First: physical vs romantic can be a false binary. Some people don’t experience a difference in physical attraction vs romantic attraction. On a literary level, and especially in the context of a space opera/fairytale geared towards a young audience, the distinction might be entirely redundant: the two spheres coincide, as the sexual element is never explicit in fairytales, and the romantic interest is often a stand-in for both. You don’t get a point where the characters are “only” physically attracted to each other in this kind of stories.  

Second: going from hating someone to falling in love with said someone is a pretty standard romantic trope. It’s juicy, it’s sexy, and it’s all about CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT. In enemies to lovers stories, the initial hatred is not an obstacle but part of the romantic build-up.Usually there isn’t “one” turning point where the relationship dramatically changes, but many. It’s a gradual evolution. 

With that said… I believe a degree of attraction was always there on both sides (Kylo’s side being a bit more self-evident than Rey’s, though Rey’s part is interesting as well, more on that later). The romantic feelings, on the other hand, are still a work in progress. They still haven’t acknowledged them. 

Let’s start with Kylo because it’s easier. 

1) Kylo is VERY attracted to Rey since the beginning.

Our boy is very transparent when it comes to Rey.He instinctively recognizes that there’s something special to this girl, and he’s drawn to her like a moth to a flame.

^ He looks her up and down. Adam emphasizes this gesture with a blatant head motion because he’s wearing a mask and he can’t be subtle about it. Which means he was probably asked to be unsubtle.

^ He gets in her personal space immediately after that. There’s really no need to be this close if he wanted to simply mind probe her. 

This is especially interesting because the way this scene is edited we don’t see how he got so close that he’s practically…what, sniffing her neck? Whispering in her ear? So I guess the final cut was rather toned down compared to the raw footage of this scene, and it’s for the better, since Rey is immobilized and terrified and in no position to give consent to this closeness. (tbh, I suspect he was originally meant to touch her or cup her face in this scene, and they cut it because they wanted to make sure that Kylo never touches her—aside from bridal carrying her into his ship. See also how he touches her during the interrogation in the tfa novelization but not in the movie. This is an excellent decision in my opinion. It’s crucial that Kylo doesn’t cross that boundary without Rey’s consent, so it makes it all the more poignant when he touches Rey’s outstretched hand in TLJ. Yeah, don’t tell me this wasn’t all planned.)

This attraction isn’t conscious on Kylo’s part—he seems to be completely clueless about it. Both Rey and Kylo are coded as very immature for their ages, both because they’re supposed to have a coming of age arc (which in true sw fashion overlaps with a hero’s journey), and because they’re emotionally stunted as neither had a “normal” adolescence (for different reasons).

^ more unnecessary closeness and he’s also blatantly looking at her lips and neck here. I won’t go in deep into the interrogation scene because there’s too much to dissect, but yeah, the whole thing is Kylo being ridiculously fascinated by Rey and not knowing what to do with it.

But this is also where he starts going deeper into her… ahem, poor choice of words, sorry. I mean he looks inside her mind and he’s enraptured. He sees her loneliness, her fear to leave the place where she’s bound in a forced state of childhood, he sees the island of her dreams—and her affection for Han, which immediately triggers a cascade of unpleasant feelings for him. In short, this is where he connects with her emotionally (although forcibly) and where it stops being just curiosity and attraction and becomes something more, on a deeper level than just the physical, for him.

(casual reminder that this is a space opera so yes, Kylo can see a kaleidoscope of Rey’s inner world and HOPELESSLY FALL IN LOVE WITH IT in the span of 2 minutes of mind probe. This isn’t to be taken literally.)

As she slips out of his grip just when he’s starting to know her, Kylo LOSES HIS SHIT. He gives in to a childish temper tantrum at the sight of her empty interrogation chair, and when she shows up again at Finn’s side, he sees red. This is very possessive/jealous coded behavior.

THEN REY SUMMONS THE LEGACY SABER AND HE’S LIKE:

^ Heart eyes, motherfucker. I think at this point our boy’s fallen HARD. He still doesn’t know, of course. But it’s clear that this moment—the whole duel with her—left a huge impression on him. Later in TLJ, he tells Rey that she has “that look in her eyes, from the forest”, which, wow, someone’s been thinking about Rey’s eyes A LOT and memorizing that particular expression and romanticizing the shit of of it.

Verdict: Kylo immediately finds Rey attractive but has probably no idea why he feels that way, and starts making a lot of irrational decisions in order to take her with him and make her stay. By the end of TFA, he’s already caught a variety of Feelings. They will only intensify in TLJ, but the foundation, both in physical and emotional terms, is already there.

2) Rey. Rey is more complicated because she’s our protagonist/main pov, she’s female—female attraction is depicted differently than male attraction—and most importantly she’s in a situation of disadvantage for most of TFA. Due to her limited agency she is forced to react rather than act, and she’s constantly in a fight or flight mode. 

This, of course, makes her (subtle) attraction hard to notice and problematic to discuss, but we’ll get there.

^ Her first reaction to a full masked Kylo Ren is blind terror (with reason: Kylo chases, immobilizes, and then threatens her with his lightsaber). But remember: per the novelization, “she has seen this man before. In a nightmare, in a dream”. This already introduces an element of ambiguity: why this distinction? Was the dream pleasant? Kylo is, at this stage, the physical manifestation of a shadow that seems to be haunting her (in her subconscious, but also in the force vision she had minutes before). It isn’t as much repulsive as it is scary. 

Soon enough, she starts conversing with the shadow. Once the initial terror fades, she regains composure and starts demanding answers, even as tied up to a chair as she is.

The unmasking is a crucial moment.

^ This is when Rey sees Ben’s face for the first time—the prince underneath the beast—and it confuses her. It’s where she loses her combative attitude and has to regroup for a minute. She blinks, she breathes in, her eyes wander across his figure.The novelization states that it’s because he looks so average (LOL, sure) and not monstrous at all, but beyond the surface reading, this already tells us that Rey took time to register Kylo’s facial features and find them strangely unthreatening–even familiar. She definitely doesn’t find him repulsive or odd-looking.

From this moment on, she has trouble looking at him. She’s constantly avoiding his eyes or stealing short glances at him—he turned from creature into man, and she’s suddenly hyperaware of his closeness and her restraints. (this is where most people feel uncomfortable with that scene, because it’s dripping with ambiguous tension). Then she finds Kylo in her mind, she fights back and locks eyes with him again, this time unafraid. She chooses to look into the monster and while she turns the tables on him, invading his mind, she finds herself “inexorably drawn to”… something. His fears? The novelization leaves this unsaid, but the choice of words is interesting. She’s not merely pushing him out, or defending herself anymore. She finds something that intrigues her in there. That draws her in.

This scene is where they truly reveal themselves to the other—Kylo’s humanity and weaknesses, and Rey’s powers and strength. It leaves them both shaking and bewildered. It’s a sort of initiation—for both. To each other’s force powers, but also to the attractive power each has on the other.

Then comes another turning point—Han’s murder, which Rey witnesses from a privileged perspective.

^ There’s a sort of softness, but also enrapture, in her expression here. She’s completely sucked into this scene, all but forgetting she could shoot Kylo from where she is and end this at any moment. No, what she’s seeing is another side of Han, but also another side of Kylo Ren.

It goes back to when she was first introduced to the story of Ben Solo.

See? Raptured. Camera zooming in on her face. Light spheres floating around her as Han tells her about the boy who destroyed it all. This is a magical moment, the cinematography is telling us. 

On some level, even before meeting him in person, she’s drawn to him. Remember, this is a fairytale.

By the forest scene Rey is horrified, angry, exhausted, grieving. In the span of two days she was forced to grow past childhood, cut her umbilical cord to Jakku, and enter a scary phase of transition into adulthood, which Kylo is, like it or not, a big part of. Now she’s seen him murder his own father—he is a monster with a human face, something that seems to enrage her even more. The following duel is more of a discovery of her own powers (and potential darkness) than it is about Kylo (whereas for Kylo it’s definitely about Rey), but in the end she can’t bring herself to kill him. Again, this tells us more about who Rey is and what is her inner conflict than it does about her relationship with Kylo but… it’s something. I think on an instinctual level, even at this early stage, she recognizes something in him that resonates with her. His loneliness, his anger, his misery perhaps.

Verdict: at the end of TFA, Rey is mostly angry and scared of Kylo. All her actions revolve around getting the hell out of dodge, keeping Kylo out of her mind, and punishing him for Han’s death. Understandably. 

But she’s also curious. This man confuses her. He shows up in her subconscious, and he’s inextricably linked to her understanding of the Force, and her first experiences with it. It’s a sort of imprinting.

TLJ is when the really meaty part begins for Rey. In broad terms, TFA was Kylo’s romantic/sexual awakening to Rey, and TLJ is Rey’s to Kylo.The peaceful, safe setting of Ahch-To and the fact that through the force bond they can communicate but NOT hurt or manipulate each other draws Rey out of her fight or flight mode, allowing her to explore on her terms Kylo’s character, and all the questions and doubts he arouses (heh) in her. 

In their first force bond interactions, Kylo is calm and collected. In the other scenes he’s had so far he’s a hot mess of boiling rage and hurt (just minutes before, he smashed his helmet and launched an attack to the Resistance in which he thinks his mother perished), but with this girl who slashed his face in half and left him bleeding like a pig in the snow, he’s quite the soft spoken gentleman, lol. I think he’s been thinking a lot about Rey, he came to terms with his fascination for her, and now he wants to make Rey think about him too. He tempts and taunts her, from a place of relative knowledge/wisdom (or so he thinks). Rey’s the one who is in emotional turmoil. 

^ Initially, she tries to stick to her feisty heroine script, and she still has a lot of genuine rage and disgust for him, but mostly she can’t make sense of him. She feels insecure in what she knows (not just about Kylo but also about Luke, the Force, her role in this, everything. Nobody is telling her anything!), so she overcompensates with knee-jerk aggression and a false display of confidence (”I know everything I need to know about you!”). 

She also calls him “murderous snake!!!!”, which is hilarious and very revealing. IDK about snake symbolism in the GFFA, but here on earth, and especially in western culture, snakes symbolize insidious seduction, and that’s certainly the authorial intent behind this choice of words. By saying this line, Rey is framed as the quintessential virtuous maiden trying to resist (sexual) temptation, that biblically goes hand in hand with knowledge—which is exactly what Kylo offers. 

On a subconscious level, I think she already recognizes Kylo as a seduction.

^ This is the first thing that throws her off balance. She was probably expecting some angry shitty warped-moral-compass rebuttal, instead he quietly agrees that he’s a monster, while also “coming into the light” to let her see his face better. To make her see him. During the whole conversation, and part of the following force bond scene as well, Kylo is almost morbidly insistent to share with her the details of his past (”Did he tell you what happened? Did he tell you why?”). He wants her to see him, ugly as he is (in a spiritual sense).  

At this point, Rey’s sexuality is GETTING ANSWERS AND FIGURING SHIT ABOUT HER ROLE IN THE FORCE. And Luke (the biblical “God” of the island) is giving her none of that, other than hippie lessons about how the Force is a superior power blah blah and you better not fuck with it blah blah don’t go in the dark wet hole and remember that the Jedi aren’t supposed to intervene in mundane shit, blah.

I actually think the deleted fish nun party scene is important to understand Rey’s state of mind entering the third, and crucial, force connection. The point of that lesson—at least the way Rey understands it—is teaching her inaction and second-guessing her instincts. Luke is projecting his own disillusionment on her. He’s telling her to stop believing in heroes, when what Rey actually needs is believing in herself as a hero. She comes out of it feeling more frustrated and humiliated than ever. Depressed, almost.

Kylo, instead, gives her answers. Not definite answers, but something that propels her into action. He tells her, “do this and this in order to become the person you’re meant to be”. He strokes her ego. He talks about her destiny. He echoes and validates her suppressed anger and frustration. He digs up a painful truth about her family, and encourages her to face it. Even as she demands to know the reason he murdered his father, he makes it all about her. First, he made her see him; now he’s making her see herself through his eyes.

And, of course, he’s half naked through the entire thing. This is the first time Rey is confronted with something textually (as in, not simply existing in the subtext) sexual. The shirtlessness is obviously here for a meta reason too (to loudly communicate the romantic undertones of the dynamic, to symbolically strip Kylo of his layers, and to give the audience an eye candy) but even Rey the character is aware that this has to do with sex, someway. 

^ That’s why she stutters and averts her eyes. This is the unmasking 2.0, only this time the sexual implications are in the forefront. In a pg-13 format, of course, but still largely readable even for children.

This is where Rey starts wondering if they could actually touch. Gee, what a coincidence. 

The shirtless scene is a huge turning point where the romantic build up becomes, for a short while, glaringly sexual. It would be easy to say that this is when Rey’s physical attraction is born, but that’s an oversimplification. Everything in this movie and in the movie before has been building to this. Kylo Ren has been at the forefront of Rey’s thoughts since Starkiller. She has a powerful psychic connection to him, talked about him with Luke, wondered about the reasons of his patricide, questioned his backstory, exercised frantically to blow off the steam of their encounters. 

This isn’t when Rey first begins to feel attraction to Kylo—it’s where she’s first faced with the reality of it, and us with her.

And facing this reality is, in part, what prompts her to go into the dark side cave—the one the older male authority figure forbade her from going, the one in which she already subconsciously expects to walk a threshold. The threshold of knowing what happened to her parents, the question that she’s been avoiding for so long, that kept her bound to Jakku, to a version of herself who never grew up past childhood because growing up would make the years and years of abandonment painfully real, rather than just notches on a wall.

The cave scene has all the markings of an archetypal rite of passage into adulthood (and womanhood). The water, the near-drowning experience, the visions, the multiple selves, the mirror. Rey goes into it fully understanding that however it goes, it will imply a loss of innocence. Thematically, it’s a direct continuation of the other loss of innocence she’s just experienced—the sexual one, with Kylo.

Rey doesn’t get the answer she hoped for, but one that forces her to mature and come into her adult self—it’s time to take responsibility and be the hero of her own story, because the adults she were waiting for are nowhere in sight. So she comes out of the cave as more mature… but also desperate for human connection. Or rather, for connection to a specific someone. She feels “relief” when she senses Kylo’s presence in the Force inside the hut. 

And when she sees him, she thinks again of touching him.

In the movie we don’t get how the conversation started, and the novelization doesn’t delve into details either, and boy what would I pay to know what sparked Rey’s confession. But we can imagine. By this point, Rey already feels a kinship with Kylo, and her distrust and skepticism for him has eroded. She sees her own loneliness in him. She feels they were both betrayed by parental figures on some level. She’s made the mental connection that if Vader was brought back, then Ben could be too, by someone who loves him. Their force connections have been strange but they also gave her the chance to discuss stuff she would have otherwise bottled up. He’s physically attractive to her. He doesn’t judge her for going into the darkness. And when he tells her what she needs to hear the most—that she’s not alone—she makes that leap and reaches out to touch him.

It’s an olive branch, a comforting gesture towards someone she feels is just alone as she is, but it’s physical contact she seeks. She could have offered her sympathy in any other way, yet she chose to reach for his hand. Remember, she’s been thinking about touching him for a while already.

Kylo, after a moment of confusion, responds by taking off his glove. This is such a loaded gesture in terms of its romantic/sexual meaning that I’m still in shock it actually happened. He’s baring himself to her, so that this contact happens without barriers. His skin is not covered in first order leather when he touches hers. This is the real him.

^ And then they have their visions of the future, and that One Perfect Tear falls down Rey’s cheek and Luke blows up the hut and this is where my analysis can stop because by this point it’s completely obvious that our girl has FALLEN HARD, and since she’s the *shoot first, ask later* type, she hops on the Falcon to get her boy back before she can admit to herself she’s stupidly in love with him.

Rey saw a vision of herself with Ben Solo at her side, and she’s so blinded by the beauty of it that making it happen as fast as possible becomes her number one priority.

But feelings for someone don’t change overnight so radically. If she’s so massively affected by that vision, it’s only because her romantic attraction for Kylo has been building up at a consistent pace since the start of the movie, getting her to a point where she spontaneously sought an intimacy with him.

It’s the same for Kylo. Rey literally ships herself to him, but he’s no less reckless than she is in barreling into this promise of a future idyll. When Rey gets on the Supremacy, he already knows this has to end with Snoke’s death somehow. He doesn’t know how to do it, but he will. He will sacrifice his master to be with her, just as she did.

If you asked either of them if they’re in love with each other, I bet they would stare at you with uncomprehending eyes—it’s like they lack the basic lexicon to understand their feelings, let alone verbalize them. So Rey’s like “save the fleet because it’s the morally right thing to do!”, and Ben’s like “join me to rule the galaxy!”, and they’re both like, “you’ll stand with me!”. They’re trying to express the love they already feel but they’re doing it in non-romantic terms, because that’s all they know.

it’s the only thing that actually took me off guard me in a movie (TFA) that was otherwise really cute and engaging but also really, really safe (and predictable). Before watching TFA, I thought I had spoiled myself on every major development: Starkiller Base, Han’s death, Luke’s last minute apparition, Rey and Finn’s playful chemistry… I went to the theatre expecting two hours of harmless entertainment (which I got), the good guys being good and the bad guys being bad, a nostalgia trip at best and an uninspired but ultimately innocuous rehash of the original trilogy at worst… but what I actually did was stumble on a gorgeous and completely unexpected hero/villain ship, the kind that had sadly been lacking in my fandom life for years, at least since the good old days of True Blood season 2. No early review or spoiler had prepared me for that. (no early review or spoiler had prepared me for Rey and Kylo interacting at all, which in hindsight is h i l a r i o u s, and few mentioned how fantastic the character of Kylo Ren was. So not just Reylo, but everything surrounding Kylo was a pleasant surprise to me.) Bottom line: I went to see the movie with several expectations, but Reylo wasn’t certainly one of those. It wasn’t even something I knew I needed in my Star Wars. It just happened.

like, when i say it’s the only exception in a movie that plays it safe, I mean it. Just look at the interrogation scene, and all the pearl clutching it caused. Name another thing in TFA that sparked so much discourse.

it’s also the only dynamic that wasn’t ripped, one way or another, off similar relationships in the OT or PT.

curiously enough, Rey’s parentage wank is also one of the main reasons that got me looking more and more into Reylo. Like most people, I walked out of the theatre fully convinced Rey was a Skywalker and precisely Luke’s daughter. Predictable, but also so typically Star-Warsy, and back then I had no reason to believe they’d go for subverting the audience’s expectations. But Rey’s being a Skywalker meant that she’d necessarily develop at some point some sort of *personal* dynamic with local evil cousin (/brother?) Kylo Ren, a prospect I immediately found more interesting and narratively compelling than whatever relationship she might establish with her presumed deadbeat father, Luke. Were Rey and Kylo going to have a Micheal/Lucifer sort of dynamic, were they going to battle over their “divine” legacy? were they going to feel sympathy for each other? would they see each other as family at all? It didn’t take me long to realize I was actually more into this than into any other aspect (or dynamic) of the sequel trilogy, and it was all downhill from there.

all the post TFA fan theories concerning Rey and Kylo meeting in the middle and what that could entail for the Force plot (a new balance? Grey Jedi?)

yin/yang—opposites attract dynamic—enemies to friends (to lovers) = I CANNOT RESIST

they’ve seen each other’s deepest FEARS

THE STARKILLER DUEL!!!

What keeps me interested in it and makes me root for it in canon:

they’re complicated. Their relationship is complicated. Nothing about them is a simple “good girl redeems bad guy” scenario. Neither of them is willing to accept compromises to pull the other to their side, much less win their heart. They’ll move mountains and cross galaxies (and defy their own masters) to save the other’s life, but they’re not going to give up on their ideals, and if that’s the price to pay they’re fully willing to fight each other to death. They both understand each other deeply, on some instinctual, spiritual level, and don’t understand each other at all. The kinship and intimacy they feel when they’re in each other’s brain and soul dissipates when they try to communicate in person, in the same room, and it’s like they’re talking two different languages. They both want the best for each other, but they disagree on what “best” is supposed to mean. This is all very fascinating to me.

they’re real equals. In the Force, and in terms of narrative weight. See: the lightsaber tug-of-war. (and how interesting it is that in TFA Rey was able to both have exclusive control on the legacy saber and defeat Kylo, while in TLJ they both controlled it to the point that neither of them was eventually able to claim it for themselves?)

I, obviously, root for Kylo’s redemption. I believe Rey will have a huge part to play in it.

lonely eldritch Force children with too much power and too much responsibility on their shoulders, finding solace in each other and crying at the barest glimpse of a bright future together

none of the other options for Rey (or Kylo) interests me. Not even celibate!Rey—as I abundantly discussed before, it’s not the idea of Rey having a platonic/celibate happy ending with no romantic attachments per se that I reject (I’d be fine with it if the context was different), but the fact that, for it to happen NOW, Rey’s feelings for Ben should be inexplicably reduced to some weak sauce *I only care for your well-being as a friend and I’m happy to see you go on your merry way and possibly never see you again* pseudo-platonic thing. The way I see it Rey is super fiercely covetous of having Ben at her side, for her own selfish reasons and not just to win the war or because she has a good samaritan complex. Call it love, call it passion, call it passionate friendship, call it force bond shenanigans but… don’t tell me she’d be perfectly happy without him. 

speaking of which, THE FORCE BOND. Sensing the other’s presence at your side—being able to talk and even touch each other across entire galaxies, feeling what the other feels, but only for a handful of minutes each time, before the vision fades like mist between your fingers and you’re alone again. Dude. It’s the most beautiful trope EVER.

I need to stress it again: the Force is connecting them.

what we saw during the praetorian guard fight—Kylo and Rey fighting together in perfect synchronicity, like the force-bonded warriors they are—kept me awake for many many nights. I want more of that. 

I do believe that a Rey/Kylo alliance / friendship / partnership / romance is not just the heart of this trilogy but also the only satisfying endgame for it, at least for the Force side of the plot. A new concept of balance that’s the result of Light and Dark finding harmony and healing the wounds of the past is imo the only way to give the Force a happy ending that doesn’t feel like a rehash of the OT one (the Light wins = the Darkness is destroyed = the Jedi were right and the Sith were wrong). Also, consider: the PT ended with the triumph of the Dark Side, and the OT with the triumph of the Light. It’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that the ST will end with a combination of the two, or perhaps with a subversion of the whole dark/light dichotomy. 

they haven’t kissed and I live for the day they will

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. 

Rey and Finn’s interactions in TFA and TLJ are framed very positively. The lines of dialogue between them like “Cute boyfriend?” and “You looked at me like no one ever had,” definitely point to romantic interest to me: I don’t see why the creators would include lines like that without indicating some romantic interest was there. Finn is the first person to ever “come back” for Rey, and their experiences with each other are “firsts” that are incredibly important. They care deeply about each other.

In TLJ, they are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc, and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.) When they see each other and embrace at the end of the movie, it’s the first time Rey looks *happy* in TLJ. She looks so happy when they hug, and there’s a long hold both on their embrace and at Rey’s heartbroken expression as Finn tucks  in Rose.

In contrast, the Rey and Kylo scenes could be interpreted as Rey learning her lesson about how important Kylo is to saving the galaxy: not a “Don’t Trust Your Sexuality” lesson, which I do find a misogynistic angle to take on this particular issue, but a lesson about thinking she needs Ben Solo to save the galaxy, a lesson that she doesn’t need him. Additionally, although most of their Force bonds are weighed with attraction, she never seems to be very happy with him, and at the end, he says deeply cruel things to her (The Throne Room scene) and attempts to have her killed on Crait. 

The last Force bond tells me Rey is not budging, and, per the novelization, has no compassion for him: it would be a long, long road to have her forgive him at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. (Noting here that yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.)

I do think that Kylo Ren’s redemption is somewhat necessary to keep the story of the Skywalker family from seeming like a complete tragedy: it would be a pessimistic ending, in my view, if the takeaway from the ST was “Sometimes, your loved one can’t be saved, and so other people must rise to the occasion,” for the Skywalker family. But, even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not.

In TFA, Kylo is very much an aggressor/pursuer of Rey and her triumph is in fighting him off; in TLJ, he seems like more of a tempter figure, and Rey’s triumph is not giving into his offer and finding value in herself. She doesn’t ever seem happy with him, and the narrative never shows us a scene of complete fulfillment when she’s with Kylo: he never gives her anything she didn’t have, where Finn does in TFA by going back for her. (The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark.)

I don’t deny that Reylo was extremely “shippy” in TLJ. But Rian Johnson, in the same interview when he said that Kylo’s perspective in the throne room was a “naked, emotional appeal” also said: “It was important to me that it wasn’t a chess game, it wasn’t just a manipulation. It’s unhealthy, and there’s much that is awful about the way that he is manipulative. From his point of view, it’s a very naked, open, emotional appeal.” So he does acknowledge that Kylo is being unhealthy and manipulative, and that’s the writer’s intent. Rey’s arc in TLJ is very much fit to a naive hero’s arc, where she trusts the wrong person and sees the error of her ways. It doesn’t mean that Kylo is irredeemable and can never be trusted again, but TLJ also doesn’t mean that Kylo and Rey should be together, and includes quite a few scenes that could be read as red flags on his end, signals to the audience that this is a bad man who doesn’t have Rey’s best interests at heart.

And then there’s the next film, which is more opinion/conjecture on my part, but I don’t think JJ Abrams is the kind of storyteller who’s interested in depicting a big epic romance as the finale of the Skywalker Trilogy, or interested in involving Rey in the Skywalker Redemption question. Han and Leia care about Ben in TFA, Rey only views him as an enemy; and when she does try redeeming him in TLJ, the answer to her attempt is a solid “No.” JJ is a Better Trevorrow to me, in some ways, where he’s good at spectacle and big, bombastic movies, and although he isn’t openly misogynistic, his movies do have some sexist pitfalls. The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him. The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her. And if it is going to be romantic going forward, why would it have an “endgame” type ending? And then there’s the option of Rey being alone romantically, but still surrounded by friends, allies, and people who care about her.

And on a separate note, I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

I’m sorry this is much longer than I anticipated, but these are the things that have been nagging me for the past few months. I did really enjoy TLJ, and I do like Reylo and apologize if my comments came off like I was trashing the ship for no reason, but this is my honest reading of the text. I have a lot of respect for your meta and wanted to bring up these points: if you don’t want to respond to this, I’m sorry for depicting a negative opinion and wasting your time.

Don’t worry, I don’t think you wrote this in bad faith! That’s one hell of an essay, and I want to thank you for taking the time to write it and submit it to my blog. The two main arguments you’re making are a) that reylo is real but is depicted negatively and so it’s unlikely to be endgame, and b) that f/nnrey can still happen and be endgame because the romantic hints dropped in TFA must go somewhere and it makes Rey happy (forgive me for the simplification). I’ll try to address some key points.

The movies so far have explicitly showed that while they’re attracted to each other, he’s a toxic person who isn’t good for her

I don’t think that’s what the movies showed. He’s not a toxic person to Rey (Daisy Ridley has gone on record saying Kylo “nurtured” Rey in a way that even Luke couldn’t do)—he’s someone whose political affiliation and morals and ideologies can’t be reconciled with Rey’s, and THAT’S why Rey dumps him. Because he doesn’t stop firing on the Resistance fleet and instead asks her to essentially become a villainess at his side, because he’s still hellbent on being the leader of a despotic military organization, that’s why the narrative separated them at the end of TLJ, not because he’s “toxic” or “abusive”.

even if I think redemption is incoming, I’m still not convinced that Kylo could be with Rey. There’s audience reaction to consider (cue the cries of people asking just how this villain is worthy of the hero), but also the narrative beforehand: although Rey seemed willing to forgive Kylo completely for a part of TLJ, the audience still remembers scenes like the interrogation (a violation of Rey and something that robs her of agency, even though she does defeat Kylo), the Snow Fight, the Throne Room, and Crait. They did tone down some of his actions in the interrogation, like touching her, supposedly, but I still feel like Kylo is an unambiguous villain in those scenes, his treatment of Rey is awful (and this is just about his behavior, not whether Rey fights him off) and then, after showing us some of his humanity in TLJ, he snaps back to being a villain, and hurting Rey, intentional or not. 

So it actually all boils down to the audience’s reaction, doesn’t it? He’s too much of a villain so let’s not make reylo happen or the audience won’t accept it. But what the narrative is depicting—intentionally—is a hero/villain romance. The villain being a villain and yes, doing villain things including trying to hurt the hero (and viceversa, the hero doing hero things and trying to stop, violently, the villain) is exactly what defines this sort of pairings. Part of the audience will love it, part won’t, but a narrative that is afraid of pissing off a part of the audience isn’t a strong narrative.

I’m also not sure what would be the point of redeeming Kylo but still having him portrayed as a toxic individual whom the heroine should stay the fuck away from. Does this sound like an epic closure to a trilogy of trilogies whose thematic pillars have always been hope and redemption? To me it just sounds like a moralistic tale trying to half assedly appeal to tumblr discourse.

The “Reylo” arc is on a knife’s edge as it is, and already perceived as abusive and glorifying of a villain who hurts the heroine by many people: how would he be able to execute it in such a way that the audience wouldn’t be outraged at the injustice of Kylo Ren not only getting redeemed, but “getting the girl” so to speak? (I totally think the idea of Rey as a prize is repulsive, but unfortunately the majority of people do still perceive heroines or love interests who are female this way.)

You’re talking as if the audience is a hivemind and universally agrees with the intra-fandom, white-feminist, tumblr-specific “Reylo is abusive” wank. But the majority of the audience is actually moderately fine with Reylo, and most of them will be overwhelmingly okay with it if IX has something that tops the praetorian guard fight in terms of iconic jedi/sith marriage alliance. A good 80% of the general target audience for SW is people who don’t engage with fandom the way we do, they couldn’t care less about reylo or f/nnrey or any other ships for that matter, they just want to see a good story and be entertained for three hours and pew pew space battles. The people who will be “outraged” if Kylo “gets the girl” are only a tiny niche if you consider the star wars audience as a whole.

Also, it isn’t Kylo getting the girl. It’s Rey getting the boy. TLJ made sure to put her perspective front and center—it’s she who pursues Kylo, she who catches him in a state of undress, she who gets the eye candy, she who ruminates on his backstory while also delving deep into her own. It’s her point of view, her feelings, her attraction, her choices, while Kylo remains relatively passive for most of the time, waiting for her (to show up in a force connection, to come to the Supremacy, to take his hand). 

The scene where they touch hands, especially considering the music and the fact that Luke Skywalker is the one walking in on them, could also be read as an ominous one where Rey is getting too close to the dark

oh, no. No, no, no. :)) The Force theme plays during the hand touch. (the /ominous/ music you hear before is actually some notes from Kylo’s theme, iirc). And the point of Luke’s arc in TLJ was that he was wrong about Ben, wrong about trying to murder him, and especially wrong about going into exile for years, and after this scene he finally decides to face his demons. He’s not the wise mentor whose perspective can be trusted. His perspective is as flawed as everyone else’s. And he is actually the one who is depicted in an ominous way in that scene (barging in, hand raised to destroy the hut in a gesture that reminds intentionally of what Ben did the night he destroyed the jedi academy).

And at no point Rey got too close to the dark. She only got close to Kylo. She was never tempted by power, or knowledge, or violence, or any of the traditional pitfalls of the dark side. Her only instinct was to help, and save someone from himself. If compassion and love are a path to the dark side, then we should rewrite the Sith code, lol. No, Luke was wrong, he learned his lesson, and by the end of the movie he went to face Kylo Ren fully knowing that he wouldn’t be the one who’d turn the monster back into a man this time, but that someone else could.

Rey not needing Kylo, and being able to ascend to heroism without him, was the end point of TLJ, and I think it would undermine that ending if in IX she did turn out to need him after all and they had to work together or she had to forgive him.

It’s not about “needing”, or “having to”. It’s about wanting. Rey not needing Kylo (and likewise Kylo not needing Rey) is something I’m thankful TLJ established, because it actually lays the basis for the healthiest kind of relationship, the one where you love someone without depending (materially or emotionally) on them. This puts all the emphasis on personal choice, rather than necessity, and I think fits extremely well with the main themes of this trilogy. Rey realizing that she doesn’t need Kylo was beautiful and I’m sure the narrative won’t backtrack on it, but I still think she’s going to be with him in the end, not because she “has to”, or “can’t live without him”, but because she wants to.

And I think this doesn’t undermine Rey’s agency at all, on the contrary, it elevates it.

Re: the proposal speech being manipulative but also genuine according to Rian, please refer to this and this. 

Re: Rey being “unhappy” with him, uhm. I see this argument tossed around all the time and it annoys me big time. Right, she was SO unhappy that she ditched Luke to run to Kylo and try to save him as soon as she got a Force flashforward of his being at her side. What an ugly vision she must have seen, right? Careful not to confuse “raw emotions for an enemy whose pain resonates deeply with mine, as I’m also fighting a war” with “unhappiness”. Rey wasn’t unhappy in TLJ anymore than she was in TFA—she just stopped pretending to be fine, as she met someone who made her dig under the surface of her plucky heroine facade and confront her own demons and feelings of abandonment, and who brought his own demons and feelings of abandonment to the table, which Rey felt intensely for.

Happiness, conversely, isn’t always a sign and guarantee of romantic love, and the idea that love always makes you feel happy is generalizing and shallow, especially when it’s more about looking happy than anything. “She looks so happy when they hug”. Uh. So? I have a best friend who is truly the only person in the world who can put a smile on my face when I’m feeling down and who I can be completely myself with, and I would even say she’s the MOST important person in my world aside from my own family, and YET, I’m not in love with her. Nor should I try to be in order to stop suffering or be generically “happy”. Friendship is friendship, and love is love: both are equally important but they’re not the same, and they fulfill different needs. (mind, this is not me dissing friends-to-lovers tropes, which I like a lot, or saying that friendship can never evolve into romantic love, just that the kind of comfort and happiness true friendship offers isn’t necessarily the best basis for a romance, especially when there aren’t any obvious signs of romantic/sexual attraction.)

Speaking of which, and moving to the pro-f/rey part of your submission… I think most of the confusion re: f/nnrey being “obviously” romantic in TFA comes from the assumption that an “endgame” relationship needs to be portrayed as unambiguously positive since the start. Yes, Finn and Rey’s interactions in TFA were overwhelmingly positive—almost too positive, which in mainstream fiction doesn’t bode well for romance. Central romances, especially of the “epic” kind, are generally bumpy (or downright antagonistic) at first. And by “at first” I don’t mean the first five minutes of interactions, as in f/nnrey’s case: I mean at least the first act of the story. Translated into the context of a movie trilogy—it amounts to the first movie, give or take.

I just feel like there are far too many “romance” cues for F/innRey for that to not have been planned from the beginning. In TFA, those “boyfriend” lines weren’t essential, they could have been taken out without affecting the friendly-rapport feeling in their relationship. In TLJ, they didn’t have to juxtapose Rey being in tears facing Kylo to happily embracing Finn upon being reunited with him. And while there is the factor of Rose kissing Finn, they never entered into a deliberate romantic relationship or showed that the feelings were mutual: I feel like FinnRose isn’t essential to the next movie if they dismissed it, since so much of Finn and Rose’s arc could be read as them being friends or compatriots. There’s really no cues of romance until she kisses him.

funny how you’re saying that f/nnrey had “too many” romance cues not to have been planned from the get go in the same breath as you also argue that finnrose isn’t irrevocably romantic and could be easily dismissed in IX. Finn and Rose have a complete romantic arc in TLJ. Complete with a kiss. Whereas Finn and Rey only have a “boyfriend” line (which could be very well foreshadowing of Rey getting a “boyfriend” in TLJ, which she did, lol) and everything else is about deeply caring for each other and being each other’s first real friend (she looked at him like no one ever had, he came back for her when nobody would). Friendship tropes, I’ll concede, can sometimes be confused with romantic tropes, but why do the tropes used in TFA f/nnrey speak of romance more clearly than what Finn and Rose had in TLJ?

My opinion: they don’t. And if it seems to you like they do, it’s probably because you want them to see that way. Which is okay, as long as you’re aware of your bias. What really tips the scale from “could be romantic” to “oh no it’s definitely romantic” is the usage of textual, unequivocal romantic tropes and situations like Rose kissing Finn on the lips against a beautiful beaming ray of light or, well, Rey accidentally walking on a half naked Kylo and being very confused. 

Those are facts, not hints.

And this isn’t Game of Thrones with its three hundred parallel storylines and red herrings or a 14 seasons-long CW teen drama, it’s a three-movie space opera that needs to be as closely knit and narratively solid as possible, it can’t afford doing a back and forth between romantic storylines, which at this point (following your logic) would be THREE, and two of them should be dismissed or ended badly in the last movie for the third to be endgame.

The main couples of this trilogy as established by TLJ are Finnrose and Reylo. F/nnrey having any sort of romantic development at this point would only confuse the audience and unnecessarily complicate the narrative, which is already complex enough as it is. 

In TLJ, [Finn and Rey] are separated for the majority of it, but you could say that separation is always part of the romantic arc

Not for the entire second act of a trilogy, the one where (statistically in the SW movies) the pairing makes the leap from platonic (or antagonistic) to romantic. 

and Rey is constantly thinking about him, while Finn is constantly thinking about her. 

…were they? I mean, they probably were and it’s fine to headcanon it that way, but we weren’t actually shown any of it on screen (it was just handwaved at, with Rey trying to make contact with Finn, and Finn trying to leave to find Rey in the beginning) and this is important, storywise. It means that their dynamic is already established; the narrative trusts the audience to remember that they’re friends, they care about each other, they have an unbreakable sibling-like bond à la Luke and Leia, and there’s no need to remind us that they care about each other or introduce new developments in their relationship, which was fully formed by the end of TFA already.

Before she heads off to save Kylo, she gives Chewie an important message to Finn. (Which could have been something like “I love you” but I don’t want to assume.)

Again, it’s fine if you want to headcanon it that way, but one half of the pairing having the revelation that she loves the other offscreen (and no payoff for that at the end of the movie) is a really bizarre way to establish an endgame romantic pairing, if you ask me.

Re: the residual “romantic” cues in finn/rey—I think, if there were any (which in itself is debatable, but still), it’s probably because the finnreylo dynamic was originally conceived (by JJ) as some sort of lowkey love triangle, and then scrapped (still by JJ) in favor of a completely platonic bond on the f/nnrey side. Thankfully, Rian threw any possibility of a wacky love triangle out of the window by introducing Rose and letting Finn have his OWN romantic storyline rather than being reduced to a third wheel or cannon fodder to some stupid romantic conflict for reylo (which has no shortage of conflict on its own anyway, lol).

You also make it sound it deceptively easy to dismiss Finnrose as some sort of failed experiment or brief but ultimately irrelevant digression in the path that leads to the f/rey romance. It’s not. Rose is an important character, whose feelings matter, and she’s EXPLICITLY, textually in love with Finn. There’s no way to work around this fact or pretend it didn’t happen or argue that they’ll magically turn into platonic coworkers or *compatriots* (?). Finn’s feelings might be less clear but that’s why we still have a whole movie to go. But they already kissed, which as I said is far more definitive storywise than a line about a cute boyfriend or a kiss on the forehead.

Finally,

it would be a long, long road to have [Rey] forgive [Kylo] at all, let alone build some sort of romantic dynamic even though they will probably be enemies for a significant portion of IX. 

It wouldn’t be a long, long road to have her forgive him, it would be a very short and simple road, because TLJ already did the bulk of the work in this sense, and made Rey deeply care for Kylo and, even more importantly, understand where his rage and hurt come from. The romantic dynamic is already established, it only needs to come to fruition, which is incredibly easy to make it happen since (to your admission too) they’re doing Bendeption anyway. To be frank, Kylo only needs to choose to ditch the First Order and maybe make ONE selfless act to redeem himself, even in Rey’s eyes, especially in Rey’s eyes. Nothing he did on Crait was worse than what he did on Starkiller (his body count is even shorter!), and it took Rey approximately 5 days to believe in his inherent goodness. I don’t think she’s changed her mind on that. I think she knows he isn’t in the right place to change his views yet, and is fully ready to fight him if need come, but she also doesn’t hate him, as the novelization also confirms (whereas, post tfa, she thought she did).

yes, they were enemies in TLJ too, but IX can’t spend a large portion of its running time devoted to intimate conversations like TLJ did: it’s the final act of this Trilogy and the Skywalker Saga, things need to start wrapping up.

Actually, it can. TLJ did it and managed to have TWO other full fledged storylines (including another romantic arc) running parallel to the reylo one, an identity/redemption arc for Luke AND an epic climatic battle in the end. 2 hours and 45 minutes are a LONG time to develop a dynamic to its fulfillment. And what other loose ends or main conflicts does this trilogy have to resolve yet, other than Ben’s relationship with Rey (and reconciliation with Leia, hopefully)? The only reason you think IX can’t spend time on reylo is because you don’t see it as a crucial part of this trilogy. But it is.

TL;DR; in my opinion f/rey doesn’t have enough set up to be the endgame romance (not even considering TFA alone), and with Rose’s introduction they kind of sealed the deal. Having Finn and Rey be involved in romantic threads with two other main characters only to undo those threads and put them together in the end actually requires more work (narrative-wise) than letting their respective romantic storylines evolve to their natural conclusion in IX. Pre-TLJ I said that both f/rey and reylo can be “canon”, and both are, the former as a friendship (the most important one in this trilogy) and the latter as a romance. I just don’t think they’ll be both romantic in the end. There’s potential in that to explore in fanfiction (just like there was potential in, say, Luke/Leia or Obi Wan/Padmé or even O/bikin), but it’s an extremely unlikely (and messy) direction to go for the canon story.

Sure, nothing screams LOWKEY like a game-changing, unprecedented force bond spanning light years, canonically described in terms like “primal”, “raw and powerful”, “a live wire in the wreckage of a starship”, “intimate”, “incredible intimacy” (I’ve honestly lost count of how many times Rian Johnson has used the word “intimate” in relation to Rey and Kylo)—a connection that allows them to communicate across galaxies while the rest of the world disappears around them (pay attention to the sound effects) and tap into each other’s consciousness and deepest secrets and fears and desires and even physically touch each other. 

^ and be coordinated in battle too. Oh god, they perfectly move together. So lowkey. Not highkey drift compatible avenging battle couple at all. 

Nothing screams SUBTLE like visions of their shared future exploding in their minds like brain orgasms at the barest touch of their fingertips, in a softly candlelit scene in front of a fireplace, while she’s all wet and wrapped in a blanket like a maiden from a painting and looking more vulnerable than ever and he shudders and cries for her. 

^ but only after removing his glove, ffs. Who doesn’t love skin-on-skin contact with your platonic buddy? Oh, by the way, this was described by the actual director of TLJ as “the closest thing to a sex scene you’ll ever see in Star Wars”. That’s certainly a strange joke to make about two characters who aren’t on a romantic arc. Speaking of gloves and hands, that actually sounded like a gauntlet thrown at JJ Abrams. Hopefully he takes it.

Nothing screams PLATONIC like Rey stuttering and flushing as she stumbles upon a half naked Kylo, who gets up close and personal in all his scarred glory as she holds his gaze and makes herself focus (LOL). That one was surely just fan service and not used to introduce a blatant sexual element in their relationship at all, am I right? And the fact that their scenes are almost invariably intimate one-on-one encounters between the two of them alone, eyes locked in intense prolonged eye contact often emphasized by choker shot camera angles with lots of quivering and audible breathing and gasping and looking at each other’s lips/neck/chest is… probably just a coincidence? The only scene in which they’re not alone with each other is the one in Snoke’s throne room, and interestingly it ends with them killing everyone in that room so that they’re both alone again and Kylo walking up to her to make a tear-soaked, overemotional marriage ruling proposal after which they both cry and plead each other to stay with them. Platonic buddies being platonic, nothing to see here.

^ this moment was especially platonic. Very PG-13. Not looking ravenous at all, Adam. I’m sure Kylo was going to give Rey a pat on the shoulder here.

The one-sided train left for Never Going To Happen City the moment Rian Johnson chose to depict Rey as the one who consistently initiates physical contact and moves closer—she offers him her hand, she gets in his personal space in the elevator scene and speaks softly to him, she considers touching his face and hair, she crosses light years against all judgment and caution and ships herself in a box to get to him and make him come back. With her. But surely she went through all this ordeal only to see him make the right choice, selfless principled redeemer of random bad guys she is. It’s not like it’s explicitly stated (in the novelization) and perfectly conveyed (in the movie) that she enjoys his presence, doesn’t want to be alone again and doesn’t want him to be alone again either and that just the barest glimpse of him at her side in a mysterious future was enough to move her to tears. 

It’s not like she WANTS HIM as much as he wants her, right? It can’t be.

^ look, the face of someone who just saw a vision of a reformed Ben Solo going on his merry way after redemption. I too cry when people I’m definitely not in love with do the right thing for the greater good that has nothing to do with me.

(seriously: why is it so hard to see that Rey is attracted to Kylo? Is it because we can’t recognize female attraction, or because it’s only acceptable in a heroine when the recipient is considered worthy?)

I mean Reylo was so ~painfully subtle~ in TLJ that virtually ALL reviews, positive and critical, praised the INSANE chemistry between Adam and Daisy and the dynamic between Rey and Kylo as the strongest part of the movie. It’s so subtle that Reylo content is now completely mainstream on social media (including official sources), that Rey and Kylo are often marketed together, and that the ship literally exploded in popularity after the movie. Methinks it means TLJ was not subtle at all, what do you think?

“But they didn’t kiss or say that they love each other yet, and every interaction between them can be read as non-romantic”!—sure, if you squint a lot and like being wrong.

The lack of kissing only means that this dynamic needed TWO movies of build up rather than one like in Han/Leia’s and in Anakin/Padme’s cases. Reylo has simply much more ground to cover (it starts as a hero/villain dynamic, so it requires more development, which TLJ does beautifully) and, unlike Ani*dala, it’s probably not going to unravel into open tragedy in Act III, which means there’s no need to skip the slow burn and squeeze the actual hook up in Act II. The… romantic consummation is going to be a huge climatic moment, so it has to happen in the third and last act. Their relationship is also more complex and rich than the ones above since it’s inextricably linked to mystical elements (the force bond, the balance) and central plot elements (it’s going to be the key to Ben’s redemption and probably to the defeat of the First Order too).

By being romantic, this dynamic raises the stakes from a storytelling perspective—because with Han, Luke and presumably Leia all gone Rey is the only one who is invested in Ben Solo for personal and not simply ideological reasons (she actually has something to lose if Ben doesn’t redeem himself, and it’s a future with him, which we know she wants badly). A friendship arc that has the same emotional impact of a love story is not a viable option in this case, not after it was made explicit that they’re NOT related (so family/sibling feels can’t be the common ground to build a relationship on) and especially not after the blatant eroticism of their most recent interactions.

Will it be “resolved” romantically?