Kylo Ren Needed to Die

“This is supposed to be a happy occasion…? Let’s not bicker and argue over who killed who….?”

[Editor’s Note: Consider this your only spoiler alert - If you are the only person on the planet who has not yet seen 2019’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker but still hopes to do so, then watch it before you read this. Then, send me an email explaining just how you’ve taken a year to see the final movie in the Skywalker Saga. Not to judge, mind you, but simply to understand….If you aren’t a Star Wars fan at all, I still hope you enjoy the read. ]

**WARNING - Star Wars Nerdeurosis is a very serious condition; please consult with all loved ones before becoming a part of this madness. Side effects can include repeated viewings of the movies for no good reason, obsession with Baby Yoda memes, action figure collecting, compulsive quoting of lines, expensive trips to Disneyland / World, and actual arguments like the one you are about to read. For those of you who decide to embrace the affliction, or long ago did - your loved one’s interventions obviously didn’t work, so welcome. To those who resist the Force - you’re in a better place, but you won’t have nearly as much fun.**

Wednesday, December 9, 2020

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When Kylo Ren died, I had one thought. 

Good. About time. 

It sounds unkind, especially to the so-called “Reylo” fans out in Star Wars fandom, who shipped Kylo Ren and Rey hoping they’d end up together romantically while bringing balance to the Force and peace to the galaxy by the end of the latest trilogy of movies.

I was not one of them. Instead, I believed that Kylo Ren needed to die, his chance at love be damned. He’d lost any hope to stare into the twin sunsets with Rey long before his final moments by her side on Exegol, when his body disappeared and his clothing deflated like a failed souffle.

And Kylo Ren himself knew he needed to die.

Just not for the one reason – self sacrifice for the woman he loved – we all assume.

This is pure speculation – at least about Kylo’s awareness – but also what I think would have been the logical outcome of Kylo’s life had he not died on Exegol while somehow still being able to save Rey’s life.

Because let’s face it, if Rey died and he lived, Kylo would have walked out of the shattered Sith temple into the teeth of the galaxy’s Resistance - as the most wanted man in the entire galaxy. After spending the last three movies trying to capture / enslave / kill her, no one in the Resistance would believe he’d actually tried to help Rey against Palpatine, so they’d assume he’d done her in either on his own or with Palpatine’s help. There would be no proof otherwise.

That means Buh-Bye, Kylo. You don’t survive killing the Darling of the Resistance no matter how many people you throw around with the Force. You’d get the same treatment you tried to give Hologram Luke at the end of The Last Jedi with the Gorilla Walker Laser Barrage, except you’d end up a cratered grease spot on whatever surface that is on Exegol (Ice? Marble? Stone? Crystal? Frozen Tears of the Damned?). 

So in that option, Kylo Ren dies. 

So what if Rey and Kylo both survived – the dream of the “Reylos” out there. What would have happened?

That’s pretty simple – he’d die.

Publicly. After the trial of the century (or whatever units of time measurement they actually used a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away--more than a parsec, less than a millenia).

But that trial would also have destroyed everything the Resistance needed to transition into a New New Republic to replace the one that, you know…Kylo helped obliterate with Starkiller Base.

And my guess is that Kylo Ren saw all of this and just decided that it made the most sense for him to go All In on his amends to the galaxy, his family, and the woman he’d finally found the courage to join on her side of the Force.

Here’s what he likely saw would play out if he walked out of the temple with Rey:

He and Rey walk out, and he has a choice to make – either go with Rey to the Resistance After-Party and ruin it just by being there, or he has to get back in his TIE fighter and fly away to somewhere he is unknown, which is impossible since he was the Supreme Leader of the First Order who’d openly enslaved the entire galaxy. So he’d be on the run his entire life AND be unable to be with Rey – all of which defeats the purpose of surviving in the first place.

So Option B) is out. So that leaves A) he goes with Rey.

When he gets to the Resistance base, it crushes Rey’s credibility in an instant with everyone she is leading - which is EVERYONE. She can defend Kylo all she wants for his actions in the last half-hour of the movie, but that defense would last as long as it took for the following questions to be asked by the people closest to her – her only true family:

Finn: “Uh, Rey? This guy took me from my family as a kid, trained me to kill on command, then I watched him butcher an entire village of civilians in his very first scene in The Force Awakens. His very first! Then he kidnapped and tortured you, destroyed the planet holding the New Republic capital – killing billions – and nearly sliced me in half in a snowy forest while I was defending you. And now you’re saying that he’s okay? All is good? WTF?”

Poe: “What Finn said, plus – he tortured me in his SECOND big scene in The Force Awakens. Then in The Last Jedi he attacked the ship holding his own mother and she got sucked into space and only survived because she did Star Wars Mary Poppins (and no, that he wussed out on firing the torpedoes that blew up the bridge doesn’t exonerate him – he ordered the attack and led it, plus he blew up a bunch of my pilot buddies in the ship’s hangar bay). That same attack killed Hero of the Rebellion Admiral Ackbar, too, by the way [Editor’s random comment: “It’s a Trap!”]. Then he totally messed with you while you were on Space Gilligan’s Island with Luke, then brought you to Snoke - all decked out in his Dead Elvis gold outfit and sultan shoes - who promptly tried to kill you. Then after Kylo killed Snoke and you saved him at least twice in that epic lightsaber fight with Snoke’s guards, he STILL tried to bring you over to the dark side, then was willing to blow the Millennium Falcon out of the sky with you on it after you turned him down. And now you’re saying we should just forget all that? All is good? WTF?”

Chewie: “RWAAARGH WRGA RARRGH!” [He killed Han Solo, Rey. His own father. My best friend. Leia’s partner. You watched it happen. And now you’re saying we should just forget that? All is good? WTF?”]

What could Rey possibly say to all that? That she loves brooding bad boys? If they just got to know him, they’d see he’s just misunderstood and much nicer than they think?

No on both counts. And she’d know it, too.

Rey’s credibility with her three friends – who know her best and love her most – would be shot in one instant, and her leadership credentials with the Resistance would take a massive hit, even if she did kill the Emperor. So, with that in mind, and because she’s about justice in the end, she’d hand over Kylo Ren for trial.

Which means he’d die.

For my money, Chewie had me at, “He killed Han Solo, Rey.”

He killed Han Solo. You can’t get away with that. That can’t go unpaid. Plus, he actually kinda killed his own Mom, too, because he was so far gone in the middle of The Rise of Skywalker that she had to do her best Luke impersonation and project her spirit across space to try to talk sense into him, and the effort killed her. And, speaking of Luke, Kylo KINDA KILLED HIM, TOO, didn’t he?!? Luke had to project himself across the galaxy in hologram form to buy time for the Resistance to escape Kylo’s post-Rey’s-rejection bender of violence. So the dude wiped out Luke’s entire Jedi Academy like grandad did to the Coruscant younglings, enslaved the galaxy, then finished up his Emo Pouty Teenager Loves “The Smiths” And No One Understands Me acting out repertoire by being directly responsible for the deaths of Dad, Mom, and Uncle.

Wow. Put that record into real life and NO ONE would be arguing he should get to walk away with his best girl, even if he saved her life and took down the biggest crime boss in the neighborhood. 

So let’s sum up Kylo’s scorecard – tortured and nearly killed Rey’s two best friends, wiped out a new generation of Jedi, obliterated billions in a nanosecond, killed TWO Heroes of the Rebellion, enslaved the galaxy under the thumb of the First Order, and then for the cherry on top – killed both his parents and his uncle, all of them heroes of the Resistance and the best people in the galaxy to help it recover.

That’s way too much to overcome, Rey (and Reylo Nation). Way too much. 

And by putting him on trial, you undercut all the trust and goodwill you fought so hard to build, and simultaneously create an immediate distraction for a galaxy that now has an even bigger power vacuum in it than when Mando and Baby Yoda were flying around after Return of the Jedi. The galaxy has way bigger issues to focus on than punishing Kylo Ren, yet they’d have to do so and it would tear it even further apart. 

What a s%$#show that trial would have been, too – an absolute circus. Every planet hurt by him would want to get their judicial licks in on Mister Kylo Brownilocks before they’d be satisfied, and that would take forever just in the Core Worlds. To avoid that, what planet would anyone agree upon that could serve as the galaxy’s Nuremberg? That would’ve taken as long to decide as it took the North Vietnamese and US to agree on the size and shape of the table to use at the Paris Peace talks – far too long and well beside the point.

And how and where do you execute him? Sarlacc pit on Tatooine? Feed him to those underwater monsters on Naboo? Freeze him in carbonite and launch him into a nearby star? Make him go back in time and watch the horribly awkward courtship scenes between Anakin and Padme in Attack of the Clones? No one would agree on it, and there would be many still nasty people who would rally to him and turn him into a martyr - that’s how crazy death cults begin, and we saw the result of that with Palpatine’s Evil Hogwarts on Exegol. 

I bet that Kylo saw all that writing on the wall in paragraph form.

When Rey lay there dead in his arms amidst the (literal) ashes of the Emperor, he must have played the tape forward (sorry – the holo forward) and seen what had to be done. What I love about the scene is that, if you watch it again, Kylo Ren doesn’t say a word except “Ow!” once he enters the Sith temple. The rest of the movie is all him doing his redemption arc in silence (In fact, his last two words in the final forty-five minutes of the movie are “Dad?” and “Ow!” Really – go watch it again). Adam Driver is fantastic in that Silent Sequence, where we watch the whiny Emo Ren slowly die off just through facial expressions and subtle shifts in attitude. Then he plays his part in fighting the Emperor, gets thrown into a bottomless chasm (more on that in a minute), then climbs out of it wounded and saves Rey via Star Wars Lazarus.

 Then, he’s Out and Deflates. Just one kiss and his first smile, Rey - that’s all you get. 

Oh, and your life. And unquestioned status as the Strongest Anyone in the Galaxy.

It wasn’t the easy way out for him as some might suggest – he “didn’t face the music” in public, but he freaking died by giving his life force to Rey, so that’s the biggest symphony possible to face. He owned his own shit and its consequences, and decided not to be a human wrecking ball to Rey and the entire galaxy any longer. His amends for all he’d done was to take Rey’s place on the sacrificial altar, and it positioned her and the Resistance to pull the galaxy back together after Ren broke it like a tantruming teenager. 

There was only one way to make amends for all that he’d done, and that was to Exit Stage Right and let Rey get all the glory for killing the Emperor. For all anyone knows out in the galaxy, Kylo either vanished into thin air after he saw a vision of Dear Old Dad on the Death Star’s wreckage, or Rey took him down alongside the Emperor - which would give her an even Bigger Mic Drop moment for her legions of fans throughout the galaxy.

It’s the very least Kylo could do, though it STILL doesn’t make up for killing Han Solo and sending him falling into a foggy abyss (I’m biased – he was my childhood hero). 

[Editor’s note: if you ever find yourself on a Star Wars planet and end up standing on a catwalk over a bottomless chasm, just turn around and find another route - Nothing Good Ever Happens On a Star Wars Catwalk Over a Bottomless Chasm. Han Solo should’ve known that, frankly.]

So, Kylo Ren had to die, and he KNEW it. Sorry, Reylo Nation – it couldn’t have happened any other way and have worked out for either of them, or for the galaxy. Or for common sense and any sense of moral / ethical justice.

Much like all the notorious despots in history and fiction, Kylo’s best gift was going away for good – addition by subtraction. Unlike real despots, though, he at least did something decent at the end for others. But that’s about it. Prior to that he was a Defcon One Spacewreck, and that has consequences no matter the level of personal redemption. The universe has a way of evening things out before we are all said and done by pointing out what we should probably do to make things as right as we can.

Redemption doesn’t mean all is forgotten and everything goes back to the way it was before, even if “true love in the Force” is involved. It’s not the storybook ending people want, but it is a much more realistic, just, and accountable one. I liked that he died, because he really needed to - and he knew it. Not because he was the “villain” and therefore had to die like baddies do in Schwarzenegger films, but because his record as the villain made no other option possible. 

Why does all of this matter? I don’t know – I’ve been having this argument with people for a year now and I wanted to get it all down in one place and just send people the link from now on when it comes up. And, I suppose, it matters because what we hope to see at the end of stories can tell us a lot about ourselves and the world we actually live in - and what accountability, amends, and justice mean. In this case? 

Kylo Ren needed to die. And he went about it the right way, for the right reasons. 

Besides, this all needs to be written down for online posterity because Kylo will soon be diminished in stature by the imminent live-action arrival of the baddest new baddie coming to Star Wars Town – Grand Admiral Thrawn.

If you don’t know who that is, you will soon (you can meet him in the third season of the animated series Star Wars: Rebels, and he is on the horizon in The Mandalorian). He’s unforgettable. And unlike Kylo, Uncle Luke, and Grandad Anakin, Thrawn doesn’t let sentimentality get in his way. Ever. He’s colder and more efficiently ruthless than any of them – and he doesn’t even need the Force. Just his brain. And a gigantic fleet. And a colossal online library. And he has blue skin and glowing red eyes, so he’s got some serious Presence. 

Bring him up on war crimes charges and put him on trial, and he’ll argue his way out of it before blowing up the trial site from space for inconveniencing him. Then he’d go back to studying art (really - he studies art) to better know how to destroy his enemies before salting the earth of their planets the way Rome (apocryphally) did to Carthage. 

He’s a tenured professor from hell. With armed spaceships - and Palpatine’s blessing to rampage at will.

And no way anyone tries to mash up his name with anyone else or hopes he finds his redemption with True Space Love at the end. You’ll want him to die spectacularly, or weirdly want him to win, or hope he just gets dimension warped into the Star Trek universe to wreak chaos there instead. 

If he finds Khan there, watch out. That’s a mash up I’d ship. Khrawn!!! Khrrraaaaawwn!!

But that’s another post. 

Here ends my most recent attack of Star Wars Nerdeurosis. Thanks for enduring reading.