I am no Jedi, but I know the Force. It moves through and surrounds every living thing.
Close your eyes
Feel it
The Light.
It's always been there. It will guide you.
[Music]
Although some fans discount them as lesser or inferior force users, both Ben Solo and Rey have shown an
incredible attunement to the force. During his transformation into Kylo Ren, Ben Solo not only destroyed , Luke's Jedi temple,
but purged the jedi students and apparently defeated Luke himself.
Kylo has also manipulated both matter and energy in a way not previously seen in the Star Wars movies.
Although Rey is admittedly less accomplished,
We have seen her innate ability to fly ships like the Millennium Falcon and most importantly, she bested Kylo Ren in
one-on-one combat. The obvious question and the one that I've dedicated this video to is where do these force powers come from?
Why are kylo Ren or Ben solo and Rey so
naturally gifted in the force? My quick answer to this in my theory is that the two are a new generation of more
powerful force users. In a minute
I'm going to explain why I think this, how they got this power, and why it makes sense in both an in-universe and
storytelling perspective. However, before I do I'd like to talk about the connection between the two characters
And this has been obviously present throughout their existence and is quite important to my theory
This vague connection that I'm referring to was referenced quite heavily in the latest The Last Jedi trailer.
Starting the trailer off is a quote by the Supreme Leader Snoke
"When I found you, I
saw raw,
untamed power.
And beyond that,
something truly special." This little bit of dialogue plays with the viewer at first it seems like he's referring clearly to
Kylo Ren. His words accompany shots of Kylo Ren doing various things.
However, the second his dialogue is finished,
we see a shot of Rey igniting her lightsaber. A lightsaber
which is metaphorically, and almost literally, a torch handed down to her by the
Skywalkers. Carrying another torch is Kylo Ren: Ben solo, who we believe may be the last descendant
and the only descendant of the Skywalker line however. It's not their lineage or familial history that's important.
It's their shared power. A raw strength
Which Luke Skywalker at least presumably tells Rey that he's only seen one other time in - Ben solo remember
This is the same Luke Skywalker who's confronted the Empire, who redeemed Darth Vader,
and who himself is a descendant of a Jedi believed to be the Chosen One. The
connection goes beyond this, and existed even in The Force Awakens. Whether
on a conscious, or a subconscious level Kylo Ren somehow knows Rey.
And she somehow knows him too. During Rey's vision she sees the Skywalker lineage and a history
which has most recently been capped with Ben Solo's
transformation into Kylo Ren. Kylo's recognition of Rey is somewhat evident in the movie,
but it's made even more clear in the audio book. He whirled to see the weapon land in the hand of a girl
standing by a tree!
Rey appeared equally shocked at her reach for the device had exceeded his.
She gazed down at the weapon now resting in her grip
It is you...", Ren murmured. Snoke was attracted to Kylo Ren
because he was a mix of both the light and the dark side, and had the potential to be very powerful in both.
That's a path Rey now travels as Luke Skywalker,
her presumed mentor, seems to no longer believe in the Jedi.
This is also obvious in the ways that she uses her power.
When she truly taps into the force for the first time, she uses it for attack, the antithesis of
What a Jedi and a light sided warrior is supposed to do. In the newest trailer,
we also apparently see her pure force powers crack a rock as she swings her saber. Again,
this is far from the calmness, and the tranquility that is supposed to be exuded by a Jedi Knight. The trailer portrays kylo Ren in
portrays Kylo Ren in the opposite way he's struggling against the light, trying to be the dark side user that he thinks he should be
Kylo
Ren and Rey are contemporaries, or at least mirror images of each other rather than black and white enemies.
Kylo
struggles against the light, while it seems like Rey will soon struggle against the darkness.
Neither our totally evil or villainous as Snoke appears to be, as
Palpatine was, and as Darth Vader was, for at least a while. The connection is obvious and while they aren't the twins Jacen and Jaina
From Star Wars legends, they're still deeply close in a very important way.
With that being said, what does that have to do with power?
It's important to remember that the force guides everything in the Star Wars universe, or at least most things
It's no coincidence that R2-D2 and C-3PO
stumbled upon Luke Skywalker on the planet Tatooine, just like it's no coincidence that Qui-Gon Jinn
stumbled upon Anakin on that same planet. The book Aftermath: Empire's End
has a chapter dedicated to the Church of the force. In that chapter, one of the disciples sums up the universe as it relates to
relates to the force in a very effective way.
While the force touches all living beings, only some like the Jedi
Operate as true vessels. Not only having the force flow through them, but also having some measure of control over it.
It's also important to note that while the force guides the universe it doesn't control it. Yoda
recognizes that the future is always in motion. In both Star Wars legends and the new Canon
Have treated the force of something that guides life and something that exists alongside to the universe
That's why both the movies and the Star Wars Expanded Universe have said that it's very difficult to predict the future
with any real certainty. In the current Star Wars universe, there are very few powerful force users and
certainly before the birth of Ben and Rey, there were very few within the galaxy.
When Luke and Leia were born and raised there were still some force users in the galaxy. There was Darth Sidious,
There was Yoda
There was a band and there was Vader when Anakin was born, there were even more force users: the Jedi were flourishing, and the Sith
Although thought extinct, had been surviving via the rule of two for millennia.
It's my belief that Rey and kylo Ren are so powerful
Because right now the force exists in only a few vessels.
I'm not sure whether the analogy will eventually be that there are only a few buckets so each one gets a lot of water or
Whether it's more accurately that there's some sort of obstacle,
And there's only two people that can handle it so each one needs to be very strong.
Fairly certain that the Force has manifested in itself some way in these two individuals
There's imbalance in the universe that somehow needs to be rectified.
This answer itself brings up several questions. The first is well, wasn't the chosen one supposed to bring balance to the force?
Wasn't he supposed to make everything good? The second one is well, if that is true,
why are there two of them and why is one of them Rey?
Let's look at the first question: the Chosen One Prophecy.
There are several options
Which would explain why the galaxy and the force is still
Unbalanced. Either the balance was only temporary,
the balance was never achieved, or the chosen one prophecy was never true. It should be noted that even the Masters of the
Dogmatic Jedi Order doubted their interpretation of the chosen one prophecy. Also notable
Is that Obi Wan, after Anakin's fall doubted his position as the chosen one.
I think one of two options are likely; either the chosen one prophecy was misread, and
Personally this makes sense to me because the absence of dark and the existence of only light i.e.
Jedi only, no Sith. never felt like the force was truly balanced.
Thematically this would tie in well with both the prequels and the Last Jedi. The prequels presented the Jedi as flawed.
The last Jedi shows Luke
discovering those flaws and trying to deal with them.
The other option is that there is a new threat to the galaxy and the force, one not originally contemplated
By those that created the chosen one prophecy. It's been heavily suggested that Snoke comes from outside of the galaxy.
He's also a threat which existed for a long time and, although he was aware of Star Wars Galaxies
and the events going on, it seems like no one besides perhaps Palpatine and some Chiss were explicitly aware of what he was doing.
Snoke, whatever he is is obviously an incredibly powerful
entity. And his appearance now and his taking of kylo Ren as a pupil, shows Kylo's potential and his power
Snoke is desiccated,
and he's clearly very very
old. we know for sure that he was around for the fall the empire, that he witnessed that. He's likely been around for far longer
He took only kylo as an apprentice probing Leia even while she was pregnant, and sensing his power while in the womb.
Despite the fact that he was likely also aware of both Luke Skywalker
and Anakin, we know that he valued Kylo because of his connection to both the dark and the light side of the force.
But you can easily say the same about Luke Skywalker and
Anakin, so the options are that Snoke is either a new foe, which demands a new chosen one, or perhaps that the chosen one
Prophecy was never fulfilled, and Snoke is just another manifestation of the error of the Jedi. Perhaps true balance is
understanding both sides of the force ,and still being good, still doing what's right. The Jedi were
dogmatic,
and their arbitrary rules like not taking loved ones and
trying to ignore ultimately useful emotions like fear, and just basically not talking about things like that
ultimately led to Anakin's downfall in the purge of most force users and really much of the force itself from the universe.
Perhaps Ben and Rey are the Force's next try at achieving true balance. This would be rather
cyclical, which is quite fitting for the Star Wars universe,
especially from a storytelling perspective. As George Lucas famously said about the prequels, " You know kind of duplicating the Luke Skywalker
role, but you see the echo of
where it all's gonna go. instead of destroying the Death Star he destroys the ship that controls the robots. Again,
it's like poetry so if they rhyme.
Every stanza kind of rhymes at the last one.
Hopefully it'll work."
Perhaps more elegantly Ann Lancashire I wrote a theory piece on the Phantom Menace.
She said , "The repeated patterns also allow, through variations, an
emotionally and intellectually complicating emphasis upon difference and change.
The broad pattern of human life, from youth to maturity to death, remains constant.
But individual circumstances within the pattern
inevitably differ,
Creating different possibilities and problems. The problem is the same as it always was; the first six movies are tied together
by Anakin Skywalker. The first cycle comprising the original trilogy
and the prequel trilogy sees Anakin, despite his fall, still somewhat achieve what he was supposed to as a chosen one.
All be it, through his son, Luke Skywalker redeeming him. Now as the cycle starts anew, so too does our
understanding of the force, of the chosen one, in a balance. And these are very real changes. The original two Star Wars
Trilogies were black and white. There was good,
There was evil. That was the balance, good
Prevailing. Now the balance has changed with that change comes to new arbiters. Two new focal points of the cycle
Kylo
Ren and Rey. What that means for the future of the Star Wars universe
For this trilogy and the inevitable next one is up to you. I've got my thoughts, perhaps
I can share them in a future video if you guys enjoy this. But just as a fun exercise,
Maybe think about Rey and Kylo as both parts of Anakin as he existed in the original two trilogies,
except the finish lines have changed here now. We're not looking for a triumph of the Jedi over the Sith
We're looking for true balance.
Finally as for a question that I mentioned earlier, going back to the in universe perspective,
Why two of them? Why two chosen ones? Why two new powerful force users, why not just one? Well the obvious
Answer would be that Kylo Ren failed.
It's notable that the two weren't born at the same time,
Rey would have likely been quite young at the time of the Jedi massacre.
But Snoke was already likely probing or somewhat communicating with Kylo Ren before her birth perhaps
She's there to succeed where he has not.
It makes sense that the Skywalker's would get the first go around, that lineage has always been very powerful,
but now that that's failed, why not start anew with an almost immaculately
Concepted powerful force user who comes out of the desert?
I hope you enjoyed this theory. This has been Eckhart's Ladder, may the force be with you.