#‘the antagonist is too evil and not morally grey enough’ or ‘your rebel people are too selfless’

[lightspren]

me: i’m having trouble thinking of the broader plot for part two of my story. let me search ‘tips for writing a fantasy rebellion’ and see if it sparks anything!

every reddit comment available: this is cliched. this is stupid. this sounds like every shitty YA novel ever. you suck and the story idea is bad and you should feel bad.

[neuxue]

So I'm reading your CoS reviews and something jumped out - you seem to think that Egwene blackmailing the Aes Sedai into swearing fealty is different from Elaida because there is no Oath Rod involved. But that's what compells Myrelle & Nisao to keep their oath. Also, you seem to think that there is a distinction about obedience, but if she can assign Siuan to be in charge, they ARE being made to obey, not just be loyal.

(2/4) Another issue with Egwene’s Oath of Fealty in CoS. Elaida had convicted rebels swear the Oath in mitigation of their rebellion against the same authority. It was the EXACT rationale used to make Myrelle & Nisao swear, except Egwene just did it for personal advantage, and Nisao herself didn’t even do anything wrong, she was just facing the same sort of unjust Tower justice as Elayne for the secret of the Kin. What should her priority have been, saving Lan or being holier-than-thou with Myrelle? 

(3/4) More Egwene’s Oath: Egwene’s attitude in the whole morning is very contradictory. The night before she was smug about taking control of minor admin stuff from Sheriam and aghast at the idea of anyone blackmailing AS or AS swearing fealty, but in the AM, she’s mad about the papers on her desk & blackmails AS into fealty. Also she’s in the middle of a false flag operation, tricking people into fighting a war they’d never fight if they had the facts. It seems like Egwene is secretly in the wrong 

(4/4) Final issue with Egwene in aCoS, I promise: How did we get from two books of Rand being the priority in Salidar, both in N&E’s motive for going there, then searching for the Bowl, lying to make them think they need Rand, and suddenly it’s all about Egwene’s power? She’s 18 with no qualifications, and for all she’s supposed to make the Tower help the good guys, she gets mad at N&E because SAVING THE WORLD might cause HER problems & condemns Rand for doing what she did except AS actually hurt him.”

For context: Since answering the previous string of asks about Egwene a few days ago, I have received 12 asks, in addition to these, telling me in less civil language about how Egwene is a hypocrite/evil/annoying/the worst and I’m reading her wrong or giving her too much leniency. Just putting that up front in case I sound impatient, because I do value good-faith discussion but the overall tone of my askbox right now is…not so good faith.

And I really don’t mind if people disagree with me on Egwene. That’s fine; you’re entirely within your rights to do so. There are parts of her story and characterisation that are very, very easy to disagree on. That’s okay! They’re supposed to be! She walks pretty close to some lines at various points (like many characters in the series), and whether she steps over those or not is sort of up to you.

But there’s only so much I can respond to on the same topic, especially because it feels like a) I’d just be rehashing things I’ve already said in the liveblog, b) like I said before, it could just keep going because Egwene’s a main character in a 14-book series and there’s a lot of material there to disagree on and c) we clearly do not see eye-to-eye on her character. That’s absolutely fine, but it again contributes to the…lack of enthusiasm I feel about this. 

tl;dr: I like Egwene, and I disagree with some of the specifics you’ve pointed out, but will also acknowledge that she does some things that are morally questionable and arguably hypocritical, and while I don’t have a problem with that in particular, it’s fine if you do.

More on the oaths, the ‘false flag’ operation, and Egwene’s lack of qualifications below.

1: Egwene’s oath

Yeah, this is one where the line between what she does and what Elaida does (and what Rand and Taim and eventually Verin do) is rather fine. I think oaths of fealty, even with the Oath Rod preventing untruths, leave more flexibility, especially to an Aes Sedai, than a very specific Oath of obedience; we see that in how the Aes Sedai sworn to Rand behave. And I think her wording is that they have to treat orders from Siuan as if those orders had come from her: there’s definitely some wiggle room there, if you want to get into technicalities…which I kind of don’t, really. For me, that’s not specifically the point. I also think Elaida’s and Egwene’s respective positions and rationales make enough of a difference that, for me, what Egwene does falls into the category of ‘morally rather shady but in a way I like rather than dislike’.

And most of it comes down to just that: a very subjective liking of this kind of thing. I like watching characters play around in moral grey areas, or struggle with their own pride, or do complicated or questionable things for complicated or questionable reasons. I like when desperate characters, backed into a corner, find a way out that works but isn’t always easy to live with. I like when characters I like find ways to get what they need, and I will absolutely admit that in many cases this is subjective. The more I like the character, and the cleverer their solution, the more likely I am to enjoy it.

Given that…yes, I like seeing Egwene find this solution and implement it. Yes, it’s politically manipulative and at times morally questionable. Yes, I condemn Elaida for something that I see as different but not hugely different. No, I don’t have a list of technicalities that I can use to draw a clear delimiting line and say ‘Egwene is right because X and Y, while Elaida is wrong because Z’. I think Egwene has more justification for what she does, given her position, her options, and her capabilities…but that’s just what I think. It’s messy and ambiguous and there’s a bit of ends justifying the means here, which again I’m kind of…fine with, in fiction, because I like morally sticky situations. If you don’t like those, or you have a line in the sand drawn at a different point than I’ve drawn mine…yes, I can 100% see where you’re coming from, and I’m not going to change your mind, and you’re probably not going to change mine, and that’s fine.

2: Egwene running a false flag operation and tricking people into fighting

They asked. A general. To build. And lead. An army.

Before Egwene even got there.

They started the rebellion. Well, no, Elaida did by leading a coup, and I suppose the Black Ajah by influencing events in that direction and Ishamael by pushing them to do so…

But the Aes Sedai who went to Salidar fought their way out, refused to recognise Elaida’s authority, set up a centre of power and operations outside of and antagonistic to it, and decided to appoint an Amyrlin, and let’s not forget, asked Gareth Bryne to lead an army for them. One of his conditions, which they agreed to, being that they have to see this through. And then they try to get out of that.

She’s tricking them–or rather, manipulating them; I’m not sure it really qualifies as trickery specifically–into actually doing what they have already effectively committed themselves to doing. 

You say ‘if they had all the facts’. What facts don’t they have? Any of them at any point could look at what Egwene’s doing and see where it’s going, but they kind of deliberately don’t. Egwene’s authority, and her motivation for getting them to vote (vote!) to go to war, is a technicality in Tower Law, which they have every reason to know. That they don’t and Egwene does is… kind of their own problem. Also, that they’re surprised at all by the vote of war in the first place is their own problem given, again, that they started a rebellion and hired Gareth Bryne to give them an army.

Does Egwene try to manipulate the political situation? Yes. Does she try to push the Aes Sedai into action when they’d rather sit and talk about acting and actually do nothing? Yes. Is that a false flag operation? No.

3: Egwene is 18 and has no qualifications

3.1: 

Rand al’Thor is 21 and has no qualifications. Perrin is 21 and has no qualifications. Luke bloody Skywalker is 20-ish and has no qualifications. There’s an entire genre out there filled with characters who are young and have no qualifications, by that definition, and Egwene is hardly less qualified for her role than plenty of other WoT characters are for theirs. In real life, that would be more of a problem. In fiction…eh. Depends how well it’s executed, for me. Some people have a higher or lower tolerance for this, and that’s fine. But it’s not remotely specific to Egwene, so I have a hard time taking it seriously.

3.2: 

Is she unqualified? An important point of context here is that this is the apocalypse. Things are falling apart in ways that no one’s really prepared for. The Aes Sedai are broken. This is sort of a theme across the books: the existing powers and systems and authorities are either in denial, or unprepared, or outdated. We can argue all day about the validity of that narrative premise, but that’s how this is set up. It’s how any of the young protagonists end up in power: because, in this ‘nothing is normal and everything is breaking’ world, no one is specifically qualified and those who can’t accept what’s happening are even less so.

Anyway, let’s look at Egwene. She’s trained under Moiraine and Siuan - political experts and also two of the Aes Sedai who have spent the most time preparing for the coming of the Dragon Reborn and the apocalypse. She’s trained under Amys and the Aiel Wise Ones - political experts, though in another culture. She even, arguably, has military experience in that she’s been trained by the Seanchan to be a weapon. She certainly has a great deal of firsthand experience in foreign affairs, having been held by the Seanchan, spent months with the Aiel, and travelled across the continent and interacted or negotiated with various countries’ leaders and governments. She’s familiar with Tower Law (thanks to Siuan), and highly skilled in the use of the One Power. She’s also intimately familiar with a great deal of the shit that has recently hit the fan: she’s a childhood friend of the Dragon Reborn, and has been front and centre at a number of rather key events lately. Also, she’s got good mentors: Siuan and Gareth Bryne, both leaders or former leaders in their own rights, teach her and vouch for her capability.

3.3:

She’s put into the position she’s in precisely because the other Aes Sedai believe her to be too young and unqualified to think or act for herself, and believe they can use her as a figurehead and puppet. They know the things an Amyrlin is and isn’t legally and technically empowered to do (and if they don’t, that’s on them), and they seem to accept the risk they take in appointing her to a position with those powers, trusting that she won’t be able to use them. That they’re wrong about this is their own fault. The lesson here is: don’t put someone in a figurehead role if you’re not prepared for them discovering that they have actual power, and deciding to use it. Look at historical monarchies, and young monarchs, and what happens to their advisers who think ‘I’ve got everything under control’

4. Everything else you’ve mentioned

The rest is subjective enough that trying to argue it would be an exercise in futility, and I feel like that’s not the point here anyway. For instance, “she gets mad at N&E because SAVING THE WORLD might cause HER problems” is…several degrees into interpretation and subjectivity; I disagree that this is what’s happening here, but the framing of this makes it hard to go anywhere productive. Same with “what should her priority have been, saving Lan or being holier-than-thou with Myrelle” - I disagree with the premise of the question itself, so there’s not much I can say.

So I’ll just…leave it there. Nothing’s stopping you from putting together these arguments as a post of your own, but I’m probably done airing them on my blog, given the sheer volume of vitriol I’ve received in response to the last set of asks. 

[meta-shadowsong]

On Moral Ambiguity in Fiction

And where it works and where it doesn’t (at least for me), using Star Wars and Harry Potter as sort of examples/case studies/what have you.

Couple sort of definition things to get out of the way--first, when I say ‘moral ambiguity,’ I’m talking specifically about characters and character arcs/dynamics, rather than overall situations/plotlines. Because the two universes, as a whole, are pretty firmly “there is Real Evil and we are going to Defeat It” type of stories. And both verses also have clear and obvious Evil Bad Guys Who Ruin Everything (Palpatine and Voldemort).

I should also say, as a sort of disclaimer before we get started, that I really like nuance, especially when it comes to characters and character alignments. I have a thing for double agents; for people who were once good but now evil, or were once evil but now good, or who are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum, and exactly where they end up depends on the weather/time of day/what have you. Which is not to say that I don’t enjoy the Obviously Evil villains, or the True Good heroes. Honestly, I think that a universe that has variety going for it tends to work the best.

Last definition - there’s a few different ways to do a Morally Ambiguous/Grey Area character. There are the fallen heroes, of course, and the redeemed villains. There are also “technically on our side in the bigger fight against Evil but also really shitty people” or “Your Allies Can Be Assholes”; and “clearly our enemy but also in some ways a decent person with whom we can Empathize” or “Your Enemies Can Be Decent People.”

(Also, while I’m not really going to focus on them here, I should mention that there are also sympathetic villains, who are never redeemed or switch sides or anything, and remain entirely Villains throughout, but have enough character development/humanizing characteristics that you can at least somewhat empathize with them even as they’re Horrible People who do Horrible Things. I’m leaving them out primarily because characters in that category tend to need way more in-depth discussion/their own essays about where they fall on the good vs. bad line; and besides I’d rather focus on different kinds of Morally Ambiguous/Grey Area characters for the purposes of this essay. Also, while I think there are examples in both verses, characters in this category tend to be very much YMMV. Basically, there’s a sliding scale from “Pure Evil” up to “Your Enemies Can Be Decent People,” and I’m trying to pick my examples that sit further on the lighter end of the greyscale here.)

Right. On to the actual discussion. Star Wars, on the surface, bills itself as straightforward good-vs-evil/Fairy Tale Logic/“once you start down the dark path” etc., etc. Harry Potter, on the other hand, has that great line: “the world isn’t divided into Good People and Death Eaters.”

Of course, once you actually start digging into it, Star Wars is absolutely not what it claims to be, and Harry Potter, while not technically wrong, fails to deliver on everything that statement implies.

When I look at Harry Potter, there are certainly a lot of Morally Ambiguous characters involved. We have Dumbledore, who fits into “Your Allies Can Be Assholes;” Barty Crouch, Sr. fits into this category as well. You have Fallen Heroes, with Pettigrew being the primary example. You have people who are maybe not technically actively working for/with the Big Bad, but are still Truly Awful People; i.e., Vernon Dursley. And you have people who are maybe on your side and maybe not assholes, per se, but have their heads so far up their asses with their preconceptions/have so many blinders on that they move past useless into actively obstructionist; i.e., Fudge.

But what you don’t find is the flipside of that. I can’t think of a single person who falls under “Your Enemies Can Be Decent People.” And while I can think of a few “redeemed” villains, they’re either so badly handled they become Your Allies Can Be Assholes (Snape), exist entirely in Backstoryland and thus don’t really have personalities or anything to latch on to (Regulus Black), or are barely present in the narrative by the time they have their Heel Realization (Dudley).

And that’s...like...leaving aside all the other issues with Harry Potter that have been cropping up in hindsight over the past few years...I think that’s a large part of why I fell out of love with the franchise. Like I said, I have a thing for double agents and grey-area/ambiguous characters, and I think a lot of it comes from the way I read this series when I was younger. I mean, it comes from some other places, too, but HP was a big one (probably because HP was such a big Thing for a long time overall, in my life and in pop culture in general). But looking back, it’s...really not what I thought it was. And it’s such a bleak, crapsack worldview, you know? “The bad guys are Bad Guys, but gueeeeess what! So are a good chunk of the nominal Good Guys!”

So, no, the world isn’t divided into Good People and Death Eaters. Technically. But it’s divided into Death Eaters, Other Bad People, and A Few Trustworthy Friends.

When I look at Star Wars, on the other hand--yeah, there are definitely Your Allies Can Be Assholes characters running around. Saw Gerrera, at least in Rebels and Rogue One, is of course the primary example. But there’s also--like, Borsk Fey’lya in Legends. And, depending on the reader/writer/narrator, various characters could fall into the “so many blinders on that they move past useless into actively obstructionist” categories. Plus, characters like Hondo, and others from the seedier side of the galaxy who are Not Good and Only Occasionally Nice, but they’re reasonable allies against the True Evils out there. And of course we have our Fallen Heroes--even if we exclude Anakin from this conversation, we have at the very least Barriss, to say nothing of Dooku and Pong Krell (we don’t really see either of them in their not-fallen hero state, but we know it existed at some point).

But you know what Star Wars also has?

The other side of this coin.

Again, even if we exclude Anakin and Vader from this conversation. Redeemed villains and “Your Enemies Can Be Decent People” are all over the place. I mean, there’s obviously my best beloved Alexsandr Kallus, but there’s also Bodhi Rook and Galen Erso; there’s General Madine (another super-prominent defector); going to Legends there’s Mara Jade and Gilad Pellaeon; there’s Ventress, who was a good person and then fell and then slowly starts finding her way back; there’s my girl Bo-Katan, who joined Death Watch and probably murdered A Lot of people, and then realized Just How Awful things were and tried to fix it. (...side note, I kinda ship Ventress and Bo-Katan, anyone with me? XD). I’m still catching up on some of the canon novels/haven’t really played the video games, but I know through Tumblr/fandom osmosis there are examples there, too.

Plus, something that came up quite a few times in the Clone Wars was that, apart from Palpatine and Dooku and their inner circles, the majority of people on both sides of the conflict genuinely believed they were fighting on the side of Right; and the Separatists actually did have some legit points about the way the Republic government was messed up. (Which is one of the bits I had a slight issue with in Queen’s Shadow, that they seemed to be taking that away from Mina Bonteri a little bit by having her in contact with someone who seemed to be either Sidious or Tyranus, but I digress.) But the PT era in general is where ambiguity and complicated politics lives, and this also starts getting into some YMMV territory, similar to Sympathetic Villains, so I’ll leave it at that.

I think that what it comes down to, really, is that HP, for all it makes its moral ambiguity explicit/centers it/talks about it, leans hard into the Your Allies Can Be Assholes aspect, while Star Wars leans more towards the Your Enemies Can Be Decent People side of things. And, again, this is not saying that there isn’t a range of quality in how these things can be handled. Like, Your Allies Can Be Assholes, when handled well, can be really engaging/amazing. And Your Enemies Can Be Decent People can quickly go in all kinds of bad directions if it’s not handled well.

But overall, a story that leans more towards the second is more hopeful. One of the main arc words in SW is hope, and I think that’s why the grey-area characters work so much better there, because they support that thesis, so to speak.

I also think that Star Wars has a much more balanced greyscale than HP does. Like, the Your Enemies Can Be Decent People is more prominent because, again, the series’ watchword is Hope, but there's still quite a few Not Nice people on the side of Good, which adds its own layer of nuance/interest, at least for me. ...and, you know, the fact that Star Wars has both Pure Evil and more nuanced villains/antagonists probably contributes to that. It might be that this kind of Moral Ambiguity works best when there is a clearly defined Evil to compare it against. Both in terms of the greyscale good guys and the greyscale bad guys.

In the end, I think there’s probably a lot of things that go into it, but overall the ambiguity in SW works so much better for me than HP. And I think the distribution along that sliding scale is a huge part of it. Because HP’s version kind of boils down to ‘Life Sucks; sure there are a few Good People who try to make it suck less, but most of the people, even on your side, are kind of awful’ and SW’s version boils down to ‘there is hope, even if it doesn’t always pan out; yes there is evil in this world and there are some, even on your side, who might choose it and refuse to change--but there are at least as many people who turn their back on it, even if it takes them a while.’ Both acknowledge that there is Evil in the world, and that dealing with it isn’t always simple or clear-cut, but SW takes a broader, more nuanced look at that question. Even if it doesn’t outright say that’s what it’s doing.

(And, sure, the fact that HP promised things it didn’t/couldn’t deliver and handled a few of the examples it tried to provide really badly doesn’t help, but...yeah.)

So, there it is. A lot of Personal Opinion, obviously, but...I feel like I might be on to something here? What are your thoughts?

((Also, I’m aware that I didn’t talk about the ST like at all, but that’s because, at least IMO, the ST has fewer morally ambiguous characters in general, at least in the sense I’m talking about. That being said, there’s at least the one guy from the Phasma frame story who falls into Your Enemies Can Be Decent People; and I guess I technically could have mentioned Kylo Ren when talking about fallen heroes, on the same justification I included Dooku/Pong Krell, even though I personally find him much less interesting than Dooku, in particular...Anyway, what I’ve noticed in the ST is that, when people are working at cross-purposes, they tend to still be firmly on one side or the other, just with differently-aligned priorities. And/or are Hondo, who marches to the beat of his own drum and always will. I love that he’s still around XD.))

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Kylo Ren Is Getting a Zuko Redemption Arc, and This Reylo Shipper Is Anything but Thrilled by It - Part 2

So here’s my chief problem with the idea of a potential Kylo Ren redemption arc:

On the whole, the Star Wars sequels are overstuffed, impressively underwritten, and the story they tell greatly suffers from being presented in a movie form.

I’m not joking: when it comes to worldbuilding and character development, the sequels – by necessity of their allotted time and creative choices made in TFA – gloss over many things that should have been addressed by now; things that are vital to Kylo Ren’s character and the degree to which he can be perceived as sympathetic at all, now and in the future.

Coming back to the Prince Zuko comparison, we know what Zuko’s deal is from the start – and yes, that includes the eleven episodes before The Storm which reveals why exactly he’s so obsessed with capturing Aang. From the very beginning of the show, there are clues hinting at the fact that Zuko’s not what he originally seems to be, i.e. a clear-cut fearsome baddie: Sokka humiliates him during the raid on the Southern Water Tribe; Zhao openly insults him, the crown prince, to his face; he’s humanized by his jolly good-natured uncle from moment one; he’s still a Firebending rookie who hasn’t mastered the basics at the age of 17. Throughout the show, we are privy to Zuko’s thoughts, we see him in different situations that challenge him and his sense of morality; we see him talk to people, and people talk about him, subtly revealing pertinent facts; we learn about his past in no uncertain terms and about his relationships; we learn what he’s fighting for and why.

All of this information creates a full nuanced image of a complex character who’s experiencing a constant inner tug-of-war between his good and bad impulses, and as a result frequently makes the wrong choice. And although we may not agree with his decisions and may even denounce them, we always know precisely why he made them, what they’re based in, and where Zuko’s coming from.

The Star Wars sequels, on the other hand, frequently leave us guessing and filling in the gaps to explain how the most basic things are set up and what the exact nature of characters’ defining moments is, if they’re even mentioned at all.

Let’s try an experiment: take everything you think you know about the story, themes, and characters of TFA and TLJ. Now, remove everything that comes from the cast and crew interviews, from the comparisons with the Star Wars expanded universe, from your headcanons or the wikis or other people’s metas and fanfic, so that only the movies themselves remain.

There’s not much left, is there?

So here’s what we know about Kylo Ren with absolute certainty:

He’s the son of Princess Leia and Han Solo, the famous rebel fighters, and the nephew of the last living Jedi;

He’s very powerful and apparently felt the calling of the dark from early on;

He greatly admires his grandfather and wants to finish what he started;

At some point, Snoke turned him to the dark side;

Leia sent him to train with Luke in order to temper his dark inclinations;

Luke briefly considered killing him; Ben interpreted this as an ongoning attempt on his life, attacked Luke, and killed all the other padawans;

He’s invested enough in the First Order to immediately notice Finn’s hesitation on Jakku. He later pursues Finn, screams at him that he’s a traitor, and takes delight in hurting him;

He still feels the calling of the light and suffers because of it.

And here’s what we don’t, yet should know by the end of the second act of Kylo Ren’s story:

What does he think Vader started, why does he want to finish it, and what’s his Vader worship a reaction to?

What’s his relationship with Snoke? What did Snoke offer him besides raw power that made him turn to the dark side as a (presumably) young man?

What is it about the First Order that would appeal to a kid surrounded by rebel heroes, enough for him to actively fight against what they built, even killing scores of people along the way?

What’s his stance on the New Republic?

What was his family life like? What was the chink that allowed Snoke to crawl in?

What were his feelings about being sent to train with his uncle? Did he consider it to be a rejection by his parents, a complication to his conversion to the dark side, or an honor which was then sullied by Luke?

A lot of these complaints stem from the fact that we know virtually nothing about how the galaxy is set up politically. Now, far be it from me to defend the prequels, but if they did one thing correctly, it’s that they tied Anakin’s fall to his open disgust with the failings of democracy. Sure, it was stupid, wooden, and gave us “From my point of view the Jedi are evil”; but at least you could follow Anakin’s seduction from point A to point B, and understand what it was that appealed to him about Palpatine.

The virtually non-existent political content of the sequels, on the other hand, directly parallels the original trilogy: a simple tale of good guys vs. bad guys which can get away with not going into details. The sequels, however, are not a simple tale of good vs. evil; they’re a continuation and elaboration of the original stories which openly makes a claim at complexity and shows that the good guys have failed. Knowing how and more importantly why it all went to hell is important. Yet despite the fact that we should be getting swamped with prequels-levels of exposition dumping, we still have no idea about:

Who’s Snoke? Where did he come from? Where was he holed up when Palpatine was in charge? What does he want to achieve besides “power for power’s sake?”

What’s the ideology of the First Order? What is their goal beside “world domination”? Are they a leftover from the times of the Empire? Are they trying to re-establish the Empire?

What was it that made the Republic start crumbling immediately after Luke left?

And unfortunately, this lack of information affects characterization.

I see a lot of people make the argument that the politics of the sequels aren’t important because they’re (presumably) not important to Kylo – so why should we dwell on something that’s (presumably) not important to our chief antagonist?

First of all, I would strongly disagree with this interpretation. To a degree, Kylo clearly does care as evidenced by the fact that he obviously has some kind of an ideological reason not to join Rey at the end of TLJ, and utterly loses his mind when confronted with Finn at the end of TFA (and no, I refuse to believe that he would perceive a defection of an unimportant floor-sweeping foot soldier as some kind of a great personal betrayal that would warrant him screaming like a mad man because his – presumed – abandonment issues were – presumably – triggered).

And secondly, political and ideological motivation is rather important when we’re talking about a character who actively fights for the unsubtle in-universe equivalent of the Nazis. The generally accepted metaphor of “an immature boy going through a rebellious phase” doesn’t work if it involves mass killings, goose-step marching, and installing a fascist regime. What we have in Kylo Ren is a motivation based partly in ideological persuasion that’s mostly undefined, and partly in immature emotions which have a very vaguely explained origin. The creators obviously want Kylo Ren to appear sympathetic, but since almost nothing about his beliefs and only a little bit from his personal past has been revealed, his speeches about being “torn apart” come across as annoying whining of a murderous man-child.

The end result is less a Jaime Lannister, and more a “Hm, I wonder if Ratko Mladic still has good inside him?”

Now, you absolutely can make a redemption arc out of this. The problem is, you need LOTS of time to do it properly, and Episode IX – with its 3 hour running time at best and a large cast of characters that all need closure – simply won’t have it. Kylo’s deeds are too monstrous and numerous to be rectified by a simple gesture; a major atonement, accompanied by a belated explanation of his personal beliefs, would be necessary. Plus, there are other factors that further complicate a neat turn to the “grey side”: unlike Zuko, Kylo Ren wasn’t born on the dark side, is a grown adult, and hasn’t experienced another way of living that would make the transition easier for him. Finally, as I said in Part 1, I don’t think death is in cards for him, making a Vader-like redemption by self-sacrifice impossible.

In conclusion, I don’t share the worries of Star Wars fans that The Last Jedi has firmly done away with any hope of Kylo Ren being redeemed and having a future with Rey.

I’m much more pessimistic than that.

Reylo, continued Force bond, eventual turn; I believe we’re getting all of that – and it’s going to be rushed and written like hot garbage.