When I mull over Finn’s parentage, I have two specific ideas with one
being more likely than the other. Since there are hundreds of
ways to handle Finn and his origins, I don’t really hold myself to these
theories, especially after the disaster that was the Rey parentage
reveal.
So, I’ve broken my ideas down into two theories.
1) Finn Kyrell/Ree:
This could easily be a crack theory, so I won’t be one to
say that I am convinced that this is correct. I really liked the novel Lost Stars and the love story between
Thane Kyrell and Ciena Ree. If you
have not read the book, I recommend it. There is also a manga version out
now, but there are some key differences in the stories.
I like a lot of different Finn theories, including Finn Skywalker, Finn Aphra-Starros, Mandalorian Finn, you name it. For this Finn Meta Week, though, I would like to talk about Finn as space Moses and what that may mean for his parentage, especially if JJ decides to carry forward the parallels in Episode IX.
The parallels Finn’s story has had with that of Moses is well-discussed, so here is just a brief summary: A child raised in an enslaving genocidal empire with no knowledge of his heritage, he escapes into the desert when faced with its atrocities and discards the trappings of the empire along the way. He meets a young woman and her father figure in the middle of nowhere, refuses a call to go up against the empire but chooses to join the struggle anyway with the girl, her dad, and others. He is now committed to fighting his former captors and colleagues.
If Finn’s story continues with these parallels, the fact may have implications for his past and future as well. Could Finn’s family have been part of a population subjugated by the First Order, much like Moses’s family were enslaved Hebrew people? We know from Rose’s story that the FO has strip-mined and enslaved entire planets of people, probably entire systems. This is very likely to be Finn’s background as well, since in general people do not give up their children if they have a choice.
If the Finn and Moses parallels continue we may watch him play a leading role in the liberation of populations subjugated by the FO, including Stormtroopers but also civilian populations who live under de facto FO rule. If his parents or other family members are part of that number, Finn may well be reuniting with them as their liberator much as Moses did. It would be a neat tie-up of his heroic arc, and would make for an emotional reveal–that by following his heroic calling Finn was making a personal journey as well, and was fighting for his family’s future all along. It would put human faces on the struggle for galactical liberation.
One further point about the Moses parallel is that Moses’s parents were Levites, the priestly tribe as I understand it. We know at least one heavily human-populated place in the new SW canon that is known for religious significance: Jedha, the moon that was destroyed during the events of Rogue One. Since the destruction since spread to the whole moon and it became uninhabitable, the refugees who survived the initial blast must have fled elsewhere if they could. A displaced and vulnerable population, they may well have fallen under First Order rule.
Yet Finn’s family and others may have kept the ways of the Force in secret, perhaps in disguised ways, in the midst of not only impossibly hard lives but possibly active repression of Force faiths, something we saw at the massacre of Tuanul at the start of The Force Awakens. If this was the case, Finn may be reunited with this tradition as well as with his family.
I am so intrigued by the parallels between Finn’s and Moses’s stories and hope to see them borne out in his parentage. Most of all, no matter who they are or in what form, I hope that Finn will reunite with his family and reconnect to his heritage. It would mean so much not only for the character but also to millions of viewers who were themselves deprived of their heritages and homes, with director JJ Abrams himself being a member of one such group, the Jewish people. The character of Finn is coded as a member of another such group, African Americans. I hope Finn will find healing, and that people who identify with his loss can find catharsis through his story.
Finn Meta Week Day 1: Finn’s Family – Finn of Taris?
The above picture is of Senator Tynrra Pamlo, who represented the planet Taris in the Galactic Senate pre-Empire and was shown in Rogue One. The actress, Sharon Duncan-Brewster, has said that she was initially just going to be in the background of this scene, but her part was expanded to a minor speaking role.
I think this was deliberate. I do not think Senator Pamlo is Finn’s mother. But I do think that there may be a hint that Finn is from the planet Taris. Taris is described as being a planet in the Outer Rim whose prosperity soon led to overpopulation. Then when the trade routes proved no longer to be profitable, civil disorder and social unrest rose, the environment suffered, and it led to civil war. It’s also mentioned that there was a huge issue with classism, and that the society was very stratified, with the alien underclass being crushed under the heels of the wealthy human nobles at the top of the food chain. Jedi and Sith struggled for dominance there, but Taris ended up being abandoned by both groups, and unrest, rampant crime, poverty, and lawlessness reigned, even though it was able to retain some of its former glory during the Galactic War.
It would have been easy for an organization like the First Order to swoop onto a shattered planet like Taris and scoop up children who were members of the lower strata. Maybe even the parents felt that the First Order was a better option than having their children stay on a world where there was no real future for them. While I’m not super-thrilled with some of the stereotypical “inner city” signalling of Taris, when I think about how Finn could have been stolen from his family, it makes sense to me that he would come from a world that was either broken by the First Order or was in such disarray itself that the snatching of children was relatively easy.
Finn’s desire to escape to the Outer Rim could be some ingrained memory that he has of his home planet or possibly the Force guiding him there. Taris has a lot to offer, but has been through hell and back. It would be interesting, if Finn really is from Taris, to see him return home and help rebuild.
That’s brilliant, that Finn was drawn to the Outer Rim for subconscious reasons–somewhere he felt safe for reasons he couldn’t explain and rationalized as getting away from the First Order, even though the Outer Rim could be pretty wild and lawless itself.
Okay wow now we all we need is confirmation that there’s going to be some Mando element in IX or maybe even just a flash of a helmet on set and we can pretty much confirm that Finn will turn out to be Mandalorian! Honestly, what the Resistance desperately needs right now are more support in the galaxy and NUMBERS and what better way to obtain that than having countless Mandalorian clans fight against the First Order under Finn (the Mand’Alor’s) command?
It would be a great way to build excitement for the Boba Fett movie, and also (dies) Temuera Morrison as older Boba Fett and the Mand’Alor!!!
Continuing off the idea of Rey deciding not to be a Jedi and how that might affect Episode IX.
Rey might be a Force user but she’s no soldier and not really a fighter either. She a survivor. She’ll fight if she has to but generally avoids to.
Finn seems to have committed himself to the cause at the end of TLJ and they need someone like Rey, they need a Force user who will fight to counter Kylo (and possibly the Knights of Ren, but who knows about these douches). On the other hand I don’t think he’d ever want to push Rey, or anyone, into something they don’t want to do. He’s been violated like that for too many years himself.
Still it would be an ongoing point of contention between them and the source of many an argument. Could you just imagine one of them ending in Rey looking Finn in the eye and saying, “well, you have that power too. I’ve sensed it in you. You do it.” And then shoving the ancient Jedi text into his arms and storming off.
Finn standing there with the old books in his arms not knowing what to think. He’s never seen himself as a Jedi, not realized what the things he sensed were and being a little bit scared because boy this is huge, but at the same time this needs doing.
So he does it. He reads the books and meticulously rebuilds the lightsaber, using the broken crystal from the old one.
Rey being supportive because it removes a burden from her she didn’t want and takes away a task she feels she couldn’t do, but at the same time feeling guilty for shoving this on Finn.
I love this, because one of the things I hate about Rey’s story is that she seems to have a role foisted on her that she doesn’t seem particularly into. I dislike that her story consists of her being an errand girl to save the universe, unsupported by her own inner drive. She’s a lot like Anakin that way, actually–extremely talented capable, but doing things because he was told to when all he really wanted was to love and be loved. Anakin would have had a much happier ending if he’d put his foot down and said “no” to the demands on him, not that this would have been easy when he started on his path as a child and almost all his relationships and his very identity revolved around being a Jedi. Rey is not nearly so constrained, and in fact it’s Finn who had similar social and psychological constraints as a Stormtrooper before he had the incredibly courage to leave behind everything he ever knew.
“Tell him I’m trying to redeem the person who slashed him across the back and put him into a coma. Can you tell him that for me please? Thanks.”
Someone finally said it.
Rian Johnson is a fucking hack.
y’all forgot luke redeemed vader who tortured leia, had a hand in blowing up her home planet, killed obi wan and froze han in carbonite?
Do you think that Finn wouldn’t be at least slightly sympathetic if he knew what was actually happening to Kylo Ren, and what had happened to him in the past? You think Finn wouldn’t be against brainwashing and abuse, regardless of the target?
Awww lookit that, Finn is worthless unless he forgives and props up the man who bullied and would have killed him!
Abuse? Not an excuse even if it happened. Brainwashing? Total bullshit. Not only did Kylo disobey Snoke’s order in TFA, he murderized the pickled prune in TLJ. And still wanted to murder his mother and all the Resistance survivors.
Has Finn had any interaction, cannonicaly, other than the fight on star killer base? Honest question. Because I don’t think Kylo has ever bullied Finn. I feel like that’s all on Phasma. That’s not to say that Kylo didn’t try and kill Finn.
Also I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Rey trying to redeem someone inspite of their flaws, pretty fucking big ones I’ll admit. I think it shows her as an inherently good person who believes that there is good in everyone.
Was this question directed at me? Because as far as I can tell you
didn’t reblog from me, meaning I couldn’t have seen it in my notes even
if notes in general weren’t acting up.
Anyway, please see the third and fourth gifs in a post I did about Finn and Kylo (link). Kylo Ren very directly looked at Finn, then as he turned to go unfroze the blaster beam from Poe’s rifle so it struck a pole close to where Finn was standing, showering him with sparks and startling him. (In the original Finn jumped even harder than in the gif I made–I cut out some frames to make the gif smaller.) So yeah, casual, cruel bullying.
War crimes are not a character flaw, jsyk. What was Finn supposed to do if asked to stay in the same organization as the person who nearly killed him, who is known to have been treacherous and murderous before? What was Poe supposed to do if asked to work with someone who murdered a village before his eyes and tortured him so painfully that his screams shattered the recording droid’s sensory capsules (link)? I understand that Rey meant well, but it wasn’t a well-thought-out decision at all.
Or: How TLJ is RotS averted far more than RotJ subverted
At
the end of The Force Awakens we watched Finn and Rey both stand up to Kylo Ren for each other, effectively saving each other and
themselves from the Master of the Knights of Ren. When Rey was knocked
out Finn took up the lightsaber; when Finn was injured, Rey woke up to
his screams and snatched the lightsaber from Ren to defend Finn and
herself.
This dynamic takes place again in the climax of The
Last Jedi, except Finn and Rey were not in the same scene like they were
during the dueling sequence in TFA. in TLJ, though kept apart until
their heartwarming reunion hug, they saved each other through the
choices they made and what each meant to the other.
The A-plot of
TLJ has been called a subversion of Return of the Jedi, for good reason.
Rey attempts to bring Kylo Ren back to the light in scenes that are
some very direct callbacks to Luke and Vader in RotJ, except
Kylo Ren, unlike Vader, refuses Rey’s plea and rises to the position of Big Bad
instead.
TLJ is only primarily a subversion of RotJ if you focus
on Rey and Ren, however. If you broaden the focus to Rey, Finn, and Ren
and the dynamics between them, it is the tragic ending of Revenge of the
Sith averted.
In fact, seeing TLJ as RotS averted subverts
the very idea that Kylo Ren was ever Anakin to Rey’s Luke: Rather he is
Palpatine, and Finn and Rey parallel Padmé and Anakin respectively, except
they each avoided destruction and enslavement. Rey, in no small part due
to Ren’s manipulation, saw him as a tortured soul who could be
redeemed. In fact he was a master manipulator who was drawing her
in for his own gain.
Rey’s lack of genre savviness, based on
a mistaken character reading, almost led to her meeting Anakin’s fate
as the subservient apprentice to an abusive master. Instead, she was
able to avoid it because of the love between her and Finn. In turn, Finn
and the Resistance avoided destruction in part because Rey did not turn
on Finn as Kylo wanted and as Anakin turned on Padmé.
The similarities between Finn/Padmé and
Rey/Anakin, and also their story together, have been commented on enough
times, recently in posts like @jewishcomeradebot’s (link with my addition).
What I have not seen discussed is the similarities of their dynamics to
Kylo Ren/Palpatine, the man who manipulated a powerful younger Force
user under the guise of friendship only to use them to grasp l power,
and tried to take his rival out of the picture for good.
Put
simply, Finn is Ren’s opponent and rival, much as Padmé was Palpatine’s
opponent and rival. They share a common background and know each other, have opposing convictions and goals, and work against each other. Rey on the other
hand, is someone Ren wants to turn and make his apprentice, much as
Anakin was targeted and groomed by Palpatine. The tragedy in RotS was that Palpatine achieved his goal
of defeating Padmé and making Anakin his apprentice. The happy ending in
TLJ is that Finn and Rey escaped that fate.
How did Finn and
Rey avoid the tragedy that was Padmé and Anakin’s story? On Rey’s side,
it was because she knew Kylo Ren was full of bantha poo-doo (and also
was poo-doo himself) when he told her she was nothing except to him. She
had incontrovertible proof that this wasn’t true, no matter how he
might twist the knife in the wound of her abandonment, no matter how
alone and desperate she felt by his design.
She knew because
Finn had come back for her to Starkiller Base. He had returned to the
very heart of the nightmares that he was ready to flee to the ends of
the galaxy to run from, and he very nearly paid the ultimate price for
it–for her. She knew that Han had thought of her as a daughter and that Leia
and the Resistance loved her. The love she had been filled up with
since she left Jakku, with Finn and his sacrifice for her at the center of it all,
anchored her and prevented her from being swept onto the shoals of Kylo
Ren’s deceit.
On Finn’s side,
he avoided total defeat and death in large part due to Rose’s and later
Luke’s intervention, but even their help would have meant little in the long run if Rey had turned against him and the Resistance as Anakin had turned against Padmé and all
she stood for. Where Anakin and later Kylo himself had committed mass
murders at their masters’ behest, Rey refused to stand by and let her
friends be slaughtered and joined forces with them. Where Palpatine had
triumphed by turning Anakin against Padmé, Rey was steadfast in her
loyalty to Finn, and Kylo failed to tear their bond apart. Their love
proved stronger than his violence in TFA and his wiles in TLJ.
The
culmination of TLJ, then, repeats that of TFA with Finn and Rey saving
each other through the strength of their love. The duels in TFA were
just between Finn, Rey, and Kylo with a personal, even claustrophobic
feel. Only Finn’s life and Rey’s freedom were in suspense since the
destruction of Starkiller Base was already imminent. In TLJ the stakes
are even larger, with more people involved and the future of the
Resistance–and by extension, the galaxy–in the balance.
Incidentally,
seeing TLJ as RotS averted and Ren as a so-far unsuccessful Palpatine
means there is no need for Ren to have an understandable motivation. As @jewishcomeradebot has pointed out (link),
Vader’s motivation for falling to the Dark Side is completely opaque in
the OT. Luke, the actual protagonist, had no reason to know or care
about Vader’s reasons. I would like to add that the PT explored Anakin’s
internal life, but that was because Anakin was the protagonist of that
series. Kylo Ren is not a protagonist, he has been and remains the main
antagonist. The motivation behind his fall is irrelevant to Finn and
Rey. It may be that there is no reason other than his belief that he is
superior to others and is entitled to power, much like Palpatine.
Where
does Finn and Rey’s story go from here? With the pretension of TLJ
being the new RotJ dispensed with and the tragedy of RotS avoided for
the moment, SW is on entirely new ground. The ends of both preceding
trilogies were teased but subverted or averted. There is no precedent to
guide us now.
One constant in the ST, however, is the strength of
the bond between Finn and Rey. Both the ST movies so far ended with
that bond both reaffirmed and acting as a powerful force (maybe even
Force) for good in the lives of our protagonists and the ongoing war. To
carry this motif forward Finn and Rey’s love could be tested even more,
with still larger stakes–the outcome of the entire war.
On Rey’s
side, one interesting dilemma would be whether she can accept the risk
of losing Finn in order to honor his conviction. This was a test that
Anakin had failed in regard to Padmé, to both their destruction. Rather
than stand with Padmé Anakin turned against everything she believed in,
and the desire to control her to avoid losing her overwhelmed his love for her. We know that
Rey, like Anakin, wanted nothing more than a sense of belonging and
attachment and she found that with Finn. Now that Finn, like Padmé
before him, found a cause bigger than the two of them, can Rey honor
that cause even if it might mean she cannot be with the only person who came
back for her? What is love? is it
holding on to the beloved no matter what? Or does it lie in accepting
change if it may come, and accepting the beloved’s free will even if it means parting with them?
On Finn’s side, his story has been about freedom and the
ever-expanding awareness that he cannot be free by himself. From the first he needed another person, Poe, to escape the First Order. After losing Poe he sought freedom for himself as he continued running, unexpectedly picking up a comrade that he became more and more attached to. This attachment grew to the extent that it overrode his original goal–he
found that his individual freedom meant little if Rey was suffering. Then, in
late TFA and TLJ, the Resistance and a larger awareness of the galaxy were enfolded
in his circle. In the next movie the galaxy itself, including possibly the Stormtroopers in forced servitude, is likely to be included
in his fight.
With his circle of moral obligation expanding so much, can Finn remember to think about himself and his closest relationships? This was something actively discouraged in him in the First Order as selfish and inconsequential, and after his arc in TLJ his earlier conditioning may lead to his falling into the same habit of self-effacement, though for an opposing cause. Is it selfish to think of his beloved when the universe is at stake? Can he bring himself to think he deserves to love and to be loved? Does true freedom exclude considerations of love, or is freedom only complete with love? Rose gave one answer at the end of TLJ, that freedom can only be won through love, and certainly Rey avoiding servitude through love is a case for that assertion as well. This conclusion is likely to be tested, though, as the fight intensifies and the demands of the war grow harsher.
Where Rey’s continuing story seems to be about the nature of love with implications for freedom, Finn’s appears to be about the nature of freedom with implications for love. Resolving this continuing arc will hopefully lead to a satisfactory conclusion of the sequel trilogy and the story of Finn and Rey.
I don’t understand the people who say that Kylo would have worked better if he had been a random, I really don’t. Kylo’s connection to the Skywalker bloodline, along with the lack of clear motive for his actions, is the entire point.
See, he’s a Nazi.
Okay, so technically he’s an allegory for a neo-Nazi in a space fantasy setting, but given that this hellsite has a distinct difficulty with complex concepts I’ll keep it simple. He’s a Nazi.
Why did Nazis do what they did? Why do neo-Nazis do what they do?
If you peel away all the embellishments and propaganda it comes right down to this: they see themselves as having a special legacy, a special bloodline to protect and they have a right to do so because they feel they’ve been chosen.
JJ has said that the early concept of Jedikiller only started working when they made him connected to the Skywalker bloodline, to the chosen family in Star Wars.
Kylo’s motivation, like that of all Nazis, is that he’s doing this because he belongs to the chosen people and thus have a right to rule. Not because he’s qualified, but because he belongs to the destined people.
No it’s not deep or complex, but it was never meant to be. Kylo is an antagonist and one JJ always meant to emulate a neo-Nazi. Giving him complex motivation would have detracted from this and, like with the real life equivalent, made it possible to justify what he’s doing because he has X, Y, Z motivation. Instead JJ gave him the most basic motivation of Nazis, he’s right because he’s chosen and because he has the strength to do what he does.
It’s not glorious. It’s pathetic, sad and ultimately someone who’s irredeemable. Not because he couldn’t choose differently than he does but because it’s not a motivation that makes anyone want to see him redeemed.
Of course, even people who sees Kylo as a villain and antagonist have a really hard time accepting him being a Nazi, so maybe this view isn’t really that surprising.
I mean the actor himself told us that Kylo Ren is an elitist (link), it’s not that deep people.
[Adam Driver] refuses to see his character as bratty. “There is a little bit of an
elitist, royalty thing going on,” he says, reminding us that the
character’s estranged mom is “the princess. I think he’s aware of maybe
the privilege.”
Cass Sunstein has criticized TLJ in part because Kylo didn’t fall due to losing a loved one (link), but maybe that’s because… Kylo is no Anakin… and is not nearly as sympathetic?
Mr. Dark Side, Kylo Ren, does have a bit of a struggle, and in that
sense, Johnson maintains continuity with Lucas’s vision. But in this
movie, at least, the struggle turns out to be a head fake. Because
Kylo’s descent doesn’t have the precipitating cause of Anakin’s – the
loss of loved ones – and because we don’t see Kylo suppressing the
better angels of his nature, the film doesn’t come anywhere close to the
depths of Lucas’s films.
If anyone is positioned as the new Anakin–but with a happy ending–it’s Rey, in struggling with the loss of loved ones, or at least her idea of them, and also in resisting manipulation by her would-be abusive mentor Kylo where Anakin fell to Palpatine’s manipulation. It’s interesting that Sunstein couldn’t recognize this story when it manifested in a female character, though to be sure it’s a common enough blind spot and RJ didn’t make it easy for anyone.
Precisely.
People, not just Cass here, are obsessed with having Kylo be the next Vader/Anakin, but he isn’t. Not to mention they’re even more obsessed with the reason why he fell to the Dark Side than they are with Rey’s parentage.
But let me ask you something. Did we know why Anakin fell in the OT? No, we didn’t, because the reason for it wasn’t relevant to Luke for whom Vader was a foil.
Is it relevant to Finn or to Rey why Kylo fell? So far we’ve been given not a single reason why this information should be relevant to either of them, so I don’t get why people are so upset about not knowing.
Except as yet another case of prioritizing the white guy over the two actual leads in the ST. Kylo’s motives for turning to the Dark are no more interesting or relevant to the narrative than Vader’s were in the OT. It’s not a plot hole, it’s not a flaw in the storytelling, it’s intentional. Only the parts of Kylo and his actions that are pertinent to Finn and Rey are relevant to the story, and unless someone can come up with a good reason why either of them should remotely care about it it’s going to remain irrelevant.
It’s why I was so attached to the idea of Rey Solo, I admit, because it would reconcile Kylo being like Anakin with the reason for his fall being relevant to Rey. The why would tie into Rey’s story while the how would directly contrast with Finn’s.
But it looks like the ST is going to go the route of only the how being relevant to both Rey and Finn. Rey at the end of TFA and even more throughout TLJ is where Kylo used to be, only to make different choices: she was chosen and groomed by a powerful Dark Force user while vulnerable and alone, but unlike Kylo she told the guy to fuck all the way off and chose to stand with her friends, not murder them. Finn throughout TFA and TLJ continues to present a direct contrast to Kylo Ren at every point, from backgrounds to choices to responses to abuse.
Rey is the one who could have been Kylo, had Kylo succeeded in his efforts. Finn is the one who stands in complete opposition to Kylo, and Kylo hates him for it.
This only strengthens the Finnrey/Anidala feels, by the way. Anakin/Rey was Palpatine/Kylo’s chosen victim-apprentice, but where Anakin chose the darkness and servitude Rey chose the light and freedom. Padmé/Finn was Palpatine/Kylo’s rival and enemy, but where Palpatine succeeded in destroying Padmé Kylo failed because where Anakin turned against Padmé, Rey was steadfast in her loyalty to Finn. We have no idea and no reason to care why Palpatine fell other than his desire for power, and the same is true of Kylo.
Finn and Rey are Padmé and Anakin, only with a happy ending.
Their story so far has many of the same beats as Anakin’s and Padmé’s had in TPM and AotC.
In the first installment of the story Rey (Anakin) is trapped in a life of servitude on a desert planet. While she might not be a slave exactly, she comes across as a form of indentured servant.
Finn is the rebel against the status quo, the way Padmé rebelled at the stagnation and indifference of the Senate and at the end of the day will take matters into their own hands and resort to armed might to set things right, when the large galaxy appears to don’t give a fuck about their issues.
In part two, they’re kept apart. Where what kept Padmé and Anakin apart was social strictures and rules, Finn and Rey are kept apart physically. But in both cases both of them are yearning to be with each other against all the odds.
Their reunification after the battle is as tender and passionate as Anakin’s and Padmé’s after the Battle of Geonosis. They rush to each other and hold on tight, finally in the arms of the person they love.
But unlike Padmé and Anakin, Finn and Rey don’t have to hide. There are no strict Jedi masters spouting a dogma against romance to tell Rey she can’t show the love she feels for Finn. And Finn’s position in the Resistance as a leader and hero is not at odds with him loving and showing love, for Rey.
So though we lack an actual wedding scene I wonder if in Episode IX we’ll be presented with Finn’s and Rey’s romantic relationship as a already given entity, they’re simply presented as a couple from the beginning. Or if the confession of their love will happen very early instead.
Either way, it would make the most sense if the two of them spend most if not all of the movie as a couple and we see them navigate the obstacles of an ongoing war alongside the obstacle they face as a couple, the same way we see it with Anakin and Padmé in RotS. Only in this case Finn and Rey will have the happy ending Anakin’s obsession denied him and Padmé.
YES I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOREVER. Finn and Rey are genderflipped Anidala with a happy ending and better lines.
Other similarities, if you go back to TPM:
– Padmé/Finn originally met Anakin/Rey under an identity they assumed for safety reasons
– Both eventual couples became friends under Padmé/Finn’s assumed identity, and Padmé/Finn willingly revealed their true identity much to Anakin/Rey’s shock
– Both couples were good friends first. This stage was much longer for Padmé and Anakin since they were children when they first met and there were 10 years between their meeting in TPM and realizing their feelings in AotC. It’s pretty clear Rey and Finn were attracted to each other almost from the moment they first met, but they still started out as friends first and foremost.
Additional similarities with AotC:
– Rey and Finn meet at almost exactly the same ages Anakin and Padmé
were in AotC, 19/23 to Anakin and Padmé’s 19/24. Incidentally 19 is the traditional age for Skywalkers to begin their adventures as adults including meeting prospective love interests, and 23 is the traditional age for Skywalker men to choose a side
– Padmé/Finn was marked for death due to their principled actions, and Anakin/Rey became involved in the situation by order or circumstance
– Padmé/Finn went to rescue a friend (Obi-Wan/Rey) despite the threat to their lives
– The rescue did not go as envisioned and it turned out the rescuee was more than capable of handling themselves
– Padmé/Finn is slashed across the back by a monster
– There’s a heartfelt declaration by both Padmé/Finn and Anakin/Rey, though the guy made the first move in both cases (”You are in my very soul, tormenting me”/”Rey, come with me”) and the girl initially refused (”It’s impossible”/”Don’t go”) before she reciprocated in the face of almost losing him (”I’ve been dying a little bit each day”/”Thank you, my friend.” I’m not kidding about the better lines here…)
In TLJ, arguably there was a form of social stricture that kept Finn and Rey apart physically–Rose and her demand that Finn give his full allegiance to the Resistance. As I discussed in The Temptations of Finn and Rey (link), this was a callback to Finn’s being coerced to give everything to a “higher cause” his whole life. This in turn ties back to the similarities between the FO’s Stormtrooper program and the Old Republic Jedi, taking children from their families at a young age and transferring their attachment to a larger cause. I like to think Rose grew as a character and realized that she had been wrong about Finn, but RJ’s execution is so muddled it’s hard to tell ¯_(ツ)_/¯
For this reason I think there’s a chance that “will they or won’t they” will still be a thing in Episode IX. Finn and Rey ended TLJ on essentially a misunderstanding and on opposite ends from their last real talk on Takodana. For all they love each other they are still essentially strangers who spent maybe a grand total of one day together in the midst of a galactical crisis. (That’s another parallel to AotC Anidala, incidentally.) The crisis is worse than ever at the end of TLJ, providing plenty of excuse for two uncertain and traumatized people to bury themselves in work and avoid talking about things too close to their hearts.
L.J.'s Obsessions 