedi in part two of the original trilogy, we will see the same (and opposite) thing happen to Kylo. He will be trained and made stronger. With that strength will come confidence and a true drive he lacked initially, which led to his honest and teenage like tantrums. The man had no figure to guide him and help him control his gift. In the next film, he will.
Big spoiler coming…..
Rey Is His Cousin: His Family Ties ARE The Balance to the Force
Sorry to drop this bomb on you here, but (though I am sure most of you know) Rey is Luke’s daughter. We know not yet with whom, but we know this because if you play the Disney Infinity Force Awakens level, Kylo battles Rey and at the beginning of the battle, calls her cousin. Yup, cousins. Luke’s kid versus Leia’s kid. But think back to how Rey was in Force Awakens. All light, all hope, gave everyone a chance and handled her few defeats with grace. Now how was Kylo? Angry, empassioned, and not in any control at all. They are the literal balance to the force left in the galaxy. One is yin, the other yang, and now they BOTH know it.
One of the family members representing light and one repping dark, just like original trilogy. That is part of why this movie was so magic. It felt, well, for lack of a better term, right. It f*cking felt like Star Wars again. But make no mistakes, Kylo Ren was “whiny” on purpose. Male teenage angst may be a joke, but that makes it no less real.
And guess what is coming next…..
The New Kylo Ren (Darth Solo?) Being Created Slowly
Kylo Ren will end up being best Star Wars villain yet because outside of Vader, he will be the first bad guy given a real chance to story arc. Anakin stayed whiny. Luke stayed kind of whiny. I think the creators learned from that, and with the death of Kylo’s birth father at his own hands, so will be the death of that self-pity he wore so openly in the first (7th) movie. He is scarred now (will probably get a way better helmet and costume as a result, which will ALSO up his scary factor), he has a new sworn enemy, and he is about to get stronger. So to all those people talking sh#t, realize, in two movies time, this guy will be making people sh#t their pants the minute he appears on-screen.
Sorry, but being someone who has murdered three out of my seven Dads, I can tell you, that stuff changes you. It makes you darker. It makes you former fears a lot less strong. And don’t forget, we don’t know who Snoke is yet, but there are some solid theories out there.
Snoke’s On You: Darth Plagueis or Vader (or Perhaps Neither)
So who is Snoke? Who is this powerful, scarred freak pulling all the strings? We don’t know for sure yet, but there are two solid theories. Darth Plagueis (read expanded U to get better idea), some say he is the son of Palpatine, and some even go here, which blows my mind (and you can peep in above pic). Damn that head scar is similar, but let’s leave it at that for now.
Truth being, we have no idea but we do know the guy is strong as hell and when Kylo trains under him, it will change everything. He WAS a whiny kid in The Force Awakens because that is exactly who he was supposed to be, and with his upbringing and basic psychology, it makes a ton of sense. No one there to redirect or punish him when he had tantrums, so they never stopped. They spell it out pretty easy.
It All Came Down to the Saber
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwHnWB2dCuc&w=640&h=360]
No one I know really noticed this, but Kylo Ren was summed up entirely in his saber. Every single light saber in every single Star Wars movie burns the same and make the same noise. A low, meditative hum. But Ren’s saber? Well, it hissed and cracked like electricity, and if you look at it, it even glowed like the saber itself was slightly out of control, shooting off little red sparks of lightning. LIKE HIM. I think we will come to find out he forged that (imperfectly, maybe from Vader’s?) and I would not be at all surprised if, by the third movie, that saber is more tuned and hums like the others (as by then, Ren will have control). For now, it was more like red lightening (and that is also the reason I believe he needed a hilt, the saber was too much and hard to control and contain). Hell, truth is, he hit Finn with a direct hit and it didn’t kill him, so we don’t even KNOW it is an actual lightsaber yet. We are just ASSUMING. But from its hiss and sparking, who knows?
Regardless of its origin, even his saber spelled out how the character was supposed to be and what we can expect to change. Shocks me how many people claiming to be Star Wars fans don’t notice these great little details (which is what makes this movie so fantastic). Anyway, make fun of Crylo Ren all you want, people, but you better hit me up and tell me I was right all along by the time we get to the 9th movie in this trilogy hits us and every single thing I wrote here ends up being true.
And if I am wrong? I am will just throw a tantrum and break some of my sh#t. Eff it, seems fitting.
I Told You Han Would Die, But I Was Wrong About Kylo (Kind Of)
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