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Spoiler warning: spoilers for The Force Awakens, The last Jedi, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones

The teaser trailer for The Last Jedi is finally out and it was amazing! It seems to lend credibility to some of the most popular theories on Tumblr regarding Ren and Rey and the mysterious connection they share. But why do Kylo Ren and Rey, two people who have seemingly nothing in common apart from loneliness, share a connection? J.J Abrams said that “their destinies are intertwined” and in the novelization of TFA Ren is described to have stumbled upon “something of interest”. That something had nothing to do with the search for Luke Skywalker since Ren decided to put it aside in order to look for the map, intending to revisit it later. It was something he couldn’t quite put his finger on, since it remained unnamed in his thoughts. In the now famous interrogation scene, Ren said the most mysterious lines of the movie: “Don’t be afraid, I feel it too.” What was he talking about? After reading this wonderful meta by @the-darkness-to-her-light  https://www.tumblr.com/dashboard/blog/the-darkness-to-her-light/159671558461  I’ve come to believe that it can be described by one word: compassion.

Kylo Ren and Compassion

Kylo Ren is different to the villains we’ve come to expect from Hollywood. His uniqueness stems from his inner struggle. He’s not happy with where he is. As he admits himself, he is in pain. Where does that pain come from?

His first appearance in TFA is that of a cold, cocky executioner. He seems callous. He does after all murder an old man who seems to genuinely care for him and then orders the slaughter of an entire village of innocent people. People whose only crime was that they harbored a fugitive. But let’s consider Kylo Ren’s idol, Darth Vader. What would have Vader done in this situation? From what we saw in Rogue One, Vader didn’t cut corners when it came to punishment. I can hardly imagine Vader asking Lor San Takka for the map. Vader killed first and asked questions later. But as we learn in the novelization, Ren gave Lor San Takka the option to surrender.

«Don’t turn a simple transaction into a tragedy for these people.»

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

After the mass execution, Ren does something that we could never imagine Vader doing: he catches a Stormtrooper disobeying commands and lets him go. And that statement doesn’t do it justice. Ren, a telepathic Force user, has actually read Finn’s mind and knows why Finn didn’t fire. He didn’t for a second buy the lame excuse that Finn gave to Phasma. Ren knows Finn couldn’t kill due to his compassion. One would expect a commanding officer to administer punishment immediately. In an army created through indoctrination, even a single instance of disobedience is dangerous. The image of Ned Stark beheading that frightened young soldier from the Wall for a trifle act of disobedience comes to mind. And Ned Stark was a man known for his compassion. Hell, he even died because of it. Imagine what a Vader-type leader would do in a situation like that. But that’s not what Ren does. And what he proceeds to do next is even weirder. He hops onto his ship and doesn’t alert anybody, ANYBODY about the Stormtrooper that refused to kill. He doesn’t even use it as a golden opportunity to humiliate Hux. If he had felt contempt for Finn’s compassion he certainly wouldn’t have missed a chance to jab Hux with it. This leads me to believe that Ren felt respect for Finn’s inner struggle with compassion. Because that is what Ren himself struggles with. That’s what he’s been struggling with since the day he joined Snoke.

«A great deal of his education had been devoted to learning how to live and move forward in the absence of emotion.»

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

Soon after the village scene, we see Ren alone in his dark room, talking to his only confidant: Vader’s battered helmet. He tells his grandfather that he feels it again, the call to the Light. The phrasing suggests a familiarity with this situation. It’s not the first time Ren has felt the call to the Light since he joined the FO. It’s one of many. And from the placement of the scene we are given to understand that the call to the Light is his compassion. This is true, based on Anakin Skywalker’s own words: compassion is central to the Jedi ideology. And that is what Kylo Ren started as, a Jedi.

After Finn betrays the FO and escapes with Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren is the one who immediately knows who the Stormtrooper was. Why would he assume that? Phasma apparently found out that there was nothing wrong with Finn’s blaster and sent him for reconditioning – more brainwashing – but thought it unremarkable and didn’t alert Hux. She didn’t immediately think it was Finn, of all the thousands of Stormtroopers on that Star Destroyer, who committed the treason. But the key detail here is that, although both Hux and Phasma can conceive of “disobedience”, “squirmishness” and “cowardice”, neither of them understand compassion. Ren does. Phasma and Hux don’t struggle with it. Ren does. Ren knows that it wouldn’t take all that much to make him drop Snoke and all fifty layers of clothes he drags around and go back to his mother. A Stormtrooper who defies death because he can’t prevail upon his compassion isn’t hard to imagine for him. He feels the same thing, in his very skin.

When Ren taunts Hux about how Snoke might be better off with a clone army, he’s more than just trying to piss Hux off. He is hinting at something, a hidden danger that only he can see. He knows that a human army has a weakness: compassion. He knows that compassion comes from being human and it’s almost impossible to squash. He knows because he’s tried and failed to do so. And has to hide it every single day. That’s the terrible burden that he carries, having to hide his compassion.

Ren’s training is peculiar itself, as far as villains go. A lot of people put emphasis on what it means that Ren killed his father, Han Solo. Is he now completely consumed by the Dark Side? As far as we may love Kylo Ren as a fictional character, let’s be fair and say that patricide is something that should put you squarely on the Dark Side of things. However, in the TFA novelization we are explicitly told that the goal Snoke and Ren have set as teacher and student is not to have Ren completely succumb to the Dark Side. He isn’t supposed to be completely consumed by either Side of the Force. That leaves us to assume that their goal is for him to reach… balance.

«It is where you are from. What you are made of. The dark side—and the light. The finest sculptor cannot fashion a masterpiece from poor materials.»

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

After all, when Snoke accuses Ren of failing to get the map from the girl because of his compassion towards her, Ren doesn’t say that he would never feel compassion for anyone. He says he would never feel compassion for an enemy of the First Order. He wouldn’t have protested that if Snoke had forbidden any and all access to the Light side and to his compassion.

«The Supreme Leader’s voice was flat. “You have compassion for her.”
“No—never. Compassion? For an enemy of the Order?»

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

I suppose what Snoke must have said to Ben Solo to lure him might have sounded perfectly reasonable on the surface: “Do not give in to sentimentality. Learn to control your compassion, learn not to let it get in the way of duty. You must do what’s right for the Galaxy. You must give your compassion to those who deserve it, not misplace it like the Jedi. Not let it stop you from doing the right thing like it did Vader.” Somewhere inside that heap of half-truths must have been the idea of a “benevolent dictator”. A thing that doesn’t exist in reality of course.

J.J Abrams’s comment about the title, Force Awakens, hints at another deception Snoke has employed.

“This was not just ‘The Force Awakens’ in a young woman. It’s the dark side of The Force awakening in the villain.”

In the original and prequel trilogies the Emperor seduced Anakin Skywalker to the Dark Side… only the Dark Side. Palpatin never told Anakin he was a perfect sculpture of both Light and Dark. It’s strange that Snoke would tell Ren that, given all the atrocities he asks him to commit in the name of their common “goal”. Ren, or rather Ben, didn’t rise from the Dark side. His training was presumably exclusively on the Light side (certainly can’t see Luke teaching the Dark Side :P). But Ben struggled with feelings of anger and fear and maybe nothing in Luke’s teachings helped him make sense of those. Or, the concept of Balance might have entered Luke’s mind as early as when Ben was still his apprentice, but the way he went about achieving Balance proved impossible for Ben. Maybe Luke, like Snoke, asked Ben to deny some part of his psyche but it proved impossible. Enter Snoke, with his own theory on Balance using the Dark Side (anger and fear) as a source of strength. If the news about Darth Vader being his grandfather got out around the time the clash with Luke, the inner struggle and Snoke’s misleading whispers reached their culmination, Ben would have gone over to the First Order guns blazing.

Why would killing his father be the way for Ren to awaken the Dark Side inside him? Palpatine didn’t ask Anakin to kill Padme. It was convenient that she died, but nevertheless he didn’t ask for it (because Anakin was never going to do that, and wouldn’t go to the Dark Side if it meant Padme would die). What it took for Anakin to go over to the Dark Side was a decision. He decided to give himself to Palpatine out of fear and love for his wife. Why then would it be necessary for Ren to kill someone in order for the Dark Side to rise inside him, in order to gain that strength that Snoke promised him? Isn’t falling to the Dark Side an internal change? A seduction? I think that Snoke purposefully mislead Ren into this decision because he wanted to kill his compassion, which is the source of his individuality. It’s the source of everyone’s individuality in this new trilogy. Finn broke away from the shackles of his indoctrination because of his compassion. In the new trilogy, compassion sets you free. 

Only Ren was misinformed.

At the end of The Force Awakens, Ren knows Snoke didn’t come through. He was weakened by his wicked act. It’s interesting that when he confronts Rey in the forest he doesn’t say “You’re alone now, Han Solo can’t save you”. He says “It’s just us now. Han Solo can’t save you.” The first would have been a far more accurate statement given that Ren supposedly has Snoke, a father figure, an army and years of training. More importantly, “You’re alone now” is intimidating – especially coming from Kylo Ren – while “It’s just us now” sounds like the plea of someone who wants to be empathized with, who craves closeness. It’s always been my impression that the way Adam Driver delivers the line “Han Solo can’t save you”, the trembling in his voice, the way his eyes are wide open and round and his breathing ragged, is that of a man who speaks of a tragedy. It isn’t hate. He addressed Finn with hate a few seconds later and the two deliveries are worlds apart. He sounds like a son who is incredibly angry at his father but at the same time he can’t put a lid on the pain and grief that’s coursing through him, threatening to show. But Kylo Ren can never show that emotion. It is forbidden.

Whatever Kylo Ren’s ultimate goal is, it’s not the same as that of Emperor Palpatine or Darth Vader. He doesn’t desire the traditional things the Dark Side has to offer. He wants to be strong, but what “strength” means to him may be wildly different from what Snoke promised him. Kylo Ren’s end goal has to do with what he perceives as moral. He aims to correct what he thinks is “wrong”.

“When they think of their actions as morally justified, it makes them dangerous and unpredictable. There’s no level they won’t go to to accomplish what they’re after. I never thought of the character as an evil person.” – Adam Driver

Rey and Ren: An intertwined destiny

He sensed his destiny and Rey’s were somehow intertwined, but how? – Kylo Ren’s biography, Star Wars.com databank

At the end of The Force Awakens, Rey has her first close shave with the Dark Side. She considers killing Kylo Ren but decides against it, because killing him in a fit of rage would be what she has learned from legend to be “the path to the Dark Side”. Armed with her eternal optimism and notions about heroism and goodness she’s absorbed through myths, she goes to Ach-To, to learn the Jedi way from the legendary Luke Skywalker. 

“Rey has a certain expectation as to what she might be getting from Luke and what that might entail. And as a lot of people know, it’s difficult when you meet your heroes because it might not be what you expect.”

Only she was misinformed.

Luke Skywalker isn’t who she thought he was going to be. He believes the Jedi – and possibly their teachings – must end. He doesn’t have the right answers for her. Does Luke perhaps think that as long as the Jedi exist, there will always be a way for the Dark side to twist their teachings and lure away vulnerable young students? Does he think that the Jedi way is somehow detrimental to bringing Balance to the Force? I’m more inclined to believe the first than the second. It’s an erroneous notion that a lot of people – good people – have bought into out of exhaustion and disappointment. A more extreme version of it would be if Luke believes the Jedi must end because all meddling with the Force must end. That simply by messing with forces greater than themselves people end up in misery and ruin. Perhaps he thinks the Force is more trouble than it’s worth. Rey has already seen that line of thinking in Finn and was very disappointed.
If Luke Skywalker has had a tryst with the Dark Side, I think it was by giving in to pessimism and inaction. He may even have been tempted to enforce order and good behavior across the galaxy and thus flirt with despotism, but given the fact that he was largely absent from the political scene and traveled the galaxy in search of Jedi lore, I think it’s more likely he was beaten down by pessimism.

“I only know one truth: it is time for the Jedi to end.”

Luke Skywalker in The Last Jedi teaser trailer

Rey wants to restore the Light Side to its former glory and settle her personal score with Kylo Ren. She doesn’t want to sit idly by while the world descends into chaos and despotism. And she wants to avenge her friends. It appears from both the TLJ trailer and the spoilers that Luke can’t or won’t help her with that. It’s not clear yet what exactly Rey wants to do with Kylo Ren. Does she want to kill him? Does she worry that this would send her to the Dark Side? What does Rey believe about the notion a lot of the fandom espouses that it would mean Han died in vain if Ben Solo can’t return to the Light? Rage may tempt her to end his life but when she’s had time to cool off and think, she probably won’t be as willing to kill Han Solo’s only son, the one he died trying to bring back. So what does she want to do with Kylo Ren? I imagine Rey must be burning with the same questions we are at this point. Why did Han and Leia’s son join the First Order? What does Kylo Ren want? What’s he fighting for?
When Luke Skywalker won’t be able to answer these questions, who is she going to turn to? I admit I have a headcanon where the Force ghosts of Obi Wan and Yoda show up on Ach-To and tell her something better than they told Luke on Degoba thirty years ago :P. 

It is perhaps the strangest thing that the only living person who holds the answers to these questions is the same one she is supposed to defeat. But, what kind of knowledge does Kylo Ren have? He believes they have important things in common. He wants to save her the heartache of expecting Han Solo to be a father to her. He wants to avoid hurting her, to protect her from Snoke, like he wanted to avoid hurting the billions that were murdered by Starkiller Base. In the interrogation scene, Ren tells Rey that something she feels he feels too and for that reason she needs not to be afraid of it. Kylo Ren has already begun instructing her. 

It’s surprising actually that Ren is a person who empathizes with that many people. He empathizes with Finn, with Rey, with his father, with Leia, with the people of the Republic who were murdered, with the entire army of the First Order, with Poe. You don’t see that in villains very often. Despite his terrifying appearance, he’s bleeding empathy from head to toe. It would be a mistake to think that someone who can commit such horrific crimes is someone who can’t feel empathy to such a degree. It’s also a mistake to think that because he feels empathy he isn’t incredibly dangerous to be around.
The most important thing Rey and Ren have in common is their empathy. Rey is an extremely empathetic person. She is so empathetic, she can identify with machines.

It took a real effort for her to let go of the first pile of food packets and draw her hand back. She glanced down at the inert droid, thinking hard. At last she looked back at the merchant.
“Actually—the droid’s not for sale. I made a mistake.”

The Force Awakens by Alan Dean Foster

She is also good at seeing past pretenses and grasping the real meaning behind people’s words. Evidence to that is the fact that despite Han’s grumpy exterior, she immediately knew what he was thinking when he tried to offer her a job. She is extremely good at reading emotions. She has gotten as much knowledge about Kylo Ren as he has gotten of her, if not more. And it is always harder to kill your enemies when you know what they are behind the pretense.

Rey and Ren are two people who are remarkably similar to each other. It’s more than their lonely childhoods. It’s more than the fact they’ve seen in each other’s minds. It’s more than their tenacity and bravery. They’re similar in their hearts. For a story that would be bound to end with the heroin killing the villain, that’s a rather useless set up. Their situational similarities might not have been enough to ensure a redemption arc for the villain, but the fact that they are similar in their hearts is the defining difference between this and other hero-villain dynamics where the hero empathizes with the villain but still has to kill him. Harry Potter empathized with Voldemort but they weren’t similar in their hearts. He also empathized with Snape for that, even though Snape died, their relationship was decidedly different from that between Harry and Voldemort. They were similar in their hearts. They both knew how to love, despite the fact that one had committed appalling crimes.

I’ve come to believe that the special bond Rey and Ren will share is not necessarily one that was forged through the Force during the mind-probing. It could be this literal and it would be awesome, but an actual telepathic bond isn’t necessary anymore because they’ve already forged a bond through compassion and empathy. It’s not an accidental bond, or a forced one, they were always meant to have that connection. They can’t fulfill their respective goals without this bond and without help from one another. And at the same time neither can go over to the other’s side. The only solution for them is to achieve Balance. And that is why their destinies are intertwined.

Epilogue

After seeing the teaser poster for TLJ, I think this similarity – the one in their hearts – is what the artists had in mind. 

Luke’s face seems angry, aggressive. But Ren’s face… a lot of people think it looks ominous, threatening. I think he’s got the look a person has when they are reading you, and want to be read back. His face definitely doesn’t look contorted with anger, or impending violence. He looks like he’s in silent pain. It’s no accident that the face of the “ominous, threatening” villain is smaller than that of the angry, legendary hero. It’s also no accident that Ren’s face is closer to Rey – or at least appears to be due to size. Rey looks like the only beacon of hope in the bloody picture. But the light of her Lightsaber slowly turns into red. It’s strange perhaps that, since the mouths of these two men are obscured and their eyes are their most expressive feature, their eyes are not leveled against each other, as if that comparison would be irrelevant. Luke’s eye is next to the ominous red beam while Ren’s eye is right in the middle where the beam changes colors. Rey seems to be looking at the brilliant light of the blue Lightsaber slowly turning into red. She seems aware of the change. She truly sees “Light, Darkness and a Balance”.