(Kylo
Ren-related spoilers ahead for all three films in the new trilogy, along with a
quick season 4 spoiler for The Good Place.)
There are
a lot of feelings about Kylo Ren out there on the wild Internets, some wildly
positive, some overwhelmingly negative, and all kinds of stuff in between. My
own feelings on the subject vary quite a bit, although I can say two things
pretty definitively: 1) seeing Adam Driver in other films/shows admittedly
increased my interest in Kylo Ren as a character, and 2) the Twitter account
Emo Kylo Ren is amazing. Today, I want to try and sort through this a little.
First of
all, let’s cover the basics. Kylo Ren is a villain. For sure. There’s the stuff
he does to characters we love, of course, like capturing/interrogating Rey,
killing his own father, and attacking Finn. But there’s also the much, much larger stuff he does to many more
characters who we don’t really know, given that he leads the fascist First
Order that terrorizes the galaxy with a ton of bloodshed. The man ordered the
atomization of a planet. He’s not
just a good guy waiting to happen.
It’s also
true that he turned to the Dark Side in part because of the malevolent
influence of Snoke poisoning his mind, and it’s also true that he spends a lot
of time trying to convince himself that he’s less conflicted than he is. It’s a
different sort of characterization: I don’t often a “complex villain” character
desperately trying to run away from a deep-down belief that maybe they’re not really as evil as they wante to be.
His fascination/obsession with Rey at times leads him to give her outs,
attempting to win her over rather than just killing her, which provides her the
openings she needs to stay alive. And at the very end, he does stand with her against the Emperor, even trading
his life force in a sacrifice for her. (Note: to the extent that Redeemed Kylo
Ren works for me, it works mainly based on how doggedly Adam Driver sells it.)
He’s a
lot of things is what I’m saying, and while I’d be reluctant to categorize him
as pure evil, the places where he was manipulated or the moments when he does
something good can’t mitigate or erase the countless devastation that’s been
wrought either by his own hand or at his command. If he’d lived at the end of The Rise of Skywalker, I’d have
certainly wanted to see him face punishment for his crimes. But I’d have liked
to see something more along with that as well.
Just what
that something would’ve been? I hesitate to say “redemption.” I’m not sure if I
can take it that far. But “reform,” or even just “change,” might be a little
closer. Oddly enough, the thing that most brings me around to this feeling has
nothing to do with Star Wars itself.
Instead, my willingness to have seen more from Kylo Ren can be traced back to The Good Place.
In the
middle of its final season, maybe a month before The Rise of Skywalker came out, an episode of The Good Place aired in which Michael is tasked with defending
humanity to a higher being who thinks that humans just aren’t worth the
trouble. He’s spent the year collecting data on whether humans are capable of
change in the afterlife, and here, he’s speaking on Brent, the toughest nut to
crack in the experiment: “Brent spent a year being an absolute diaper load of a
human being, and the point total tells you that. But what the number can’t tell
you… is who he could have become tomorrow.”
That
right there is what gives me pause when it comes to writing off Kylo Ren. To be
sure, he’s a much worse person who’s done far worse things than any human we
saw on The Good Place, and a desire
to change shouldn’t mean he ought to get a free pass on everything he did in
the first 95% of the trilogy. But I also think that the world (or a galaxy far,
far away) can be bettered by people choosing to change, and that means making
room for that to happen, albeit in a way that preserves justice for their victims.
Star Wars and The
Good Place. Not two properties I ever would’ve thought to put together, but
when I started to sort out how I felt about The
Rise of Skywalker’s stab at “redemption” for Kylo Ren, the speech of
Michael’s was the first thing that came to mind, and I realized I couldn’t
dismiss it out of hand.
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