I’m laughing so hard because I just realized that Finnrey is an actual yin and yang ship, and embody the dynamic more deeply and beautifully than any other fictional pairing I’ve seen. Why did it take me so long to see this?
We have Finn, brought up to have absolute certainty and conviction in the First Order’s cause, “raised to fight” as he put it in a recent TV spot. His instinct is to fight, to take action. But it was a yin moment that was his turning point, when he reeled from Slip’s death and refused to shoot the villagers. Yang contains yin, after all, much like the dark spot in the white yang part of the yin-yang symbol.
Then we have Rey, whose entire background revolves around patient waiting and basic survival, classic yin actions. “They’ll be back,” she tells BB-8 and herself. She avoids unnecessary conflict and keeps her head down even when Unkar is cheating and starving her. Again, though, her turning point is a very yang moment when she goes out of her way to enter a conflict and rescue BB-8.
Their meeting is a combination of yin and yang actions where they fluctuate between one and the other. When Finn sees Rey under attack his initial reaction is to step in (yang). Then Rey, outraged on BB-8′s behalf, again chooses to seek out conflict and charge Finn (yang). Finn tries to take Rey’s hand (yang) to run away (yin), and Rey defaults to avoiding contact (yin) and getting angry about it (yang). They escape together, making a fighting retreat (yin and yang). It’s a reflection of the turbulence of their situation, how their responses ripple back and forth, and also foreshadows the changes they will bring to each others’ lives.
Finn, now shunning the aggression he was raised to, seeks get far away from the action (yin). Rey, who has now begun to find belonging and conviction, wants to stay and finish the mission (yang). They both want to be together but each is seeking their balance in opposite directions, Finn to have more passivity and peace in his life, Rey toward certainty and action. Then crisis strikes, and they’re both forced to fight back until the end of the movie. Finn is forced into passivity by his coma while Rey takes new and decisive action, completing the cycle so that their starting polarities are reversed.
Early in The Last Jedi Finn awakes and is still poised to withdraw from the fight, while Rey is reaching out to Luke, trying to start a new spark where the fire seems long burned down. Again, it appears, their stories will parallel and contrast, with Finn finding a new certainty to replace the one he discarded (”We have to fight” and “I was raised to fight. For the first time I have something to fight for”) while Rey finds herself on shifting and uncertain ground according to interviews and trailers.
I always knew Finn and Rey’s arcs from TFA were intertwined, but I hadn’t realized just how much their stories have this dynamic of approach, retreat, clash, and parting. Together they balance each other, but they also find themselves apart and opposite. Yearning to join and compelled to part in sweet anticipation (”We’ll see each other again. I believe that”), in their shared gaze and clasped hands the universe itself dances in its timeless motion.
I’m not sure it completely confirmed force bond, so much as it confirmed something else, which seemingly is implied to be Kylo, is calling out to Rey. Which is what Jacen does to Jaina in Invincible, he repeatedly calls out to Jania and Jaina. I see more Jacen and Jaina parallels then I do any romantic parallels.
Kylo I believe recognizes Rey as his sister, his “it is you” in the novelized version clearly indicates he knows who Rey is. So it makes sense that Kylo Ren would be calling out to Rey.
Totally. It is SO Jacen and Jaina. And, I mean, before TFA, what did people expect and want of a sequel trilogy? Jacen and Jaina. I know I did, and I was disappointed when they decided to rewrite the future (until I found out about Finn). They changed it up enough in TFA so that you’d be like “Nah, they’re definitely not Jacen and Jaina” at first, but as you look closer, and now with the way they’re being marketed….
(and no, reylos, they’re obviously not twins, it’s not note for note)
How can anyone see that spot and think it’s a Force Bond? (Which isn’t romantic in the first place, ffs…) A Force Bond is a relationship within the Force formed through the trust and affection between master and apprentice. What’s shown in the spot is clearly a malevolent pull that distresses Rey and touches off Luke’s worst fears, in addition to looking a lot like Luke calling to Leia in ESB. (Didn’t read the EU material where Jacen and Jaina appear, so I can’t speak to that.)
A r*ylo? Being ugly on a post about Poe and Leia? It’s more likely than you think!
Now that we know that Finn will face off against Phasma in what looks like the hangar of Snoke’s capital ship the Supremacy, I found something interesting in the teaser trailer.
Here’s Finn igniting his baton:
Here they are fighting:
And here’s a shot of Phasma walking out of the darkness leading a group of Stormtroopers from the teaser trailer:
In the teaser this part is cut together with a shot of the burning building Luke is kneeling in front of, making it look like this scene and that is connected but on closer inspection it looks all wrong.
Look at the curved bit with the metallic reflection in the upper left corner and the debris on the ground, it looks nothing like Luke’s burning building. But it looks a lot like the hangar in the fight scene.
So Phasma doesn’t arrive alone to take on Finn and what’s more the hangar is already burning when she and her troopers do. Someone has already destroyed it.
What’s more, these Stormtroopers with Phasma cannot be the only ones there.
This Stormtrooper behind Finn is interesting because he’s shooting a TIE fighter.
So the two possibilities seems to be that: A) He’s one of Phasma’s loyal Stormtroopers and someone has taken over the TIE and are helping Finn bust up the hangar. In which case we must be looking at a major infiltration by the Resistance, but do they even have the personnel to commit to such an action? In TFA they looked very understaffed and not at all equipped for such large scale infiltration. Not to mention that this mission seems to consist of Finn, Rose Tico and the mysterious DJ.
B) He’s a Stomrmtrooper that, like Finn, has turned against the First Order.
Now this is much more in thread with what we already has hints off about Finn’s storyline. And it makes sense of his lines from one of the other TV spots:
“I was raised to fight. For the first time, I had something to fight for.”
Lines that clearly comes late in the movie given how he’s dressed.
What he has found to fight for is freedom. Not just his own, but the freedom of all those infants that the First Order stole and indoctrinated. For all the children that the world forgot and who grew up into people that the galaxy tries to forget about as well, at least that they are people.
Would that mean Finn’s infiltration mission had results by the time Phasma arrived at the hangar–that the uprising was so organized that troopers pretended to be loyal to her until the moment they turned?
Alternately, the troopers who were still loyal to the Order may have been killed/neutralized after arriving with Phasma. That would be in keeping with the theme of moral ambiguity if we have Troopers killing each other.
Further, if we assume the hangar burns after this gathering from the trailer:
Where are these Stormtroopers in the subsequent fight? Wiped out in the blast that caused the fire? Turned against the FO en masse? Fighting each other? My guess is a combination of the first and third, since neither Finn nor Phasma has troops by their side while there are troopers in the background, so the assumption is that both their sides are too busy fighting to come to their leaders’ aid.
Yes, I’d say that what Finn and Rose are doing on board the Supremacy has already paid dividends by the time Phasma arrives.
And I could only imagine that any pre-existing rebellion inside the First Order Stormtrooper ranks would have to be very circumspect and very careful about at least appearing to be loyal or risk reconditioning.
Yes I imagine it’s a mix between 1 and 3 too. But I have a much more pressing question right now.
Assuming that the rebellion is at least partially successful, what becomes of the surviving Stormtroopers after this scene?
Do they go down to Crait with Finn and Rose (and Rey)? Is it them we see in the walkers?
You know, we’ve seen none of the skispeeders actually fighting any of those walkers.
That’s really intriguing! The walkers show up with the TIE fighters above them and the TIEs are definitely hostile (either that or the teasers are cut REALLY deceptively when Finn whooped at them being shot down), so I assume at the moment the walkers and the TIEs are on the same side. But I think it’s more than possible that the Stormtroopers make off with the FO’s weapons. How cool would that be, for the Stormtroopers to “dismantle the master’s house with the master’s tools?”
I don’t have a lot of experience with these polls but they do seem to have a pretty regular schedule, judging from the dates of past polls and quizzes. Whatever happened, Kyle has pulled slightly ahead now–so Finn fans, go vote! #rebelfinn
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