TROS spat in the face of every single abused child who was looking to this fairytale for hope. The sequel trilogy wasn’t about a farm boy looking for adventure or even an abused child falling to villainy, it was about three abused children from the different class systems all rising out of trauma and dysfunction. This was our fairytale, our story, and JJ Abrams perverted it into abuse apologist propaganda in a pathetically desperate attempt to appease the most hateful groups of fans who never understood or appreciated the story to begin with (which is why the story had to be butchered in order to appease them).
1.) Rey
Rey’s parents selling her for profit into slavery was portrayed as a good, loving thing. Child trafficking was literally portrayed as excusable, and even loving, in this children’s film. Just let that sink in for a second.
What is the message there? If your parents did something horrible that caused you years of trauma and torment, you should just not lose faith in them because they may have had a good reason (even if you have no evidence of that). Maybe a space wizard who has been dead for decades forced them to traffic you. This scene makes me want to vomit. This is how a children’s fairytale portrayed parents who sell their children into trafficking:
There is no excuse for this. Rey’s parentage was solved. Her identity crisis was over. This wasn’t needed except to force this abuse apologist message. Oh, and of course to feed the sexist fanboys a bit of eugenics to make them stop whining about how a woman could possibly be important and powerful.
TLJ was about Rey discovering her identity and letting go of her unhealthy, irrational dependency on parents who she never knew, who sold her to an abuser and left her to half-starve alone in a desert. TROS decided to give her a new identity crisis out of literally nowhere just so they could erase all that “You are not your parents, even if your parents don’t love you and/or aren’t special, you are still special and still deserving of love. You can find belonging ahead of you.” stuff with dynastic “Actually, your blood family does entirely define your identity and you should always assume they’re right even when all evidence points otherwise, just ignore your own trauma and blame it on a dead space wizard.”
The whole Rey Palpatine thing left a very bad taste in my mouth. Not just because it’s fucking stupid and something Reddit would write, but because Rey was horrible in TROS. She acted like she was possessed by Palpatine, she stabbed Ben (who she cares for and always had compassion for) to kill while he was distracted. She suddenly acted like she didn’t care about anyone around her. She just overall acted unrecognizable from the warm, loving, empathetic woman we saw in TFA and TLJ. The message here is clearly that because she has this “bad blood”, Rey can’t have an identity for herself. The only thing that saves her is taking on the identity of the good guys, she never finds her own. All the traits she’s had up until now don’t matter, who she actually is doesn’t matter. All that matters is what man’s blood runs through her veins. All Rey is is someone’s granddaughter, because if she wasn’t, then she’d really be nobody.
And thus, JJ Abrams decided that “Anyone can be special, even nobodies. Your worth is not defined by your class or your background.” was a stupid message and instead it should be pure eugenic “You’re only special if you have important people blood/name. Your identity is entirely your (male) family, not your own. No silly woman could have power of her own!”
Rey taking on the name of Skywalker is an utterly shallow attempt to fix the fact that they took every bit of Rey’s real identity from her, took half her soul (Ben is her dyad, two that are one), and then left her alone on a desert planet as if to say that her “true self” is the abused child she once was and that she can’t actually escape that. The moral of this fairytale was “You don’t need friends or love, as long as you have a glow stick (material possessions) and a super duper special name that makes you important (which you weren’t before, you were nobody).”
Not to mention that Rey basically named herself after Luke, no one else she knew actually used that name. And Luke didn’t do anything to deserve that, he rejected her at every single opportunity and only did the bare minimum to help her after being berated into it. Han was her surrogate father and the first person to offer her a life outside of Jakku. Leia was her loving mentor and pseudo-mother. Ben was the love of her life who has always been there for her when she needed someone to confide it, someone to see her true self and tell her she wasn’t alone. Luke was nothing but some cranky old guy who made her feel awful about herself and never accepted her (not to mention telling her she was inherently dangerous and also trying to murder her soulmate when he was a child which the real Rey was furious about).
2.) Finn
Finn’s character has not been given much in terms of development. For the most part, he’s been reduced to “Rey’s friend” and then “Finn’s friend”, with a little moment in there where he got to be with Rose and have his own identity but TROS of course decided to reward racist bullies and cut out Rose instead of giving the rest of the fans a satisfying story.
In TROS though, the one thing that Finn actually did that was heroic by himself, his character defining moment of turning from The First Order, was credited to the force and described like it wasn’t a choice at all. Which brings up a lot of questions and, as Han would say, “That’s not how the force works!”. It was so entirely unneeded to take that from Finn, but they gave up all of Rose’s potential screentime to do it.
There’s also the moment when Poe, our alleged hero, so hilariously (i.e callously) compares himself being a criminal to Rey being a scavenger and Finn being a stormtrooper. Completely ignoring the fact that they had no choice in that, as if their trauma doesn’t matter at all. It’s a small moment, but it was very insensitive and highlights how much the writers Did Not Care or even understand their main characters’ experiences.
3.) Ben
I don’t even know where to start with Ben Solo. His ending was the one that broke me as a person, I had so many hysterical sobbing fits over it that my loved ones were actually getting tired of it and it genuinely put me in a really bad place with my depression that I’m only just not getting out of.
Ben Solo’s story in TFA and TLJ was abuse victim’s epic, it was the story of a boy who was tortured and groomed from the time he was in his mother’s womb. A man who never knew a life without abuse. Ben Solo was described as a pure beam of light in his mother’s womb who was ensnared and tainted by a predatory force bigger and stronger than himself that he could not escape.
The feeling of being tainted and corrupted is common in abuse victims, and the fact that TROS told every single abused child out there “Yes, you really are tainted and corrupted. You do deserve to die before experiencing more than a moment of happiness and safety.” is something that I’ve yet to get over. It still infuriates me, it still breaks my heart. Ben’s entire arc up until this point has been about how he is still worthy of love.
And no, this isn’t me woobifying; it’s in the text of the films and the canon novels that Ben worked for his redemption, that he earned it. Ben fought Snoke from the time he was a child, but Ben was only a child and Snoke was too powerful, too relentless in his cruelty for him to withstand. The one and only person in the entire galaxy who had the training and the knowledge to protect Ben was his uncle, who chose to try to murder him in his sleep instead of protecting him. Ben was left with nowhere to turn except to his abuser. And even then, we see him struggle every single day to try and force himself to be this evil person that he never was. Ben was light itself who was convinced he was darkness through abuse and manipulation.
Then, when Ben found the first person who he could feel and connect with through the force, even though Snoke and Luke had abused and betrayed him - Ben still took the chance to reach out to Rey and be vulnerable with her. While interrogating an enemy, he took off his mask and revealed himself (something we only see him to for his father and when Snoke forces him to maliciously). In the middle of a war, under the thumb of the monster who has tortured him since forever, Ben was able hold Rey’s hand and tell her she wasn’t alone. He was still able to be kind. And because of that kindness, that connection, Ben found the courage to finally destroy his abuser and free himself.
Ben freed himself, and he did it out of compassion for and a need to protect Rey, not out of wrath or vengeance. If Ben were truly a creature of wrath, he would have killed Snoke before, but it was only when he had to see and hear and feel his soulmate be tortured by his own abuser that he found that courage. And yes, he did take Snoke’s place at first because that was the only way he knew how to protect himself. In his experience, people without power get hurt and that’s it. But even then, Ben was able to muster yet more strength to shed the armor that was Kylo Ren and stand with Rey unarmored against the very thing that has abused and tortured him since before he was born.
That took so much bravery and love and selflessness for Ben to stand there as himself, ready to fight his abuse and trauma head-on as Ben Solo. For him to admit he was hurt for the first time in the series. For him to crawl up a cliff with a badly broken leg out of love. For him to willingly give his very life force out of pure love. All of these things are incredible for Ben to have been able to do after all he had been through, these are more than deserving of reward. But TROS punished Ben for doing everything right, they proved that abusers always win in the end. Ben was going to survive until the last few edits. Everything we see was literally leading up to him surviving. This was Ben’s redemption, this was supposed to be him fighting for his new beginning and taking his first steps into the happiness and safety he earned, and should have had as a child, not a pointless struggle before succumbing to death:
But TROS told us, told traumatized and neurodivergent children who saw themselves in Ben, that it wasn’t good enough. That love isn’t good enough. That doing the right thing deserves to be punished. That children tainted by violence and abuse and darkness don’t deserve love and healing even when they earn redemption, even when they do everything in their power to do the right thing and be brave. The hopelessness of that is what broke me as a person. That is not what Star Wars is about. Star Wars is about redemption and love and hope; TROS was about cruelty covered up with a thin sheet of materialism and confused, poor storytelling.
