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[candlewisps]

Hi! I was just wondering, why did Kylo Ren unmask in front of Rey? From the viewer's point, he barely knew her and had all the reasons to look fierce and menacing in front of her in order to extract information. Did he feel any sympathy for her? It didn't look like he realized she was Force Senzitive, therefore trainable by him or Snoke, so he would make her feel familiar with his face. I've heard many theories, but I am really curious on yours.

Hiya back, @denisaiko!!

I think there are a few reasons combinedwith why he likely removed the mask, but to start off with: you bring up what Ithink to be a very key difference in Poe and Rey’s respective interrogationscenes to begin with: that Kylo “had allthe reasons to look fierce and menacing in front of her in order to extractinformation”.

Except in Rey’s case, he didn’t. Atleast not in the way he did with Poe. To Kylo, and the First Order, Poe isalready firmly understood to be a member of the Resistance. Not just a member,but a fighter. Prior to his interrogation, Poe had already engaged them incombat, in open rebellion to their actions. With Poe, you really need to go inwith a “go hard or go home” attitude from the get go if you have a hope ofretrieving information, as he is someone who has already openly defied theFirst Order many times over. There is no need to pamper or treat him gently, noneed to give him an “easy way out”, because he is already certifiably establishedas an enemy combatant who will absolutelyresist.

Rey is no such thing—at least not yet.Up to the point Kylo meets Rey, all she is guilty of is being a scavenger whoflew away with a droid and a ‘traitor’. She has no known previous ties to theResistance, she hasn’t really gone around spouting any anti-First Order agenda,she’s just sort of “there”. From Kylo/the First Order’s perspective, she isjust someone who could have gotten caught in the mix, and is therefore someonewho might be pliable or easily swayed into giving up the map if she is providedan ‘easy way out’. Rey shooting at Kylo down on Takodona could just be seen bythem as self-defense. At this point they just don’t know where any of her‘true’ loyalties stand, so there’s no point in going to direct torture if there’sa chance that the information can be drawn from her willingly.

Poe’s interrogation started with himbeing tortured head-on. Rey’s began with the possibility of getting what theyneeded without having to resort to such brutal methods. Kylo may be manythings, but I don’t think for a single second that Ben has ever likedcausing people pain, especially where it might be unnecessary. He only goesback to interrogate Rey with more ruthless intent after Snoke gives the order.(Not to mention the fact that torturing someone would also be painful for himas a result, right?? As a Force-sensitive he would be able to subsequently feel anyanguish he caused his captives??)

Anyways. One of the reasons he removedhis mask was to help along the interrogation on his terms, by getting theneeded information without having to resort to a harsh mind-probe. If younotice, Kylo only removes the maskonce Rey refers to him as a “creature ina mask”. A creature. A ‘creature’ is something that brings to mind thedistinctions of beastly, animalistic, and otherworldly. In other words: separate,unfamiliar, and unrelatable. Frightening, even. By Rey outright calling and/orbelieving him to be a ‘creature’, she is placing a barrier between them thatmore easily allows her to displace any sentiments or fears she may have for thecoming interrogation. I believe part of the reason he removed the mask was toremove that sort ‘security blanket’ she had fashioned for herself. Kylo wasfully intending to throw her for a loop, because he knew his appearance wasn’tanything near what she was expecting.

And it had the exact effect he was hoping for: she was surprised as all hell andtheir sudden ‘relatableness-on-more-even-ground’ made her extremelyuncomfortable. He wasn’t scarred, disfigured, or ugly as sin. He wassmooth-faced, young (so so young I’m going to cry), and innocentlooking. In the TFA novelization, she observed these things, and even thoughtabout how he could have been just anyone passing by on the street. From anarrative standpoint, this was also meant to reflect the audiences’ own reactionto Kylo’s reveal: shock, uncertainty, and discomfort upon seeing anon-villainous looking ‘villain’. It’s a punch to the gut, it’s meant to be make audiences, andsubsequently Rey herself, feel uneasy.

So Boom. Rey’s confidence is nowheavily unbalanced, and a more relatable interrogator is one a captive can moreeasily identify with and therefore release information to. It is much easier tohate and defy someone you can’t establish common ground with. It is much easierto hate those we categorize as “other”.

Kylo’s goal in this is further depictedwith the “You know I can take whatever I want” line. He is providing Reyanother easy out so that he doesn’t have to rely on figurative mind-rape, so heis letting her know that even if she wanted/planned to resist it would bepointless, and she would just be setting herself up for needless pain. I don’tthink Kylo is a sadist, so that’s not what he wants. It’s also possible hedoesn’t want to use such an invasive technique because Kylo knows, firsthand,what it’s like to have another swimming around your consciousness, your safeplace, because he knows that Snoke does it to him all the time to sort of‘monitor’ him.

It might also be possible that‘creature’ hit him in a way that made him severely uncomfortable, a way hewasn’t expecting, so it in some way prompted the masks removal. ‘Creature’ is aword all too familiar and interrelated to ‘Monster’, so I believe that Kylo,being who is he is, is very, very sensitive to that word.Ridiculously so. He has so much self-hatred for himself, and he probably thinksof himself as a monster in more ways than one, but to hear the word attributedto him from someone other than himself may have caused the Ben Solo inside him,still alive and struggling, to react futilely against being labeled somethingso despicable.

And yes, I do believe on some level heheld a measure of sympathy for her. Snoke even comments later, in TFAnovelization, that Kylo seems to have some compassion in this regard. I thinkits more likely than not that the compassion Kylo felt stemmed from theirsimilar issues of loneliness and isolation, something that hits far too closeto home for him. He understands all too well the feeling of being trapped, sothat lends itself to a certain form of sympathy. He says out loud (to make heraware that he is indeed capable of extracting legitimate information from herhead) that he knows she feels lonely, and that at night she is “desperate tosleep”—his own inner turmoil likely lends itself to insomnia and chronicnightmares. It’s just something he can understand all too well.

And I think on some level, howeverunconscious, he might possibly have recognized some level of Force-sensitivity in her—I meanby the time they meet, Rey has already had her “awakening” of sorts, where shehad the Force-vision in Maz’s basement. Not to mention, if he truly believed her to be ‘normal’, Kylo might have just been able to extract the map from her mind on Takodona, or he wouldn’t have felt it necessary to have her physically restrained during the interrogation? It might even be a minute part of the reason he feels “compassion” towards her, because most of the other Force-sensitives in the galaxy he was ordered to kill.

I hope this answers your question, and thank you so so much for your patience!!