Warning: The below review contains spoilers. But if you just want my non-spoiler review, here it is — meh. It was OK. It wasn’t my favorite Star Wars movie (that award still goes to its predecessor, The Last Jedi), and it wasn’t the worst (which I would consider The Phantom Menace). However, it probably ranks closer to TPM than TLJ in my opinion. There were parts I liked, parts I didn’t like, parts I LOVED and parts I HATED. If you’re ready to read my full-spoiler review of The Rise of Skywalker and find out which parts I would categorize where, how I think it should have ended, and what I think the future holds, continue on.
What I Liked
Let’s start out with the real star of this movie, Babu Frik. Out of all the new characters, his was the one I enjoyed the most. He’s adorable, he makes me laugh, and his character was actually relevant to the storyline.
Speaking of Babu Frik’s storyline, let’s talk about C-3PO. He was great in this movie. I cried when he had his memory wiped, laughed when he was reintroducing himself to everyone and cheered when R2D2 restored his memories. Chewbacca was another one I cried when I thought he died.
The legacy characters in general made me smile. Was Princess Leia (excuse me, General Organa) perfect in this movie? No, but I think they did the best they could reusing old footage of Carrie Fisher. Seeing her train Rey and reach out to her son were two of my favorite scenes. Luke’s force ghost catching the lightsaber and raising the X-wing was certainly fan service, but I still enjoyed it. And Lando will always be the smoothest guy in the galaxy. It was nice to see him reunite with his true love, L3-37 aka the Millennium Falcon.
It wasn’t all the legacy characters though. I liked seeing Zorri and Poe’s dynamic. While Poe didn’t turn out to be the Gaston/Wickham bad guy like I predicted, we did find out that he used to be a spice runner, and I liked seeing him flirt Zorri as she turned him down. Hux being the spy was also a good twist, but I wish we got more of him. Rey’s yellow lightsaber was pretty cool too — like a Rey of sunlight haha.
Another thing I thought was cool was all the flips because they were done much better than the prequels. Rey’s flip over Kylo’s ship was beautiful, and seeing their flips during fights like Ben vs. the Knights of Ren was awesome.
What I Didn’t Like
Right from the beginning, the crawl was not my favorite. “The dead speak!” So, Palpatine is back, and we don’t really care how or why? This had to be my least favorite crawl in all nine episodes, and it led into a completely unnecessary montage of Kylo Ren going from here to there that could have just been a mention in the crawl instead. As much as I love Adam Driver as an actor and Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is my favorite character in all of Star Wars, we could have cut out the whole montage and just started on Exogol with Palpatine. This was indicative of another problem this movie has — pacing.
Another reviewer compared this movie to a video game, and I totally agree. It’s just a series of missions slapped together instead of one cohesive storyline. The reason The Last Jedi is my favorite Star Wars movie is because it relies less on heavy action (though there are certainly some excellent action sequences) and more on character development and storyline. The action in that movie, such as the throne room scene, is in direct response to where the story and characters are going. The Rise of Skywalker seems to just have action for action’s sake.
All of this seems to be because the writers were trying to please everyone from the internet. I wish they didn’t feel the need to feed the Twitter trolls. The slow chase between the First Order and the Resistance in the last movie was too boring? We’ve got extra jam-packed action in TRoS! Wanted to see Rey end up with Finn, Poe or Kylo? There is sexual tension with all three! Didn’t like seeing Hux as a comedic device? He goes out like a punk! Saw the sequel trilogy as Pride and Prejudice in space? Ben is getting redeemed AND a kiss from his lady love! (Note: OK, I did like that part.) Didn’t think the guy who killed Han Solo deserved a happy ending? We’re killing off that jerk! Thought Rose Tico was an SJW? We cut her screen time to less than two minutes!
Poor Rose … they didn’t even acknowledge her kiss with Finn or saying that how they would win would be by saving what they love. As an Asian American woman who doesn’t get to see much (if any) representation in Hollywood, this felt like a particular slap in the face. It seems like she loses the guy who chases the white girl and then gets paired up with another woman who apparently has more in common with him as a former stormtrooper. (By the way, it was confirmed that Finn was not, in fact, trying to tell Rey that he loves her. Instead, he was trying to tell her that he was force sensitive. I guess that’s cool?)
Jannah’s introduction, along with her group of friends, really seemed to humanize stormtroopers. Plus, in the deleted scenes from TLJ, we see that Finn had stormtrooper friends who recognized him when he snuck onboard Snoke’s ship disguised as a First Order officer. In fact, I thought they were setting up some kind of stormtrooper rebellion. Instead, let’s watch these former stormtroopers kill their old colleagues who are really kidnapped children who were taken from their families. That was really disturbing to me.
Speaking of disturbing, who procreated with Palpatine? Yuck! The majority of introductions (other than the adorable Babu Frik of course), seemed completely unnecessary. They really played up the new characters in the marketing — Knights of Ren, Zorri, Klaud, D-O, Allegiant General Pryde, and Dominic Monaghan’s new character. (Wait, Dominic Monaghan was in this movie? I don’t even know what his name was.)
Rian Johnson created the praetorian guards so that he didn’t have to kill off the Knights of Ren, saving them for a bigger part in episode IX. However, they were killed off even easier in this movie than the praetorian guards in TLJ. They didn’t bring anything to the story after being so hyped. Instead, we learn through a comic (that most fans won’t read) that the Knights have been around a long time and were not, in fact, Luke’s former students (whom, by the way, Ben Solo never killed, nor did he burn down the Jedi temple).
It felt like Zorri was there to prove Poe was straight since the internet seemed to think Poe and Finn were going to wind up together. I thought Klaud and D-O were there just to sell toys and added nothing to the storyline. Allegiant General Pryde’s storyline could have been Hux’s. There was no need to bring in yet another First Order officer. Domhnall Gleeson played such an excellent villain in The Force Awakens. I don’t know why they didn’t bring Hux back to his space Nazi self in this movie. Snap Wexley was also brought back just to be killed off immediately.
While we’re on the subject of deaths, there were so many fake-out deaths. Palpatine died three movies ago? Nope, he’s here and in the flesh. You thought Chewbacca was dead? Sike! He was on another transport apparently. C-3PO sacrificed himself for the mission? Just kidding — R2 had backed up his memory. Rey literally stabbed Kylo through the chest? Only a flesh wound!
What I Loved
In a word, Reylo. The one thing I said I wanted out of this movie was a romance between Ben Solo and Rey, and I got it. (But at what cost?) The two of them are a dyad in the force — two as one. In other words, they are soulmates. Two halves of one whole. They are the literal representation of balance in the force.
The scenes between Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver were easily the best in the movie. “You wanted to take my hand. Why didn’t you?” Kylo asks. Rey finally answers several scenes later, “I did want to take your hand. Ben’s hand.” That was so emotional, and I loved it. When she healed him, Kylo/Ben didn’t say a word, but his eyes spoke VOLUMES.
Say what you will about this movie, but the acting was phenomenal. I don’t think the actors were given the best scripts in the world (but hey, at least the dialogue was better than the prequels), but the actors really managed to convey so much emotion in every scene. I don’t just mean Adam and Daisy either. Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Harrison Ford as Han Solo, and even Joonas Suotamo as Chewbacca. His mourning over Leia’s death really choked me up and is the most genuine mourning scene I’ve ever seen in Star Wars.
When Ben’s memory of Han showed up, I nearly lost it. It was Ben playing the scene from TFA in his head how he knew it should have happened. How he wished had happened. “Dad,” Ben whispers. Han responds, “I know,” which of course in Han talk means, “I love you.” It was such a meaningful moment, and from then on, we saw no more of Kylo Ren, only Ben Solo.
I do wish Ben had his turn earlier in this movie so we could see more Ben Solo and less Kylo Ren. (Side note: Bringing the mask back was just to sell toys, right? Because it served no other purpose.) What we did see of Ben Solo was magical. Running to save Rey, getting the blue saber from Rey via the force bond, climbing out of the pit to get to Rey, saving the woman he loves … Ben Solo deserved so much happiness. And I thought we got it. I’ve never been happier watching Star Wars than I was when I saw Rey come back to life, smile and say Ben’s name. She finally gave Ben her hand when she placed it on top of his after he healed her. When they looked lovingly into each other’s eyes and kissed, I thought this is it. This is my space Darcy getting his happy ending. Ben finished what Anakin started. He saved the one he loved from dying. It was the most emotional I have ever felt during a Star Wars movie. And that’s where my happiness ended.
What I Hated
I’ll give you two words for this: the ending.
Ben Solo was thrown into a seemingly bottomless pit and pulled himself out to save the woman he loves. He didn’t get any help from his own mother, uncle, grandfather or any other force ghosts urging him to rise like they did with Rey. And if they are the dyad (which apparently only comes once a millennium), why did Rey defeat Palpatine on her own while poor Ben was at the bottom of the pit? And didn’t Palpatine WANT Rey to strike him down? Didn’t he just get what he wanted?
This about it … what kind of light does this paint Leia in as a mother? Sure, she named him after her only hope, but then she abandoned him as a child. She used the last bit of her energy to distract him so Rey could stab him. And when he was in his most desperate hour, she went to Rey (who is by blood a Palpatine) instead. Luke confirms that both he and Leia knew Rey was a Palpatine. So, what does that mean? They saw the good in Rey and were willing to help her out, but they completely wrote off Ben Solo, their own flesh and blood? Luke is ready to kill him in his sleep, and Leia gave up on him in TLJ, saying she knows her son is gone. As soon as her son dies, Leia is finally at peace and disappears into the force while Maz smiles. What is that? “Yay! My son is dead. I can fade into the force happily now.” This is a horrible ending for our princess of Alderaan.
Let’s address all the reasons people think Ben doesn’t deserve a happy ending and why they are wrong.
- “He’s responsible for the destruction of the Hosnian System because of Starkiller Base!” Nope, actually, that award goes to General Hux. Kylo Ren was against it and tried to stop it. He was also not on Starkiller Base and watched the lasers go by from a ship, so he had no chance to stop Hux from doing it.
- “He killed Han Solo!” Yet even Han would tell you that he forgives Ben and blames himself for being an absent father. It’s canon. Look it up in the novelization of The Force Awakens. It also split Kylo’s spirit to the bone, and he was wracked with guilt immediately and forever. As Snoke says, he has too much of his father’s heart in him.
- “He killed half of Luke’s students, burned down the temple and turned the rest into the Knights of Ren!” No, according to the comics, Ben did not kill any students and the temple burst into flames without any help from Ben, seemingly by itself. Actually, the students chased after and tried to kill Ben, which drove him right into the arms of Snoke, his manipulator and abuser. Ben and Luke even fought the Knights of Ren together while on a field trip before Luke’s betrayal.
- “Nobody from the Resistance is going to accept him. They would execute him.” He’s Leia’s son. If she accepts him, who would dare tell her he’s not welcome? When Hux, the guy who was actually responsible for the destruction of the Hosnian System and the kidnapping of thousands of children to turn them into stormtroopers, reveals that he’s the spy, the biggest reaction we got was Poe saying, “I knew it!” That reminded me of Thor saying the same line after seeing Captain America wield Mjolnir. If they were cool with Hux after all he has done (including being happy about killing his own father unlike Ben), they would have been cool with a redeemed Ben Solo.
- “He’s abusive to Rey!” Rewatch the movies. You’ll see that Rey, in fact, is the aggressor in all their interactions. On Takodana, she sees him and shoots, no questions asked — doesn’t even know who he is. In the interrogation room, he calls her his guest and is actually pretty gentle with her. In the novelization, he removes the restraints and says he will go as easy on her as possible. Sure, he force-throws her against a tree on Starkiller Base, but that’s only AFTER she openly attacked him; he was simply defending himself. He tries to tell her he can teach her the ways of the force, and she slices his face open. In their first force bond, she shoots at him again with no questions asked while he tries to figure out what’s going on. “Can you see my surroundings? I can’t see yours, just you,” he says. When she is lonely on Ahch-To, he’s the one she reaches out to and imagines touching his hair and face. (I’m not making this up. Look it up in the novelization for TLJ.) And he insists that she isn’t alone. How is any of that manipulative or abusive? He tells her that she’s nobody but not to him. He’s not saying she’s worthless without him, which is what some people would like you to believe. Instead, I think he’s saying that while the rest of the world may think she’s nothing, she’s everything to him. It’s very reminiscent of Darcy’s first proposal to Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice. “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections — to congratulate myself on the hope of relations, whose condition in life is so decidedly beneath my own?” Of course, Elizabeth rejects his proposal saying that he should have behaved in a more gentleman-like manner. Both Darcy and Kylo mean well, but they need help in articulating those feelings. Luckily, Elizabeth and Rey wind up coming back around and taking their hands in the long run. Kylo could have easily shot Rey from his ship and killed her on Pasaana, but he didn’t because he was chasing after her to talk to her, not kill her. Instead, she cuts off one of the wings of his ship and sends him spiraling into a ball of fire. And let’s not forget that Rey took advantage of him being distracted by his mother’s death to run him through with his own saber. Now which one would you consider the abuser?
Does poor Ben deserve to die? No. He deserves to live. “Kylo Ren is dead,” Han says. “My son is alive.” What? For five minutes before he disappears into the force? That is not a satisfying ending, sorry. Ben Solo went through too much to be given an ending like that. There is a big difference between Darth Vader (who killed younglings, spent decades on the dark side, and lived to be an old man dying as part of his redemption arc) and Ben Solo who was manipulated, abused, misunderstood and abandoned throughout his entire life (most of which was spent in the light, despite all of this, until he caught his uncle trying to kill him). Leia even admits that when she was pregnant, Palpatine was there the whole time, manipulating poor baby Ben. If my parents shipped me off to boarding school with my uncle and then I saw him standing over me with a gun or knife or something while I slept, I don’t think I’d have fond feelings for him or be totally fine mentally either.
OK, so Ben Solo gave his life for his soulmate. Got it. Fine. I can live with it. But then Rey doesn’t seem to mourn for even a minute? She was more torn up about Chewie (who it turns out wasn’t even dead) than her other half who died in her arms. Then she flies off to meet up with her buddies for a big celebratory group hug? I’m sorry. That’s just unacceptable. Just when I thought I was getting a Beauty and the Beast ending with the prince coming back and living happily ever after, they kill him off. Could you imagine if Disney did that to Belle and then she goes and celebrates with her friends? Or if Flynn was never healed by Rapunzel’s tear at the end of Tangled? Or if in Pride and Prejudice when Elizabeth confesses that she loves Darcy after he saves Lydia, he just dies? Absolutely not!
OK, here it is, the final scene that’s supposed to wrap up not only this movie and this trilogy, but the entire Skywalker saga. All the Skywalkers are now dead once Ben passes into the force, leaving only a Palpatine. Rey can call herself a Skywalker if she wants, but it’s in blatant opposition to JJ’s original stance in TFA. The sequel trilogy starts out with Lor San Tekka saying, “You cannot deny the truth that is your family” and ends with Rey denying the truth that is her family.
Why was she on Tattooine anyway? She had no connection to that planet. She had Anakin’s (not Luke’s — remember that his was green) and Leia’s lightsabers. Anakin hated sand, so let’s bury his lightsaber in it right next to his dead mother! Leia was enslaved and put in a gold bikini by Jabba the Hutt on Tattooine, so she’ll definitely want her saber buried there too! Even if you wanted to argue that it’s where Luke grew up, the last time he was there, he saw the burnt bodies of his aunt and uncle and said there was nothing there for him now. If we’re going anywhere from a previous movie, it would make more sense for Rey to go to Naboo. That’s where Palpatine and Padme were from, so it connects both her lineage and Ben’s. It’s where Padme wanted to run off to with Anakin to raise their children. I want to know why were Luke and Leia’s force ghosts there at the end and not Ben’s? Why was BB-8 there? Why did Rey get absolutely no change from where she started, alone on a desert planet with her loved ones dead? I have a theory for why this ending makes no sense.
How It Should Have Ended
My theory for why we didn’t see Ben’s force ghost and why Rey ended seemingly alone on a desert planet (AGAIN) is because that wasn’t the originally planned ending for this movie.
The music on Tattooine is literally called “A New Home.” Either JJ has a sick sense of what George Lucas called “poetry, it rhymes,” leaving Rey alone on a desert planet again, or she was supposed to build a new home there with someone else. And that someone else is Ben Solo. For all you who think that Ben can’t come back from everything he did as Kylo Ren, there is another option other than just walking into the Resistance base and expecting them to welcome him with open arms. He can choose to live in self-exile.
There were many leaks leading up to the release of The Rise of Skywalker, and all of them (sadly) turned out to be true except one (even more sadly). The one scene that was supposedly filmed but never made it to the final cut was Ben Solo flying his father’s ship, the Millennium Falcon. It makes perfect sense for him to fly that ship (with Rey as his copilot) to Tattooine to live out their days in his family home. How would Rey have even heard of the Lars family homestead? Leia was never there. Luke ignored her for the majority of TLJ. It makes far more sense that Ben would have heard of it from his Uncle Luke growing up and chose to exile himself there. And if Ben had lived, his force ghost wouldn’t show up at the end. That would explain why we only had Luke and Leia’s force ghosts.
We know for a fact that there were some last-minute reshoots. I think Ben’s death was a reshoot, and this shoddy ending on Tattooine was a half-reshoot. I believe, if anything, he was supposed to pass out and you were going to think he was dead (yet another fake-out death), see Rey meet up with the Resistance, and then see her fly to Tattooine where (surprise!) Ben was alive and waiting for her. If the old woman at the end asked who they were, they could call themselves Ben and Rey Skywalker. Think that’s not a very good disguise? It works just as well as Obi Wan Kenobi changing his name to Old Ben Kenobi.
They could then look out into the twin sunset together with Rey standing in the lighter sun and Ben standing in the darker sun — a literal representation of the dyad, showing true balance in the force. Instead, we get…BB-8. Why? There is zero reason for BB-8 to be on Tattooine other than to be a stand-in for Ben. He’s not even Rey’s droid; he’s Poe’s.
I had someone try to argue with me on Instagram that Rey and Poe share custody of BB-8. Excuse me? Since when? Are they a divorced couple, and Rey has visitation rights on weekends? That makes no sense to me. The reason he was with her on Jakku in TFA was because Poe got captured, and then they thought he was dead. As soon as Poe was back, BB-8 was done with Rey. He spent the rest of TFA with Poe and was still with him during TLJ when they attacked the dreadnaught, and as soon as BB-8 is back from the mission with Finn and Rose, Poe asks where his droid is and BB-8 races to him. BB-8 spends no alone time with Rey without Poe in TLJ and TRoS outside of this time on Tattooine, and the only explanation is that they had to replace Ben with someone and nobody else made sense. BB-8 was the lesser of evils because it would have been even worse to show her with Finn or Poe or literally anyone else at the end.
What the Future Holds
So, what’s next? I love The Mandalorian, and I love Galaxy’s Edge at Disney World. But if Disney and Lucasfilm want to make big money in the future, they’re going to need more than Disney+ TV shows and a theme park land. I enjoyed Solo, but it didn’t do well. Rogue One, in my opinion, was the most boring Star Wars movie. Therefore, the non-saga films aren’t going to be the future of Star Wars either. They need more of the Skywalker saga, and I’m sorry, but Rey can call herself whatever she wants, but she’s not a Skywalker; she’s a Palpatine. She could have married into the Skywalker family, but unfortunately, Ben’s not around anymore. She can, however, still carry on the Skywalker bloodline. How? The next trilogy can explain that when Ben gave his life force to Rey (with his hand on her belly), he also got her pregnant at the same time. And that’s how Disney and Lucasfilm will continue the Skywalker saga.
An alternative way they can bring the Skywalker bloodline back is by bringing Ben back. We didn’t see his force ghost at the end. In addition to the fact I don’t think he died in the original ending and the ending we got was a cobbled together version at the last minute, I think another reason we didn’t see Ben Solo’s force ghost could be because Disney and Lucasfilm want to keep the door open to the possibility that Ben didn’t die at all. He could be in the “world between worlds.” The official Star Wars databank defines it as, “a collection of pathways and doors between time and space.” In the Star Wars Rebels cartoon, it was assumed Ahsoka Tano had been killed by Darth Vader. However, we later saw Ezra save Ahsoka from certain death by pulling her through a portal in the world between worlds. In a future episode film, we could see Rey try to find the world between worlds to save her other half, Ben Solo. And that could explain why he disappeared but didn’t become a force ghost; he was pulled through the world between worlds.
One last theory — if force ghosts are “more powerful than you can possibly imagine” as Obi Wan told Vader in A New Hope, then it’s possible for Rey and Ben to continue their force bond even in death. It reminds me of that scene in The Princess Bride when Wesley tells Buttercup, “Death cannot stop true love.” Heck, we saw Yoda hit Luke on the head as a force ghost in TLJ, and we saw Luke catch a lightsaber as a force ghost in TRoS. If those things are possible, it’s also possible for Ben and Rey to … consummate their union.
I didn’t believe when they first said it, and I don’t believe it now — I don’t believe that they will actually end the Skywalker saga for good and leave all that potential money on the table. I’m sure there are many more options they can come up with, but the fact of the matter is the Skywalker saga has to continue (and Ben and Rey have to procreate for that to be possible) if for no other reason than for Disney to make money. They didn’t spend billions of dollars to purchase Lucasfilm for it to not be as profitable as possible. We had about twenty years between the originals and the prequels and about another twenty years between the prequels and the sequels. I think Disney will get antsy in about twenty years from now and continue the saga with Ben and Rey’s kids. It’s the only logical future path for Star Wars.
