**Spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, so read on only if you dare.**
It seems as if everyone has their issues with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Even if you loved the movie, you’re part of this discourse because those of us with problems are shouting out into the void of the internet and questioning things you may have loved. It’s a mess of a situation.
So, I want to focus on something I really loved in The Rise of Skywalker, and that is, surprisingly, the redemption of Ben Solo. I am happily split over my feelings on The Rise of Skywalker. In my ranking of Star Wars films, it sits happily in the 6th slot for me—7th, if I’m having Hayden Christensen feels.
That being said, there is something about Ben Solo’s storyline that made me, for once, give a sh*t. From the dawning of this new trilogy, I hated Kylo Ren for what he put his parents through, especially by supporting Vader despite the fact that, in the end, Anakin Skywalker came back to the light. For years, I refused to call him “Kylo Ren” because, much like Han Solo, I wanted to see Ben Solo onscreen.
He killed his father to try to become a complete Sith Lord and continually hurt Leia over and over again, so, for me, there were too many things stacked against him when it came to his redemption arc. I wanted to see Rey kill him, which I guess I kind of got twice over in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but I don’t necessarily know that I like it. And yet, I came out of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, and his redemption was one of the few things about this movie that I really did like.
There’s a moment in the movie that brings Ben Solo’s storyline full circle for me in a way that truly made me care about him. When Leia uses the last bit of her life force for her son (I actually hate this, but that’s something else entirely), Rey gets the moment to strike him down.
Once Kylo has been stabbed through the stomach in the same way he killed his father, Rey realizes her mistake, and after she uses her Force Healing abilities to bring him back but, Ben’s scar is gone, and there is a lightness to him that was never there before. Rey leaves him sitting on the edge of the ruins of the Death Star, and it becomes apparent that Ben has found the light again.
Sure, fine, I like it, but the only scene that I will honestly watch multiple times (and the subsequent arc for Ben) starts with “Hey kid.” When Ben is basically stuck on the Death Star, he’s looking out into the water and coming back to the Light side of the Force, but there is one moment that defined his Sith journey, and that was killing his father.
I’ve been a fan of Harrison Ford since I was six years old. So, the minute I heard “Hey,” I knew exactly who it was. So much so that I slapped my friend. Now, he’s just a memory, just a figment of Ben’s mind that feels unfinished because of what he did.
Their conversation is a mirror of the last conversation that Han Solo had with his son, but this time, Ben tries to apologize. In a movie filled with cheesy callbacks to the original trilogy, one moment that I truly love comes when Ben is almost too heartbroken to say that he’s sorry. He’s looking at his father and only manages to say “Dad …” before he’s crying, and in true Han Solo fashion, Han replies, “I know.”
It’s like, from that moment, a switch went off, and whatever Ben Solo had suppressed within himself was let free, and to me, it became clear that Ben Solo was never the most like Skywalker. In fact, he was just like his father.
Ben goes after Rey, heading to Exegol, the home planet of the Sith, to try to help her take down Palpatine. While there are beautiful moments for Ben Solo throughout this entire exchange, there’s another Han Solo-esque moment that, again, drives home the fact that he was more like Han before he turned to the Dark Side than he’d probably like to imagine.
Remember in Return of the Jedi when Han Solo is facing off against Storm Troopers and is his charming self?
Well …
This all, in a twist of fate, is frustrating to me because, for the first time, I cared about Ben Solo, and then … they killed him. Why? Because I guess the price you pay for redeeming yourself is death in the world of Star Wars. Much like his grandfather, he saved Rey and used his Force healing to bring her back to life, but at his own expense.
I don’t agree with it. I think that there was a way the two could have existed together (and they should have been siblings, but whatever, I’ll yell about that at a later date), but killing Ben Solo after his fight to discover his true balance feels cheap.
Justice for Ben Solo, a redemption I truly tweeted about a month ago and screamed about how I didn’t care how he did it, I’d still hate him. I recognize now that I’m eating my words, but also … why do all this work just to kill him off in the end?
(image: Lucasfilm)
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