IMPORTANT: The following essay will draw upon existing work for a lot of its content and conclusions. I do not claim credit for the work cited to others below, though my interpretations and commentary are included throughout. Most of the content I’m referring to can be found in links included below, and the primary sources are @ohtze‘s “Kill the King and Take His Crown,” and @ashesforfoxes‘ “The Descent.”
You can also find a lot of really insightful work on this stuff by listening to related podcasts, like recent episodes of SW Connection, Metamashina and Scavenger’s Hoard. Literary theory isn’t new stuff, and any analysis will necessarily stand on the shoulders of giants. However, I hadn’t seen any analysis on the synergy and interplay of the various tropes and archetypes discussed.
TO BE PERFECTLY CLEAR: The summary of the constituent parts of these tropes and archetypes is based on the work of others, in both written and commentary form. My contribution is the assignment of the various elements to the heroic, character, and narrative structures, and a guess as to how those elements will play out on screen. Some of the guesses are close to or identical to those suggested by Ohtze, because I think she’s right, but I’ve added editorial commentary and my own spin on it. The summary of the literary structures is intended as crib notes for anyone unfamiliar with these terms or other works.
So, if you’re ready, join me below the cut. [I’ve tried about seven times to add the cut so it’ll show on mobile, and it won’t for me, so idk]
I truly enjoyed this meta and it’s focus on tragic vs. heroic storytelling and how that might resolve. Thank you so much for rec and also for your amazing breakdown of the possibilities within Episode IX in regards to the Knights of Ren and incorporating Mastery Over Life and Death. There’s no way they are letting that story beat slide at the end of this nine-part cycle.
Opening text of the first Clone Wars episode of the Mortis Gods arc. Relevant, IMHO, not just to Rebels but also to Ben & Rey and where we’re headed in Episode IX.
– His parents’ is a ‘broken household’ (’No matter how many times we fougt I always hated watching you leave’ – kinda paints a picture; his parents then proceed to break up after his fall – so there’s literally no HOME for him to go BACK to);
– Ben collapses his padawan hut (Jedi home) on top of himself and Luke – effectively turning into a tomb (of Ben Solo AND Luke Skywalker the Myth)
– Ben destroys the Jedi temple and runs off into the Underworld (in his night-shift => burial shroud)
– The Starkiller Base (the dead planet, covered in dead forest) houses his quarters and underworldly posessions – Vader’s helmet – get blown off by the Resistance
– The smut-hut (not so much a home but a sanctuary of their secret affair with Rey) gets blown AWAY by Luke – like the cover is blown off and their connection is exposed (to themselves, too)
– Ben crashes his mask (it’s not a home but is part of ‘the walls’ he erected around himself)
– There’re more circles to Hell than Starkiller, so Ben has his quarters (home) on Supremacy – the Supremacy gets bisected by Holdo’s sacrifice (there HAS to be more to the fact that Starkiller destruction was an offensive, Supremacy destruction was a defensive)
– So, as of Crait – Ben is effectively homeless (again!), after a confrontation with Luke – but he gets a glimpse of the home he HAS beakoning him AHEAD – Rey and MF (Rey IN MF) (something he didn’t have after the fallout with Luke and the Jedi).
Points that I’d like to take away:
– The FO is clearly NOT his ‘home’/belonging. However, with Supremacy (Snoke’s seat of power) gone – his is bound to be a different order (if by sheer virtue of form and place), before he finds his way back into MF.
– The Resistance are also ‘homeless’ now – that is a neat, neat parallel.
– maybe the MF will too get destroyed by the very end – and Rey and Ben will be left ‘homeless’ once more, but together – because ‘home is where the heart is’.
– I am very curious how Supreme Leader Ren’s third installmed of the Underworld home will be arranged (before it too gets destroyed – by his own hand this time? by FO’s hand – Hux?)
– On a lighter note – can the guy catch a break already? It’s how many times he’s left with clothes on his back, no toothbrush, no change of underwear! And noone around who likes him enough to lend him any)) I really really need a glimpse of Supreme Leader’s first night in office (after that super awkward ride back from Crait). He needs to shower at some point (and to cry himself to sleep) – then what? Does he dispatch a droid for a set of standard issue uniform and shampoo? (IS there anything standard issue that would fit his size?) Where are they crashing, after half the star-destroyers are blown in halves? How does it work now – he used to be pretty much on his own as a knight, doing his own thing, the troops were suject to a different chain of command (Hux made it clear). Now what? Does he get staff?
I love this, and I had a couple thoughts as I was reading it (I hope you don’t mind). He really is constantly exposed and unhomed.
Didn’t Leia have a home on the New Republic capital in the Hosnian system? So that literal home got destroyed. After Starkiller is used, he can never go back to his mother’s home.
Ben wanted to destroy the Falcon — the ship that his father added a kitchen in to welcome his mother when they got married, the ship where his father said ‘Chewie, we’re home’ when he boarded, and the ship that has left without Ben (with his future wife aboard) at the end of both movies. I think the strong meaning of the Falcon (it is important enough to have it’s own unique musical motif) will have Ben finally boarding it with Rey at the end of IX.
The Resistance is in the small home/nest of the Falcon, and that home symbolism is all the Resistance has going for it.
Ben actually still has the Vader helmet – it’s on board the Finalizer, the Star destroyer he and brotherly-rival Hux share the command of. He didn’t bring it on the Supremacy, and the visual dictionary suggested he wasn’t ready to face his grandfather’s visage after being defeated on Starkiller.
So the one home Ben has left is still on the Finalizer, which means the Finalizer is probably doomed next movie.
omg I never put those two things together. THAT’S SUCH A GOOD POINT. masters calling both of them out for having some sort of feelings for the other. and I love that Ben gets accused of having compassion, something more deep and meaningful, meanwhile Rey’s getting accused of wanting to bang Ben, basically lmao
I think Kylo Ren / Ben Solo is the only person who really knows Rey, because he’s the only one who’s seen her vulnerabilities. To basically everyone else she’s all cheerful and cool: the girl who can fly the Falcon, fetch Luke Skywalker, beat Kylo Ren, lift rocks to save the Resistance. An amazing action heroine. But Kylo knows her weaknesses, he knows she’s lonely, and afraid, and desperate to find her parents or some kind of family, a belonging. And because she’s seen into his mind, too, and knows he feels just as lonely and abandoned, she can be honest with him, let him see her real self. Kylo Ren knows the real Rey, just as Rey knows him, and that is one of the things that makes her dynamics with him so different from her dynamics with everyone else.
Here’s a passage from the last jedi novelization where snoke confirms outright that he had been manipulating ben by exploiting his fear of inadequacy and abandonment since he was a child.
I still straight up lose my shit when I think about this scene too much. It makes me so frustrated to think people have interpreted Kylo’s words as manipulative/abusive/etc when his face is so raw and desperate and sincere like it is here – A look that I never expected he’d be capable of before this film. There is NO malice there, he’s not relishing saying this at all; On the contrary he’s sharing the same pain she feels and that he’s felt in her. He’s voicing what she hasn’t been able to bring herself to say – The dark source of her own inner turmoil, her feelings of misdirection, the questioning of her self-worth if even her parents – her less-than-nothing-parents – found her so meaningless.
But even the way Kylo shakes his head when he says ‘you’re nothing’ – It’s like he’s simultaneously negating the statement as he speaks it. The sentiment is so repulsive and unthinkable to him, that anyone could view Rey in such a way. Then he says ‘But not to me,’ and his whole face changes, taking on that determination and fervency, and you can literally see his eyes changing with his desperation to make her see what bullshit that sentiment was.
“But not to me” is not a statement that pressures or manipulates. It’s completely devoid of politics and to me does not at all equate to ‘come to the dark side.’ It’s spoken like they’re the only two people in the whole world. Nothing outside of them matters, and there’s not a single other thing on his mind other than the all-consuming need that he feels for her. This was probably the most shocking moment of the entire film to me, because I was NOT a Kylo fan going into it and I didn’t think he’d be capable of emotions this pure. I say ‘pure’ because “but not to me” is – if anything – a statement that reveals HIS OWN weakness more than her own. The balance of vulnerability and resolve when he spoke it betrayed that this was not a moment when he felt in control. Sure, he was trying to make her see that if she joined him, she would never find reason to question her self-worth again… but the way he’s practically TREMBLING when he speaks it belies the fact that he’s probably the more vulnerable of the two of them in this moment.
As we know from how this scene pans out, Rey is not dependent on Kylo’s belief in her worth. Once she comes to terms with her past, she has plenty of strength through her decisions in the present to know her own path. I think it’s incredibly telling that Kylo’s declaration and offer here was not enough to persuade Rey to abandon her convictions; YET, Kylo says all this directly after abandoning his own loyalties and killing Snoke – Most directly because of his need to protect Rey and keep her with him. It meant everything to him that he believed Rey valued him for him, regardless of his past or his power (the aspects of him that seemed to have guided everyone else’s manipulation of him up to this point). Knowing that in one way or another, he mattered to Rey – that she reached her hand out to him of her own volition, and came to his side that day – that alone inspired his most shocking and admirable display of strength to date when he threw off Snoke’s influence. It took her belief in him for him to find that inner resolution he so painfully lacked.
All of this is basically to say I find it ludicrous that people misread the true balance of power in this scene. He says “But not to me,” and he means it so, so honestly – much more than he could ever say in words. She has kindled inner strength in him he didn’t know he possessed. She has changed everything for him. She is literally the most powerful force he has ever known.
Of course, the tragic part of this is that he believes he can be for her everything she has become for him. But she’s in a very different place than he is. She’s a much stronger person, still full of hope and faith in both herself and the world around her, and his absolutism isn’t right. Kylo sees their union as a total All Or Nothing, and she immediately knows this wasn’t her vision. She may be nothing or no one, but she still exists outside of his validation. But she will have to wait until the day he can, too.
Reylo Source 