Finn Appreciation Blog

If you think aboutit, Poes been captured, tortured, crashed and then lost a bunch of his friends exploding starkiller, then Finn is comatose for a while.

me: 

John Boyega visiting children at The Royal Hospital in London.

You see the change written clear as daylight on his face on his face after Han’s murder.

From shock and horror.

Into grief and angry determination.

When Kylo flings Rey into a tree and yells “traitor!” at Finn it further cements his decision to fight. But the choice itself was already made before that moment.

That Han’s death has this tremendous impact on Finn should not come as a surprise.

Overall Solo treats him and Rey kindly – thanks Finn for helping Chewie, offers Rey a job, and after Finn makes it clear that he’s leaving Solo doesn’t judge him and tells to keep the rifle – which I doubt is something that Finn is used to.

Clearly Solo is a man he knows about and has admired. When they’re “introduced”, Finn speaks of him as the “Rebellion General” in a tone that is entirely favorable.

But still Han is a man who isn’t perfect, he too is running away, but after Takodana Solo rallies and tries to do the right thing.

So I think in Han, Finn sees both something of a farther figure, as well as a man not unlike himself.

But this alone is not the entire reason why Finn reacts so strongly to Han being murdered that it changes his path, the context of how the man is killed is equally important.

Finn is not a man to bemoan his fate or part, or wish for things to be different than they are, but you can’t tell me that somewhere deep down Finn isn’t wishing that someone – anyone – had come along and offered him a way out of the First Order. Instead he had to rely on luck and the kindness and understanding of strangers when he escaped. He was lucky with the people he met and he knows that.

And here is Kylo, being offered this exact thing. Han says to his son “come home, we miss you” and for that Kylo murders him.

From that moment on there is no option but war between the two of them as far as Finn is concerned. Finn might have been able to accept Kylo refusing the offer - even if he would never understand why - but when Kylo kills Han, Finn forever becomes his enemy.

So when Kylo Ren confronts Finn out in the forest and arrogantly tries to claim part of his heritage after murderously having rejected another part, Finn has only one answer for him. An angry and defiant

No, take a look.

That’s it. That’s the sequence. Two brief lines from Snoke and a very short reply from Kylo Ren.

What makes it even odder is that it has been shoehorned in between two major plot points, Hux agitating for and getting permission to use the Starkiller and the audience learning that Han Solo is Kylo Ren’s father.

The only reason for this kind of shoehorning is if it is meant to convey something that could not be conveyed anywhere else and that is of great importance to the story.

Past tense, so not foreshadowing of Rey’s awakening that happens 15 minutes later. And even if it was, with that kind of short time frame it would be the most useless foreshadowing ever.

This is the first time that Snoke and Kylo interact and the only time they do so prior to Rey’s awakening. Shoehorning this in here declares loudly for all to see and hear that there was an awakening prior to Rey’s and the movie wants to make that fact explicitly clear.

Instead of the sound and noise of the troops training/fighting or the officers yelling orders, all would be tuned out and Finn would hear the gentle, yet clear melody of his mother’s laughter, and her singing a lullaby he remembers and can’t get out of his head somehow. instead of the mandatory speeches the superior officers would do (referencing hux’s in tfa), he would hear of his father gently talking to him, excited sentences of the future and how proud he already was of his beloved, precious son. 

Imagine him helping his fellow troopers get up in a practice mission: when he reaches out for their arm and he feels their fingers grip around his hand, he somehow can feel the warm touches of his parents as they hold him, carry him, and play with him. Their fingers how they always brushed his cheek and sometimes even a delicate squeeze. How sometimes the few drops of blood or sweat that would roll down his face from training felt so terribly familiar a drop of a single tear that fell from her mother’s eyes when she saw his face for the first time. The face that had a glint of the father and the jawline of the mother-her-was staring at her right back, an innocent, wondrous gaze, a light to his dark eyes that had made her heart pause.

He could feel them and for some reason, a part of him insists that it’s not a simple deja-vu or even the stormtrooper gloves acting up. a strange tingling runs down him as that part of him suggests the idea of another life. it’s there, but he can’t at least, completely, imagine a life that’s not following orders and running through practice combat and missions to exist. 

For Finn, I think it’s all really familiar, but he just can’t pin exactly why. 

That’s the part of him that always showed its presence whenever he thought, felt, and heard of the life he had before he was just another number, another puppet of a regime that invests in dominance and power and coldness. What his life was as a stormtrooper is a more tragic and violent alternate parallel to the life he had before he was taken away, pried from loving arms fed with lies that their child will do good and serve good for the First Order and restore the galaxy to a scape of peace and order. 

I can’t fathom the rush of the Force just absorbing through him when he decided to abandon all faith in the First Order and when he heard the billions scream out from the system that’s lightyears away and definitely when he touched the cool hilt of Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber and when the weapon’s blue light sent an electrifying breeze through his veins. I can’t fathom how the familiarity of the life he lived before being raised to a stormtrooper seems even more real now-almost so close. 

While Finn’s story and hero’s journey so far is one of immense courage, heart, and unexplainable strength, it’s also one of unimaginable grief and tragedy. 

and then picks up luke’s lightsaber, the embodiment of the jedi and the fight for the light, to fight off kyle’s evil ass, the head of the organization he tried to run away from and which abused him since he was a child.

He literally throws away the weapon he was given by the first order, he sheds away that assigned identity, and makes the choice to fight for the light side even though he’s terrified for himself and for rey. I think this is the very moment where he leaves FN-2187, the soldier, behind and becomes Finn, the man.