It’s interesting that many people are willing to read Kylo as manipulative and TLJ as false redemption bait (up to saying Rian’s comments about co-protagonists must’ve been misleading) but don’t read Rey’s motivations past the most obvious things she says. Rey said that she would go to Ben to turn him and win the war, so she must’ve /only/ been acting out of eager heroic naïveté that’s set straight by the end. It definitely has something to do with how we as viewers react to the gender dynamic.
Yes, in part it has to do with gender bias and a rejection of Rey’s romantic agency because it doesn’t follow the wholesome pattern they expected. Some fanboys don’t know what to do with a female hero who pursues goals that aren’t immediately relatable to them. For others it’s about shipping reasons full stop.
Either way, people project a lot on Rey and want her to be this plucky uncomplicated heroine who follows exactly Luke’s journey even though she’s a different character with a different background and different archetypes influencing her hero’s journey and there’s something so… hard to swallow about a heroine revolting against an established old guard male hero to defend the bad guy she’s falling in love with. I get it. A heroine. Having a romantic arc. With a villain. Romantic love as a motivation, ewww, am I right? But of course it’s easier to pretend that Rey’s actions in TLJ were only for the *greater good*—a greater good she didn’t even know existed until like, two weeks ago?—and that she was only interested in Ben as a weapon rather than as the person who (Daisy Ridley’s words) was nurturing her through her insecurities and fears. (easier until the next canon installment comes and smashes your interpretation, obviously, but I wasn’t one of those who were completely blindsided by TLJ, so I can’t relate, lol)
Luke’s motivations to save Vader were personal, not strategical. So are Rey’s—but of course she frames her choice in strategical terms to Luke: he’s already judged her harshly for opening herself to the dark side and to Kylo, so she makes an appeal she thinks he’ll approve of, rather than verbalize feelings she isn’t even fully aware of yet to an old, embittered man who doesn’t seem to be particularly in touch with romantic shenanigans. (also, there’s a part of Rey who isn’t ready to accept that the galaxy’s fate rests on her shoulders. So she first tries to turn Luke, then Ben—the two most powerful male figures she knows bar Snoke—so she doesn’t have to carry this burden alone. But it turns out she has to, for now at least. The last jedi has to be her, Rey from Jakku. And in the end, she embraces it.)
And the redemption bait n’ switch thing was for us, the audience. People were expecting Kylo to either follow a linear redemption path or become a one-dimensional villain that needs to be put down like a rabid dog—TLJ went for neither, pulling the rug from our feet and clearly stating that this is NOT the original trilogy and we need to stop using that frame to anticipate future developments. Kylo is now in a position where his redemption seems more unlikely than ever (because what worked for Vader shockingly didn’t work for him, so what’s left?), but at the same time he’s also grown more sympathetic, more nuanced, and has this genuine connection with the main hero that can’t be written off as manipulation or a red herring, since the feelings between them are very real. The stakes are higher than ever, the conflict is seemingly irreconcilable, and the final act is no longer easily predictable. Mission accomplished.
The bait and switch isn’t for Rey though. If it were, I would have LOTS of problems with this movie. Because the last thing a female character trusting her instincts and acting out her compassion and empathy needs is being punished by the narrative for doing so. And Rey isn’t. None of this is a cautionary tale for her to learn that you shouldn’t sympathize with your conflicted enemy or believe he can be saved.
The point is that what she saw in Kylo was real, and she was right to open herself to him and hear his point of view—her instincts were right on the money, but the execution needs more work, as Kylo can’t be extricated so easily from his situation, and she can’t be his only motivation. He’s been building up to surpass Vader for years and he clearly still believes this means becoming the leader of a fascist organization and he was given no reason to believe otherwise—moreover there’s no real place for him in the Resistance, and Rey (like Han) never addressed this. In his mind, going back to where Rey wanted to take him isn’t an option, so he’ll shape the universe into something new where he and Rey can be together. Rey, of course, cannot accept this, because she sees the reality of the new order Kylo is helping create, and it’s awful. That’s the tragedy. But with due time, he’ll see it too. I just said in an unrelated meta that there’s no real growth without responsibility and no responsibility without agency and now Kylo has everything he thought he wanted and the freedom to use it as he wants—and soon enough he’ll learn that it’s nothing to him. He needed to reach the top—or depending on how you see it, the bottom—before actually starting to reverse course.
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