the first two movies of the sequel trilogy were so good we didnt deserve them. they were so meta. tlj especially

the way they raised the question of how this massive franchise could sustain itself into the future and what star wars is about and what it means culturally.. yeah

like with the main 3 characters its so good. rey (pre tros) has nothing to do with star wars. kylo literally tells her she has no place in this story. theres no character quite like that in any other sw movie. she has nothing to do with the war she has

nothing to do with the skywalker family soap opera. she's here for her own personal journey. she's a nobody, and if a nobody can become the most important person in star wars, then anybody can. it's a really powerful message

and finn is fascinating because he adds dimension and nuance to pre-existing sw. his story makes us look past the robotic armor and masks of the stormtroopers and forces us to acknowledge the brainwashed cannon fodder as people. sw never made you do that before

and ben solo is the most star wars a character could possibly get. he's a skywalker, a solo, an organa, a naberrie, a prince on a technicality. everything about him is a reflection of sw's most famous and iconic character, the grandfather whose specter he is obsessed with

a lot of people have theorized that he's a representation of sw fanboys, but i don't think that's true. he's not looking in on this from the outside. this is HIS story. and he's hardly a fan

every part of star wars had to come together to make ben solo. i think that much more than a sw fan, he represents star wars itself. the entire saga.

in the same way (again, pre-tros) rey has nothing to do with any of the family drama star wars is entirely about, ben has
EVERYTHING to do with it. he's also tied to the themes of redemption that make up the core of sw

i think the biggest resistance to ben as a character is what he means for og star wars, namely, that there was something left unresolved by the end of rotj. that anakin started something that ben needed to finish, story-wise. and that our beloved characters didnt live happily

ever after. it hurts to find out that they were bad parents who accidentally let some raisiny guy groom and manipulate their child. it especially hurts to think that luke could be briefly influenced by the dark side again, and become cynical and detached from the force as a

result. but it all makes perfect sense. the scars of the sort of familial trauma the og sw characters went through run very deep. and they would always need to ruin the happy ending in order to get a satisfactory sequel. but just as luke and leia held the chance for anakin's

redemption, ben held the chance for theirs. anyway i think the point of ben solo is to say that star wars is an imperfect story thats in the middle of rebelling against itself. and i think the point of rey and finn is to provide the fresh blood that sw needs so to speak

and the conflict between the three is just the question: what is star wars? who is star wars? what does this franchise even mean? what is it trying to tell us? who does it belong to?

tragically it never really resolves the question. and this is why tros shat the bed so spectacularly: we can't find these answers in the og characters. by pushing aside the sequel characters to focus on them, tros also pushed aside these questions for cheap nostalgia bait

but i think its very sadly fitting that when it delivered the death blow to itself and to really the whole saga, it took ben solo down with it

two last things: when i said "the whole saga" i meant all sw previous. also i think a big part of bens character rests in acknowledging the fundamental flaws of the jedi order that led anakin to the sith and how it happened again because trying to recreate the

jedi order didnt give it what it never had which is proper support for traumatized children/those who are already being preyed on by darksiders