in reply to this post.
@wanderingscotsman I can’t speak for everyone so I am speaking for myself here. I personally want his redemption, one because he’s Han and Leia’s son. He’s the last of the Skywalker legacy (Luke counts but let’s be honest, Luke won’t be around forever. He’s playing the lead of the Teacher who now needs to pass the torch onto the student: Rey). Han died, Leia will probably be written out (RIP Carrie), and there’s nobody else to continue said legacy but Kylo.
I don’t subscribe to the idea that Rey is a Skywalker. There are too many holes for that theory to make sense to me, so that leaves Ben Solo. People argue that he’s a “Solo” not a Skywalker, but a paternal last name does not erase genetics. I FULLHEARTEDLY headcanon that Han was force sensitive, at least in order to feel it enough to always have a bad feeling about things, but Kylo’s force abilities come from LEIA. Leia is a Skywalker. Some people seem to have this mentality that a person can only be a Skywalker if a Skywalker male brought them to life, and that’s BS. Which brings me back to the aforementioned point: He’s Leia’s son first and foremost. She wants him back. While I am 50/50 on Reylo happening, I ardently want to believe Ben would come back if only for his mother’s sake.
Then there’s the next thing. His characterization up until now has told us of his fall. Anakin’s redemption was short, like 2 minutes short, and felt entirely unsatisfying to me. I want to see Kylo work for his redemption, and have to go through the paces to atone for his mistakes. This doesn’t read like a reharsh of Anakin’s “Oh my god I’m dying Luke I love you and your sister” redemption arc, and I doubt LF would want to “rehash” that. You have to keep in mind that JJ had the very tricky job of both reviving the old and bringing in the new. He had to manage to catch the eye of diehard old fans (and what better way to do that than to appeal to nostalgia?) and get the rest of us newbies interested. That’s hard. The criticism is valid, but I also think it’s harsher than necessary. JJ gave us three dimensional characters we new-to-fandom can get behind on, and that’s always a hard thing to do.
Which once again brings me back to Kylo Ren.
He’s already been set up as somebody who STRUGGLES to remain in the darkness, so the likeliest most satisfying end would be that he returns to the light. He’s the opposite coin of Vader, and I think that would be interesting to see. They say history repeats itself and I would love to see what the creators of the movies would do to alter it. I also want to see him kick his abuser’s (Snoke’s) ass.
But... that’s just me.