SPECULATION What if Kylo Ren is confronted with Force Ghost Anakin?

When I first saw TFA I thought we might see Vader during Kylo's monologue with the helmet. I feel like that would have been the best time in that movie for Anakin to appear. I think any potential encounter with the Anakin ghost will leave Kylo more confused than determined. I may have mentioned it before but my little fan fiction moment would entail Anakin appearing as he does at the end of RotJ (new edition) and then literally showing Kylo what the darkside will do to him by having the ghost transition to burnt Anakin.

 

No.

The ghosts that appear are known by those who they appear to, or at least that was the case up until Rebels started messing with it. I won't go into Rebels here, because that is another topic, and they clearly aren't done exploring that area of canon.

Luke sees the three ghosts at the end of ROTJ because two of them were Luke's teachers with whom he had a bond, and one is his father whom he had just truly met a short while earlier. It is established in the OT and PT that the ghosts aren't so much the actual person's spirit walking around in the world, it is the part of their spirit that connected with and lives on in the mind of those who see them, and this is only possible when one is standing strongly on the side of the Force, not the Dark Side of their own power. Leia didn't see the ghosts. Han didn't seen them. (This is another reason why removing Sebastian Shaw as Anakin was a dumb move.) Did you miss that those guys just appeared to Luke? It wasn't subtle.

Kylo Ren could never have known Anakin. Why would he see the ghost of someone he's never met or bonded with? It's a really stupid idea. Possibly the stupidest idea fandom has ever come up with.

They go through the effort of making new Star Wars films and exploring that universe further, and all someone wants to see is old characters and actors show up again, sticking their head into frame and waving and nodding at the audience? That'd make me want to sell my creation for a ton of cash and wash my hands of it too.

 

The canon sources don't mention the personal connection being requird. In fact I believe Jinn says "You will learn to preserve your life force and so manifest a consciousness to commune with the living after death." Not "the living you knew in life." We haven't run into Force Ghosts talking to non-force sensitives, but I have to imagine the Ghost can control who they are appearing to whether that person be sensitive or no. Hence Han and Leia not seeing the three at the end of ROTJ. I want to see more force ghosts because I don't want Luke to be the only Jedi teacher, look how that turned out.

 

This is concerning to me. I watched TFA again last night and that line of Kylo's was noticeable to me, as well. When did Darth Vader show him anything? Is he just imagining it? That's what I thought, but when you point out that concept art- (which I also have but I didn't look at the Darth Vader pics too closely)- well, I don't like it.

That would mean Anakin was not redeemed in the end, which they've definitely led us to believe he was by showing his Force Ghost with Yoda and Obi-Wan in ROTJ. Even more so when they changed his ghost to the young Anakin. It was one of the central themes of the trilogy, and the fulfillment of Padme's (and Luke's) convictions that there was still good left in him. What, not enough good to triumph in the end? I don't think they should retcon something as important as that.

And another reason why that bothers me is that it yet another failure for the heroes of the OT, who apparently couldn't do anything right. This time, it's Luke's failure to redeem his father, when he (and we) thought he had.

But, as you point out, there's good evidence that's what they're thinking about. I guess I better prepare myself to be disappointed.

 

all is not lost. don't forget: Kylo Ren is an unreliable narrator.
he thinks his family abandoned him and didn't want him.
he thinks the Resistance are murderers and thieves.
thinking his grandpa has showed him anything could very well be:

1. just part and parcel of his delusional thinking,
2. precipitated through a Forceback by touching Anakin's lightsaber (which he might have once possessed),
3. a false construct of Snoke's to pull him over into the Dark.

too early to say they're retconning anything when there are so many other potential explanations.

 

I hope so. I really thought it was Kylo's delusions, but the artwork makes me wonder.
What I'm hoping it's all about was that Vader may have shown him the power of the dark side- AND told him it was the wrong path. Remember, Anakin was angry because he felt the Jedi were holding out on him when he was learning. That they were hiding the power of the dark side deliberately to keep in in line. It may be that he felt he should show Kylo the power of the dark side so it wouldn't seem so mysterious and glamorous, and he could see for himself that it was wrong.

Kind of like when parents let their kids do mildly bad things so they'll learn never to do it again.

Kylo might be like the kid whose parents let him try cigarettes, and instead of it choking him, he turned into a pack-a-day smoker.

 

...except that Ben Solo sees the dark side of the force as so mysterious and glamorous and all.

 

Yes, exactly. He doesn't see it as a bad thing, when his older relatives thought he would. Perhaps he thinks they just didn't handle it properly, and he will. After all, that's what Anakin thought- and as Han said, there's a lot of Vader in him.

It's kind of like the One Ring. It seems so wonderful but instead of the wearer controlling it, it controls him. And then it consumes him.

Kylo didn't learn from Anakin's mistakes, he just thought he wouldn't make any. (But of course, he already has- lots and lots of them).

The other meaning of that statement of Kylo's ("Show me the dark side again, grandfather") could be that someone else first showed it to him- probably Snoke- and Kylo's pleading with Vader teach him more. It could be he's never actually had any encounters with Anakin's force ghost, and he is hoping Vader will bail him out of his troubles with Snoke, because he doesn't understand that Anakin turned back to the light in the end. Why he doesn't know it is beyond me, but it's possible the family hid his heritage from him, which was probably a bad mistake.

 

I would have thought that it would have been drilled into his head about Vader turning back to the light but Anakin should have communicated this to him at least a few times but Kylo deemed him as a weak fool and an old man & assumed that Sith lords can come back as force ghosts and refused to believe that Vader and Anakin Skywalker are the same person .

 

My friend, your autocorrect hates you I think.

 

My phone has a keyboard glitch where if I start typing fast it freezes up and retypes something else all together but I just corrected it .

 

Are you basing this on anything specific, or is this just a hunch?

 

Just a hunch

 

@HAL'sgal , @AstromechRecords :

Kylo Ren knows what happened with Vader.
Snoke has twisted the story to suggest that Vader's sacrifice was a weakness "in an otherwise exemplary life".
what we don't know is how much of Vader's ultimate destiny (as the chosen one, for example) has likewise been twisted by Snoke.
i too question whether he's ever had legitimate contact with Anakin because i think Anakin would have tried to course-correct him from the start.

my best guess is that Ren experienced a Forceback similar to Rey's after touching the lightsaber and has developed skewed ideas about his own destiny from that experience. and that his meditation on Vader's helmet is not a two-way conversation.

 

We're all pretty good at those.

 

And also what FN said in his post that he mentioned us in ...

 

the first two lines aren't a hunch ~ that's from the book.
but yeah, the rest of it is just me musing.

 

I have a feeling that when Pablo Hidalgo saw the concept art for Anakin's "dark force ghost" he was like: "That's not how force ghosts work!"

 

If they did use those concept art images, they would become iconic SW images i reckon. (putting aside dark side users not becoming force ghosts etc)

Imagine a scene where the vision appears, turns it's head and it's one of those concept images staring back (half light and half dark would be great). Awesome.

However, I doubt it would happen! Us SW geeks can always imagine things!

 

given that they're playing with the paradigms, what if some part of the knowledge Luke has acquired at the Jedi temple is some way to summon Anakin's spirit so that Kylo Ren can see him/hear him ~ maybe Luke conjures this half-n-half thing in the hopes of reaching Ben.

that'd be kinda spooky and interesting. and definitely "weird" if that's what Johnson is going for.