You know, after writing the 50-odd page rough draft of my TROS rewrite earlier this year and starting the second draft, I happened to sit down and watch Avatar, and actually got a bit irked that they had already done Kylo Ren’s character arc.

Speaking of Rey vs Kylo, my thinking has changed dramatically over these past months. In the begining (and in my rough draft), Kylo and Rey move towards each other in characterization, with Rey becoming a bit darker and Kylo turning back toward the light. There was also the implication of romantic feeling between them carried over from TLJ. However, this whole thing still felt rather wrong. Kylo is still a much darker and more troubled character than Rey even at her worst, and any romance would be founded on the toxic beginnings of TFA and TLJ. It’s not that such a relationship couldn’t work, but it felt like a bad message.

My current thinking is that Kylo’s redemption, if it occurs, must not involve Rey; the characters simply aren’t meant for each other. Rey could still interact and fight with Kylo, but he is not the antagonist to her character like Vader was to Luke. In my current thinking, Rey learns that her focus on Kylo as her antagonist is warping her reality whereas her true focus should be on finding other people like her who have been awakened by the Force to resist the First Order, and using the lessons and failures of the past to build a new Jedi Order.