Official Episode VIII - Kylo Ren Discussion Thread

That's how I felt. When I first saw him talking to Vader's helmet, I was like "Who told him Vader was his grandfather?". I don't think it's wrong that they hid it, they probably never imagined it would ever get out. It was a fluke that it did.

 

Snoke was definitely very important for Ben's turn. However, I believe that Ben would have been drifted to the dark side even without Snoke's manipulations.

IMO the real reason for his turn is/was his family. After Ben had figured out that his family kept his legacy from him, he changed. He felt betrayed.
As a result of this, his path to the dark side began. Ben developed hate against his family, but he started to identify himself with Darth Vader, his grandfather.
Snoke had been waiting for that very moment. Now he could manipulate Ben much easier.

No, Snoke isn't the reason of Ben's fall (at least not the only one). Snoke just helped to get Ben to the dark side much faster.
This is also the reason why Kylo Ren will be redeemed. If there were no Snoke, then Ben would have been on a long and hard trip to the dark side and eventually he would have been consumed by it.
By the help of Snoke he took the fast and easy road. But he couldn't fully develop his darkness, his hatred.

Call me crazy but I think Snoke is the reason why there is still light in Kylo. I could be totally wrong though.

 

The light went out in Kylo when the Sun went dark and he stabed his dad through the chest.

 

I don't think so, especially after I read the novelisation of TFA. #SaveBenSolo

 

That may have been true when she was younger, but that is not the Leia I read in Bloodline. If she never cared about her reputation or legacy, she would have told the entire senate about her affiliation with Darth Vader herself. Also, she still refuses to fully accept the truth decades later.

She loses all support and her reputation is tarnished when the truth is revealed, and Leia knew this would happen, hence she kept the truth hidden. If that's not selfishness, then I don't know what is. It doesn't matter whether one's intentions are good, selfishness is and always will be selfish.

Leia cared more about what she could achieve than her children's potential. Han and Luke were the wiser adults in this situation, as they wanted to tell Ben the truth. It's very ironic that Ben disliked and murdered the parent who cared for him more.

 

If you want another version of how Leia was being selfish:
Ben is an adult, he deserved to know the truth. In fact, he could have been told when he was a teenager. Leia wanted to hide the truth from him and continue treating him like a child, thus she was being selfish.

Han saw good in him, but at the end of the day he is a smuggler. Smuggler types are uncomfortable with direct confrontation.

 

Yes I understand that, but the presented challenge was not proving whether Leia and Han's intentions were good (we already know they were), but how they were selfish, and I think I made some good points .

 

Yeah Leia always stood out in my mind as a character that was always so secure in herself and what she saw as her duty. I think it's marvellous writing that her number one antagonist (Snoke) manages to utilise what was perhaps one error in judgement to exploit one of her strengths (mental fortitude in decision making) as a potential weakness.

 

i agree. in the question of Leia's "culpability" for lack of a better word, she only wanted to protect Ben (and maybe avoid the truth herself longer than she should have), and Snoke exploited that.

they all made mistakes and Snoke, to me, is still the villain in this. if i struggle with Leia, it's only because she does love her son so much, and yet she and Han both failed to protect him even while trying so hard to protect him. she just didn't see the real threat.

could Han and Leia have provided better support for their kid? probably. did they set out to hurt him or deliberately treat him negligently? very very doubtful. if Leia shoulders any extra portion of the burden it's only that she a.) was the one who was reluctant to tell him about grandpa (and convinced the others to also keep mum), and b.) she possibly failed to disclose Snoke's nose poking into things (certainly to Han, we don't know if she told Luke, or even made Ben aware that she knew).

as had been discussed before, it will be really interesting to see what her relationship with Ben really was/is. was she merely "weak and foolish" like Ben's father, or does he have better/worse epithets for her?

Ben chose a bad path out of grief and pain and anger. that's on him.
but the grief and pain and anger didn't just happen overnight when he found out about Vader. we know he was already troubled and we don't know for how long.
it's easy to blame him for his lousy adult decisions and yes, he has to accept responsibility for them.
but he likely could have made better ones if he hadn't been screwed up in the first place.

 

.. Just some thoughts that passed my mind while reading through your lines:

If we make the not so far fetched guess that someone with big potential in the force, a force SENSITIVE kid, is kind of a "very open sensor" for the living force and therefore has also open channels to all other forms of mental vibes in his/her surroundings. This mental status can play out well if you have the right guidance in your "critical" years (small child till 3 yrs and especially the teens) but oth it can have huge impacts if you get under the influence of manipulative "friends". Everybody knows about young people with quite nice parental heritage and at some point everything went wrong. In a lot of such cases there is not ONE single special thing that is responsible for the mess.. just a lot of little steps but no spectecular errors for the viewer from the outside.
If you look at your own decisions in your youth, have you always forseen all the mess that happened after you did sthg stupid?

Like I posted elsewhere, I think a high potential in the force has also the higher potential for producing the greater mess if he/her takes the wrong road at some point.
Yoda told Luke about this dangers for a Jedi student; that one single choice can push a Jedi onto the dark side of the path.

I think that Lucas tried hard to show the bigger picture behind the darkened curtains of a famous villian and I hope we will also get more background material about the steps that lead to Kylos darkness. Beside some of the big impacts ( for ex. giving him away with Luke) I would also like to learn sthg about the "smaller" problems.
Perhaps a dialogue between Kylo and Leia or a story that Luke could tell Rey would be helpful for a better understanding of the bigger picture.

At the end I stay "stubborn" about the so called emo Ren/Ben and refuse to accept easy answers until I get knocked out by RJ .

 

true words, @oldbert!

we don't know what sort of problems Ben might have been dealing with, large and small. not just feeling alienated or misunderstood or rejected, but overwhelmed by his own capabilities in a way that could have been very confusing/frustrating/frightening.

i want to add too, recognizing that Ben was likely a proud child of very proud parents, who probably lacked the ability/tools to ask for help.
parents can't always know what their kids are going through--especially if they are distracted by bigger concerns. it's the case with many children who feel "abandoned" or neglected that their parents just think they are self-sufficient and/or independent-minded, when really they feel alone and lost, but don't want to expose themselves or "bother" their busy parents with their embarrassing problems.

we might not find out too much about what precisely happened, and ultimately i'm more concerned about what will happen next.
but i do think this is a kid who didn't want to take this path; he just didn't know how else to start working toward what he thinks is his destiny.

 

Good point @FN-3263827!
What if the gap between the one he thought he should become (even if we assume that young Ben could have been much too ambitious from beginning) and the one he saw in the mirror got bigger and bigger and Snoke joined him one day and told him sthg like "..Did you ever hear the whole story of your great grandfather...you could follow his foodsteps and establish order and peace in the galaxy .. but it will be a difficult mission and only the strongest can succeed.." and other poison like this. You do not need much more to gently pull a frustrated ambitious young adult on your side..
and if that is combinated with a lack of communication skills and too little possibilities to debate with his parents and friends .. voila..

 

If I remember correctly, Snoke manipulated Ben since he was pretty young, and Leia seems to think that her not telling Ben earlier caused him to finally turn. Now if that's true then Snoke never never told Ben Solo the true story of his grandfather. Now, I'm a little confused as to why Snoke didn't do that? Was it part of some plan?

 

Could the Knights of Ren be other of Luke's padawans that Benny boy was bffs with, so they created the KoR to overthrow Luke?

The last time I fell for a story about a man in black killing Luke's father it turned out to be from a certain point of view. A hidden meaning in the words. That Anniboy turned dark side bad boy and became Vader.

So...could Kylo be the leader of his Jedi killer friends who actually didn't literally die but; turned to the darkside, put on masks and hunted down force sensitive as well as searching for the mighty legend Luke Skywalker?

 

An interesting idea and in LOST series we had a similar temple massacre in which the Man in Black asked the temple protectors to follow him. Some did follow him and the others were killed.

But on the other hand we have no single rumor that the KoR are force sensitive, so this may not play out this way.

 

They could be, they must have lost faith in Luke's leadership & felt Kylo's vision for the order made sense or that the sith order needed to exist again.