a rambly set of thoughts on why Finn is Luke’s son.
Elsepost someone asked if I had a summary of my thoughts on Finn Skywalker, and I didn’t, so here is a rambly and ineffectively structured one.
So first, anyone looking for a Skywalker force user example to use to look for a new Skywalker tends to forget about Leia.
If you consider Finn - who is noted in the prequel novella about his life to be a natural leader who rallies his other Stormtroopers and who in the novelization Poe says several times seems to have some sort of inspiring effect upon Poe, making Poe feel like he can do anything, feel alert and refreshed and ready to take action - as an heir to *Leia*’s way of being a force user, then there’s a big clue.
Look how that entire room of Resistance generals listens to him. He’s not just nobody, he’s a Stormtrooper, yet no one is suspicious. No one consider him a n00b. Instant trust, a thing that Poe’s POV in the novelization takes pains to point out. That feeling Poe says is one that makes you feel like throwing in with him and following him anywhere. Know who else Poe has similar thoughts about? Yup. General Organa. He heroine worships her.
1. Finn’s designator, 2187, is Leia’s cell number in ANH.
2. Like Luke in ANH, Finn, dressed as a Stormtrooper, goes to that cell and rescues a beautiful enemy captive! He even whips that helmet off like Luke did.
3. Carefully watch everything Finn does in the tie fighter and the MF.
3a. He guns like Luke.
3b. He has a “woo hoo/good shooting/ don’t get cocky” thing with Poe like Luke had with Han.
3c. He *picks up and looks at the little training sphere thing* that Obi-Wan had Luke training with on board the MF. A little sphere thing that *zapped Luke* the same way our new droid sphere, BB8, zaps Finn when he meets Rey.
3d. A *tentacle creature grabs him and is trying to eat him* and he has to be rescued by his companion(s). He also gets the garbage chute callback with Phasma.
He is also the person whose seemingly mundane experience (shooting wompa rats/as a janitor on Starkiller Base) is what results in the destruction of the Death Star du jour. Rey has no involvement in that aspect of the plot at all.
No matter who Rey is, I firmly believe that Finn is the Skywalker. Consider that Kathleen Kennedy said that the saga films are about the Skywalker family. In the SWU, like America, kids take their father’s last names by default traditionally, and wives use their husband’s. Ben Solo. In the EU, Leia Organa-Solo, Jaina, and Anakin Solo, vs Luke’s son, Ben Skywalker. Mara Jade Skywalker, Luke’s wife. In the film we don’t known what name Leia used before the divorce. So we were more likely to be looking for a male Skywalker than a female anyway.
Add to that the fact that early on when the lead candidate for Finn was a blond blue-eyed white guy it was rumored he was to play Luke’s son (and they were looking for a black or biracial British woman to play Rey), and the fact that they had John Boyega use an American accent for Finn…
Early in TFA, when Finn has had his moment of truth/I cannot be a Stormtrooper moment, Kylo gives him a pointed look, right? He shows later that he knows exactly which Stormtrooper Finn is, has learned his name. Then later in the snow he battles first Finn, who then gets knocked out, then Rey, and does the “it *is* you” line that a canon source has now said we should not necessarily consider to indicate he knows her already but that he thinks she’s the one he sensed “awakening.“
Now consider that perhaps what hit Ren’s radar was that Finn was maybe force sensitive, but also Rey hit his radar that way, so he didn’t know which one of them had “awakened.” Then, the “it *is* you” becomes the moment when Ren decides it must’ve been Rey, not Finn…but really it’s both.
Who uses the Skywalker lightsaber first? Finn does. Finn lights that thing up first, not Rey.
The evidence for Rey being a Skywalker is largely cosmetic. She’s a pilot…sort of. The prequel novella actually shows us that she has only ever piloted one thing before, and that all her piloting and mechanical knowledge comes from the same place Finn’s shootin’ and battle knowledge comes from: simulations. Long ago she found a huge sim library of ships and flight sims and it was her only intellectual outlet, so she memorized it. Also, she only flies the MF and she isn’t that great at it, and the MF is not a fighter anyway. She has a junk sort of speeder that is red, but she also has a lot of junk left over from the Battle of Jakku. She lives in an at-at torso, like Luke in the tauntaun, but so? It is *there*. Lots of people live in wrecked ships on Jakku and drive salvaged vehicles.
What are the things that aren’t circumstantial? Luke quite specifically never can speak droid to R2. But Rey can speak to both BB8 and Chewie instantly in what is obvs a use of the force - Finn even calls her on the Chewie thing. Know who in ANH can understand anyone, and shows it by understanding both R2 and Chewie in the first half of ANH? Not Luke. Obi-Wan.
So Luke’s lightsaber calls to her? Well, she gets NEAR it first. It shows her scenes she couldn’t have been there for (Bespin) which indicate the memory is stored in the device, which could indicate she has psychometry. Then she sees a memory that is possibly hers observed from another perspective, then one of Luke and R2, has a future vision, has an odd one about the Knights, and she hears two different Obi-Wans. And as mentioned previously she doesn’t use the lightsaber first. Finn does. So the lightsaber calling to her says nothing specifically “Skywalker” about her.
I’d also like to note that structurally, Ren and Finn’s encounter is given foreshadowing and import. If Finn is just some rando, why? Finn is a co-lead but people never speculate about his ancestry beyond his skin color. If Finn was still a white guy you couldn’t shut people up about how he is so clearly Luke’s son.
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