do you understand that Finn a defected stormtrooper who barely escaped starkiller base the first time, against all good judgement went back for rey at the risk of being recaptured and reconditioned? DO YOU?!
(Continued) when did Finn start? Did he learn to hide part of
himself while in the order? What could that have been like? His boss can
see into his mind. He is constantly being monitored. Or was his first
time to lie, when trying to get the ship to take them out? Or when he
told Rey he was resistance. He kept a part if his life he hated
separate, he was able to keep something to himself for perhaps the first
time in his life. And that makes Finn sharing it that much more
powerful.
Eggshells
FN-2187 isn’t sure what his first secret was. He knows secrets are corrosive and wrong, at least when kept from the Supreme Leader and the First Order. Secrets weaken them, like greddleback tunnels eaten into the foundation of a building. They should be transparent as flexiglass to each other and above all to the Order, they are taught, and not hold anything back.
Yet there is something he holds for himself, selfishly, shamefully, treasonously. It goes back all the way in his mind, before durasteel walls and clean, blinding white: smiling lips against his forehead, fingers tickling his tiny belly, even the echo of a name if he listens hard enough. He builds a shell around this little bubble of memory and curls himself around it like a bird sitting on an egg.
He can’t explain why he does this. He knows that what he has, the best training in the galaxy, his Stormtrooper sibs of one mind like the limbs of a giant organism, and above all the cause of the First Order, far surpass whatever backwater existence he left behind. Yet that small, stubborn part of him, beyond all reason, just settles down harder with a demented scream: Mine.
He does not expect to add to his furtive cache, but it happens anyway. One by one, thoughts that are too painful or dangerous crawl back, back, back and into his little egg.
He wishes he could see a sky and not the dark of space through viewports.
He wants a room of his own and to shut the door and not have all the other boys crowd in on him, body and mind.
FN-2000 would be pretty cute if he weren’t such a smug know-it-all.
Sometimes when Captain Phasma is talking to him he feels like he is disappearing, piece by piece, each disappointing bit of him fading out of existence for good.
On the darkest nights when sleep is a foreign thing he wonders if he is really on the side of good.
Most dangerously of all, he wants to find the touches and voices that haunt him still, his core of secrets that started it all.
Back, back they crawl into the far reaches of his mind and slip into his egg of thoughts like a reverse hatching, protected by a shell of secrets and treason.
He expects to be found out at every psych evaluation, for all his secrets to be thrown out to view mangled and half-formed, the shapes of dreams that grew twisted and stunted away from the sun.
Somehow that never happens. He passes evaluation after evaluation with top marks like he passes all the other tests. Sometimes he himself forgets he carries all these thoughts with him, the secrets so deeply hidden they are secret to himself. Maybe that’s how he does it.
Every time he gets away with it there’s a little thrill. Ha! I beat you again, again, and again!
He doesn’t know where this contempt comes from, but of course he cannot confide in anyone without blowing the whole thing. He keeps his mouth shut and the thought trudges to the back where his egg grows, an ovoid tower of treason.
He hears the first crack when the spark of Slip’s life goes out. The crack grows louder when he faces the captive villagers to shoot them, so loud he cannot aim and cannot fire. I don’t know if we’re on the right side Did my village look like this Are my parents His blood burns through my helmet that’s physically impossible but it’s true My face is burning off I can’t do this anymore I can’t stay here
Shoot, damn you! Shoot into the air if you can’t fire at them.
I can’t I can’t I can’t stay I can’t
By the time he is back on the Star Destroyer he is drowning in the quicksand of his thoughts, all the traitorous little secrets he had tucked away for so long. He takes off his helmet because he can’t breathe and his face is melting from Slip’s blood even though it is not.
“Report to my division at once.”
The words stab into his head wih the clarity of sunlight. He knows he won’t last a nanosecond in reconditioning. There’s no way to hide the flood of his thoughts anymore, no time to rebuild walls that took twenty years to raise and one night to undo.
They’ll take it all away, the smiling kisses, the sneaked glances at broad shoulders, his doubts and Slip’s blood.
He shouldn’t want these things.
MINE.
“So you’re with the Resistance?”
He looks up at the girl through the sun and the dust, the hope she holds in her rapid breaths, the soft yearning behind her hard-packed strength. He knows how to be what’s wanted, what would keep him safe.
“Obviously.”
He rises to the occasion through the pain that still glitters behind his eyes. The thrill of getting away with a lie is gone, though. He looks at how she smiles at him and wishes he could take the words back, wishes all his yesterdays away.
“I’m not Resistance. I’m not a hero.”
He hears the final cracks as the last of the shells in his mind shatter. He is naked before her eyes, exposed to his softest core, as he tastes his fullest truth for the first time since beyond memory.
I’m over the moon that Finn got that iconic line – “may the Force be with you” – but no one seems to be asking the obvious question, where did he learn it?
It’s not something the First Order would have taught him that’s for sure.
Originally it was a Jedi greeting that the then Alliance adopted as several ranking members had had close ties with the Jedi before the rise of the Empire. The First Order want the Jedi wiped out and sees the Republic, the government formed by the Alliance after Endor, as an illegitimate power to also be destroyed.
While I could see it spreading via the Church of the Force who’s teachings are based on those of the Jedi, it doesn’t seem to have spread into the general populace in the 30 years since the Battle of Endor, as far as we can judge by the canon material available.
It doesn’t even seemed to be used by the Resistance personnel in general.
So again, where did he pick it up?
My theory is that Rose said it to Finn, and Finn is repeating it back to her in a jocular, slightly disbelieving way. We have never seen this phrase used jokingly before, because when it was said it was always used in earnest at a pivotal moment in the films. The fact that Finn is saying it in a laughing manner not only fits his status as a rebellious, authority-critical hero, but shows he may be unfamiliar with it or at least its full context.
A major reason I think this is part of a scene with Rose is because of the background. Here’s a still of Finn saying the line…
And here’s an early shot of Finn and Rose talking.
They feature the same door, as far as I can tell, from different angles. (The difference in lighting is probably due to poor rendering of the TV spot, since the daytime scene with Rey also comes out dark in the video uploaded to YouTube.)
If Rose said this line and Finn repeated it to her in a cynical way, it would be in line with their relationship as described to us in various articles and interviews–that he wants no part in the fight at first (and I don’t blame him one bit) and she helps him believe in it and himself.
It would also be a setup for Finn saying the line in earnest later on as part of his character development, having found his own conviction and his own meaning in his journey. It will go down as a moment in Star Wars history much like Han coming back to assist Luke at the Death Star or Jyn’s rendition of this iconic line.
Funny you bring up that Finn seems to be disbelieving even ironic here. I read it the same way and it made me wonder if it was Rose or Poe he’s saying it to, as popular thought appears to be or if its an authority figure.
To me he reads like he wants to tell someone to piss off but can’t, in that his voice is very polite, almost formal, but his little smirk and tilt of the head kinda reads like “oh go eff yourself”. Because that’s not Finn’s smile when he means it, it looks utterly fake.
Of course, without context its hard to know. But yes it makes me think he’s saying it to someone in authority where he can’t say exactly what he means, so he resorts to this.
In Resistance context that would mean Leia or Amilyn Holdo, my money is on the latter.
If true, this just may mark the first time MTFBWU was used as a “fuck u” 😂
Alternate theory: Finn learned the phrase from archival materials he studied as part of his training, like Rebellion radio chatter intercepted by the Empire or something. It’s a fond headcanon of mine that he got the “war hero” bit from studying the old battles and coming to his own, wholly unapproved, conclusions.
I’m over the moon that Finn got that iconic line – “may the Force be with you” – but no one seems to be asking the obvious question, where did he learn it?
It’s not something the First Order would have taught him that’s for sure.
Originally it was a Jedi greeting that the then Alliance adopted as several ranking members had had close ties with the Jedi before the rise of the Empire. The First Order want the Jedi wiped out and sees the Republic, the government formed by the Alliance after Endor, as an illegitimate power to also be destroyed.
While I could see it spreading via the Church of the Force who’s teachings are based on those of the Jedi, it doesn’t seem to have spread into the general populace in the 30 years since the Battle of Endor, as far as we can judge by the canon material available.
It doesn’t even seemed to be used by the Resistance personnel in general.
So again, where did he pick it up?
My theory is that Rose said it to Finn, and Finn is repeating it back to her in a jocular, slightly disbelieving way. We have never seen this phrase used jokingly before, because when it was said it was always used in earnest at a pivotal moment in the films. The fact that Finn is saying it in a laughing manner not only fits his status as a rebellious, authority-critical hero, but shows he may be unfamiliar with it or at least its full context.
A major reason I think this is part of a scene with Rose is because of the background. Here’s a still of Finn saying the line…
And here’s an early shot of Finn and Rose talking.
They feature the same door, as far as I can tell, from different angles. (The difference in lighting is probably due to poor rendering of the TV spot, since the daytime scene with Rey also comes out dark in the video uploaded to YouTube.)
If Rose said this line and Finn repeated it to her in a cynical way, it would be in line with their relationship as described to us in various articles and interviews–that he wants no part in the fight at first (and I don’t blame him one bit) and she helps him believe in it and himself.
It would also be a setup for Finn saying the line in earnest later on as part of his character development, having found his own conviction and his own meaning in his journey. It will go down as a moment in Star Wars history much like Han coming back to assist Luke at the Death Star or Jyn’s rendition of this iconic line.
Ok, I’m coming out of my semi-hiatus to address something just real quick.
I’m a Kylo fan. It’s not a secret by far, but heres the thing that a lot of people who also claim to be Kylo fans don’t seem to understand.
Kylo Ren is the villain. He’s been presented to us in TFA as the villain. He’s still being presented as the villain in TLJ.
Why are y’all so determined to turn him into the hero of this story and demonize everyone else so he can look like the innocent one in all of this?
Equating Finn and Poe as being murderers in the same vein as Kylo does a disservice to all of their characters.
Poe shooting and killing Slips is absolutely not the same thing as murdering a defenseless old man and then ordering the massacre of an entire village. Poe was helping to fend off attackers who had zero right to be there.
Finn defending himself and the other people on Takodana from yet another FO invasion doesn’t make him a heartless character. Those soldiers weren’t going to stop following their orders, and while yes they’re brainwashed and programed what was Finn gonna be able to do about that at that moment? Do you think he could have just stood there and said “Hey guys, they’re controlling you, the First Order is bad, you gotta stop doing this.” and all those troopers would have dropped their weapons and agreed with him?
No. They wouldn’t have. And they’d have shot him dead right then and there if he hadn’t defended himself.
So quite frankly, you guys can just fucking stop with your “The Resistance and Poe and Finn are just as bad as Kylo and the FO!!” bullshit, because you sound ridiculous.
Quit demonizing Poe and Finn. They didn’t do anything other than defend themselves and people who were innocent from a faction that was invading and killing people.
In the picture: Phasma looking at Finn and baby Finn files
After re-watching The Force Awakens, as it is often the case when you see a movie for a second or third time, I came to appreciate a few characters insights and general details that I had previously missed out on. I would like to share them with you.
Let’s now look at FINN:
Finn’s escape and subsequent journey really are remarkable. His emotions are palpable and there’s that scene where he takes his helmet off on the Star Destroyer where you can literally see all his feelings dancing behind the “glass” of his eyes, like little fires. You get this sense of panicking urgency, this need he has of getting out of the First Order asap, and to me, it all felt very real.
One detail I found fascinating in the opening scene is that Poe – the first meaningful “outsider” Finn iteracts with – is the one who kills his stormtrooper friend (killing the last friendly image of the First Order he has), effectively initiating the domino that will lead to Finn’s “awakening”.
Finn’s test:
Director Rian Johnson, while addressing The Last Jedi content, commented on how the 2nd instalment of the sequel trilogy will prove to be “testing” for all the main characters.
Now, while Kylo Ren’s problems, weaknesses and tribulations are often discussed and quite easy to pinpoint, as are Rey’s, Luke’s, Poe’s and Leia’s; Finn the Cupcake’s (a well-earned title, no less) demons haven’t quite received the same amount of attention. Perhaps because they’re – at this point – subtler (and no, I am not talking about Finn’s attachment to those he cares about: I tend to associate that more with his “light side”, since it’s so obvious and out in the open).
Let’s discuss them a bit more in depth:
I have personally found two features of Finn’s that could be conductive to growth or, likewise, darkness. One of them fully escalated and found resolution during TFA, the other hasn’t, as of yet.
1) fear (and, to an extent, sloth) – Finn’s escape was likely catalysed by two factors: fear of killing innocents for a wrong cause and fear for his own life (and, implicitly, fear of growing up/letting go).
While escaping, obedient Finn is also confronted for the first time with his own individuality, in a deep manner.
The questions “who am I?” and “where am I going?” were likely to be the background music to his rocambolesque escape, though more subconsciously than in a Jedi-like meditative manner at that.
Fear of dying is what keeps Finn anchored to his child self. What keeps him from hoping. And daring.
Finn outgrows this the moment he ditches the Outer Rim guys to go fight the First Order at Maz Kanata’s castle, Rey having played a key (human) part in his decision.
After this, Finn gains a piece of his identity, making one step forward towards adulthood.
2) Phasma – yes. Phasma. The captain. The warleader. The steely soldier in a mask …his parental figure, in a sense. The embodiment of Imperial care and “tough love” every subservient citizen should look up to.
Kylo Ren and Rey are not the only ones troubled by their families. Finn is too, in his own way, and by the end of TFA he still struggles to come to terms with it in a mature way.
The line “I’m in charge, I’m in charge now Phasma, I’m in charge!” after he and Han capture the Captain and the wary, aggressive way he holds her captive and orders her around while pointing a blaster at her head prove that beautifully, showing us a rougher, conflicted side of Finn’s that had stayed dormant up until that point.
Everything about this scene with Phasma shouts “trial”. Finn’s self-confidence wavers as he partially loses his cool, portraying the adolescent Phasma trained. It’s as if he is actually doubting his freedom, while in her presence, and hasn’t quite grasped how to handle that.
The TLJ trailer, alongside the purpose of Finn and Rose’s undercover mission, give us reason to think that this Phasma demon will be addressed in the upcoming movie.
Finn does not hate Kylo Ren. He does not hate Hux, nor Snoke. But he could hate Phasma, because of what she attempted shaping him into. Because deep down he feels that he’s not completely free as long as he hasn’t proven that to her. And although as informal as any Imperial training can get, there’s still a level of intimacy a trainer and her stormtrooper share, as opposed to fighting against any other faceless First Order follower.
Phasma acts as a sort of Frollo to Finn’s (able-bodied) Quasimodo.
Will Finn free himself of Phasma’s (literal and figurative) influence without succumbing to hatred?
I’m looking forward to seeing where this is going to end, and I seriously hope Johnson has given this arc the depth it deserves.
Finn doesn’t hate Kylo Ren, Hux or Snoke? The people who stole him from his family, nearly ruined his life, and seriously physically hurt him and his friends? Could you share your reasoning behind this statement?
I’m also unsure why Finn shouldn’t hate Phasma or the rest of her gang for that matter. He has every right to be angry at his abusers. Anger and, dare I say, hatred at Kylo Ren helped him fight an overwhelming enemy, and anger no doubt helped him return to and function in Starkiller Base, the last place in the Galaxy he wanted to be.
@lj-writes Well, Darth :-), since you raised this point, let me start by asking you a question: what is the message Star Wars heroes convey?
Would Luke still be the hero we all love if revenge had been the motive behind the defeat of his terrible father?
Would we still hold Obi-Wan in high regard if hate had been the driving force behind his maiming of Anakin?
Feeling anger and hate is natural, acting upon them is naturally brutish, especially for a Star Wars positive character of such relevance. Finn sure does hate what Kylo Ren did, what Snoke represents, but he does not hate, nor obsess, over the annihilation of their personas (for personal ends especially). He has a much higher purpose than that. And even if he hates them, his challenge (like all other main characters’ challenges, even Poe’s) will be to allow these negative feelings to relent their grip on him, and to mature into overcoming his obstacles without resorting to them. Why else would we look up to Finn, if this weren’t the case?
Otherwise…well. There’s always another avenue, if that suits you best. Star Wars has plenty of characters who let themselves be driven by the winds of vengeful, bloodthirsty passions, too: Darth Maul and Darth Vader are two among them, and look where this way of seeing life brought them!
Remember Finn’s interactions with Kylo? He was always fearful (not cowardly, but with the knowledge of someone who knows what the First Order is all about), not angry. After the knight of Ren slayed his own father, Finn and Rey ran away from him. The time when Finn realized he needed to act, for himself, for life, for the right thing – was when Kylo hurt Rey. And no, I couldn’t see the eyes of hate when he wielded that blue lightsaber. The eyes of a lion who fights against another creature, sure. But not the eyes of hatred.
On the other hand, Finn could hate Phasma on a more personal level simply because of the fact that – as his teacher and trainer, someone whom he shares a more “intimate” bond with, at least figuratively – she represents a part of him that he hasn’t fully elaborated yet in the context of his new life as a free man.
Let us not forget that before defecting, Finn was just one among many obedient Stormtroopers. In one of the opening scenes, Phasma and Hux examine his history files, stating aloud that he had never created any problems: that is, he was raised to be one of them, believing he was doing the right thing.
“I was taken from a family that I will never know” Finn told Rey, true. But I don’t believe that the main underlying message here was that he resented them for that. I think that the main underlying message was that he had practically known no life outside them. No other reality. I think that the way we negotiate our present with apparently contradicting roots is relatable to many of us.
If Luke and Obi-Wan (and even Rey, when she didn’t inflict the final blow to an injured Kylo) emerged victorious from their battles without falling into the black pit of hate that could have claimed them, why wouldn’t you wish the same sort of elevation for Finn?
We’re in Star Wars, not in some badly subbed Vegeta vs Majin Bu match, for Force’s sake.
P.S.For clarifcation: my Finn character analysis is by no means complete, it is just the transcription of some new things I noticed after recently re-watching TLJ. The personal journey part is partially covered, the Phasma part is the bulk of it but interactions with other characters are missing.
P.P.S. tell me, is the word “hate” a bit more nuanced in Korean? I ask you this out of curiosity, since there is often no perfect black-and-white translation between languages, especially when they have different roots.
That’s pretty much the generic “hating your oppressor makes you just as bad as them.” I like how you take the Jedi Code that helped lead Anakin to ruin as the last word in this universe.
Thank you, I wanted to know if you had factual basis for your assertions and for differentiating between Hux/Ren/Snoke and Phasma in their relation to Finn, I gotta say that was the most words it took to say “no” I’ve seen in a while.
L.J.'s Obsessions 