Bind🤍🌓🖤Dyad

"John, it's impossible to say how much you mean to all of us. Your music for Star Wars, like all your music, has truly become part of our DNA. I can't fully remember the first time I heard 'Rey's Theme'. I was in such sensory overload I believe I blacked out for a moment. But every time I've heard it since I'm transported back to the scoring room I visited, watching you conduct a room full of incredible musicians, elevating the work we had put on film beyond recognition. Through the power of music you continue to inspire us, terrify us, comfort us, and send us flying across the face of the moon. As an art form, the movies — quite simply — are better because of you. We love you, John. Happy birthday. And here's to many, many more."

—Daisy Ridley to John Williams at The Kennedy Center

"Be with me ..."

This year's new Reylo Valentine is available now in my Etsy shop! A nice alternative to the Reylo who prefers Ben Solo to Kylo Ren (also the "To my Other Half" card from previous years is available as well!)

I’ve been seeing a lot of people saying that they would have been ok with Ben dying if they gave us some closure and we saw his force ghost or that the ending of TROS is a happy ending because when Ben dies he returns to the light. But the more I think about it, Ben’s death was never going to work for me because “returning to the light” shouldn’t end in death.

I’ve seen people say that it had to end that way because Vader’s redemption ended in death but this doesn’t work because the films show that no matter how hard he tries Ben isn’t Vader, he was never fully committed to the dark side, he was always conflicted and just lost his way.

In an interview that Adam Driver did on the making of TROS he says something along the lines of “If Kylo Ren is someone without hope, then Ben Solo is someone who has hope.” 

Ben’s character symbolizes hope for the future that lies in the hands of the next generation. Rey, Finn, Poe and Rose also represent this idea however only Ben represents the continuation of the legacy started by Luke, Leia and Han (After all he is named “Ben” after Ben Kenobi, Leia’s “only hope”). I think the writers tried to remedy this, by giving Rey the surname “Skywalker” (which bothers me for various reasons but I’ll save that for another rant) however this doesn’t work because while Rey represents a “New Hope” for a new generation, only Ben can represents the lost and then re-found hope of the legacy characters (Luke, Han and Leia). Like Ben, the legacy characters start TFA feeling hopeless, the Skywalker family is broken. They all feel responsible for failing Ben.

Leia holds out hope the longest. But even she eventually gives in to despair.

Until Luke reminds her that “No one is ever really gone.” Showing that he has found the strength to not only believe in himself again but also to believe that Ben can still make the right choice.

But just as Ben rejects Kylo Ren and regains hope…

his life abruptly comes to an end and he’s never acknowledged again.  

And this is why the ending of the Skywalker saga feels so unsatisfying to me, because there was no closure, the family is still broken at the end of the series. The “memory” of Han that Ben sees on the death star wreckage is suppose to act as closure for the family but he only gets to have this final moment with Han and this is an especially depressing resolution to that problem, when you remember that Han is not really there, this is a moment that Ben has to create in his own mind in order to comfort himself and apologize to his family.

Had Ben been able to live on and spend the rest of his life continuing his families legacy and fighting for what they believed in then I would have seen his redemption as hopeful, as this would have shown that even though people can sometimes go down the wrong path that it’s never too late to turn your life around. Also continuing his family’s work of helping the galaxy, would have been a way for Ben to honor his family and atone for his past. I believe that this ending would have healed the Skywalker family.

I still have some hope for Ben’s return, because I can’t believe that Lucasfilm can’t see how bleak the ending of their saga is. And after all “No one’s ever really gone.”