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Post #1429633

Author
sherlockpotter
Parent topic
The Rise of Skywalker: Ascendant (Released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1429633/action/topic#1429633
Date created
14-May-2021, 2:01 PM

Here’s an idea - instead of Kylo being all like “Grrr…I’m a bad guy! I want to kill Palpatine and claim his power! Grrr!” What if we could make him into a kind of anti-hero?

Ideally, Sir Ridley could tweak the title crawl a little bit:

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren has traveled to Mustafar, chasing whispers of a hidden power that [has been rising in the shadows]…

(So it’s kind of ambiguous to the audience whether he wants to claim that power for himself, or to stop it.)

He finds Palpatine, and he thinks about killing him; but then Palps tells him, “Kill me, and my spirit will pass into you…” So Kylo is like, “Shoot, I can’t kill him yet. I’ll have to play along.” (No matter what, I personally still want to axe the “pathway to many abilities” line. It feels like the Chewie medal - shoehorned into the movie because it’s a meme.)

Later, in the hangar, he confronts Rey: “What Palpatine doesn’t know is we’ve become a dyad in the Force, Rey. Two that are one. We [can defeat] him together, and [stop] the throne fleet.” (So his priority would be stopping Palpatine, rather than ruling in his stead. This also feels like it’s less of a backtrack from TLJ - He goes from a morally grey character who wants “The Sith, the Jedi…Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to,” to someone who teams up with the Sith and plans on ruling the Sith Throne; instead, he would stay as someone who’s just trying to make the galaxy better in his own twisted way, by still trying to progress things forward.) Basically, he thinks that they can contain his spirit if they work together.

By changing it from “We will kill him together” to “We can kill him together,” I think there might be enough nuance to explain why he’s trying to enlist Rey’s help, and why they’d have better odds of being successful if they work together, even if (and likely because) he knows about the possession gobbledygook. Plus, Kylo becomes more multi-faceted as a character, and Rey’s moral conundrum is heightened because, “Well crap, is Kylo Ren actually right?”

Rey doesn’t trust him for shit, of course; so when she goes to Exegol alone - I agree with RogueLeader here - "Kill me, and my [power] will pass into you… You will be Empress, we will be one.” And later “You’re too weak. Only I have the power to save them.”

Oh, and if we really want to focus on Palpatine’s spirit, instead of “all of the Sith Spirits,” could that last line be, “A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me!” “I…am a Jedi”?