Breaking Down the Duel Between Kylo Ren and Rey
In case this wasn’t going to be obvious: spoilers (SPOILERS! SPOILERS!) is like 90% of this article. You’ve been warned, you three people that haven’t seen the movie yet.
I loved the new Star Wars. It had its problems. Yeah, it borrowed too much from A New Hope, in terms of basic plot line but it’s characters is what really shined. Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren (admittedly he’s a lot more controversial of a character).
But with this new movie has come a whole host of criticism. Some of it legitimate, other not so much. What I’m writing is aimed specifically at the final fight where Kylo Ren faces off against Finn and Rey.
There’s a fair amount of people that are critical of Kylo losing this fight. On the face of it, it doesn’t make much sense on why he was having so much trouble and ultimately lost the fight against these two relatively inexperienced people. Hell, Kylo Ren even had homefield advantage!
So here are my nine points as to why Kylo Ren lost that fight:
1.) Kylo Ren was wounded going into the fight by Chewie.
Shortly after killing Han Solo, Chewie shot Kylo Ren with his Wookie bowcaster. Leading up to him being shot, the bowcaster was being shown as having a huge impact on its targets. Stormtroopers were launched several feet, their armor was shattered (rather than being just punctured like we see time and time again with other weapons), and at one point during the battle at Maz’s castle, Han used it to kill multiple stormtroopers, with one shot, without hitting them directly.
So, when Kylo Ren was shot in the hip by this weapon and all it did was stagger him back a step, it speaks to his resilience. An argument could be made that the bowcaster didn’t do much to Kylo Ren, but the previous evidence for it speaks otherwise.
2.) Is only really half-trained by all accounts, both as a Jedi and dark Jedi.
From best that we can tell, Kylo Ren betrayed Luke and the new Jedi order before his training was complete. He joined Supreme Leader Snoke, who began to train him as a dark Jedi of some sorts. However, Snoke reveals that Kylo Ren’s training is incomplete still.
So he may not be as well trained as we initially thought. Along with that…
3.) Is conflicted and torn by the light and dark side.
In this universe you really need to go full ham in either direction to really get strong. Being in the middle just weakens you. The grey side is a lie. This would also explain why his Force abilities aren’t top tier and why he struggled against Rey at various parts in the movie.
His melodramatic conflict would certainly affect his ability to fight full force with anyone, as well as mess with him mentally.
4.) Had just killed Han Solo, his father.
No matter the circumstances of it, that’s an extremely emotional moment that’s bound to affect his mental state, which was unstable already due to #3. He had a lot of issues with his father, but obviously still struggled with the actual killing of him.
5.) Generally an unstable person, mentally and emotionally.
People call Kylo Ren a “Darth Vader wanna-be,” and they think it’s an insult, but really they’re just giving his character synopsis. He was written that way. And in a lot of ways his progression is similar to Anakin’s descent to the Dark Side. The Darth Vader we know was able to focus his anger and hatred in controlled bursts. When he was angry, Vader focused it on one person and usually killed them. Compared to Episode II or III Anakin who lashed out against anything and everything.
Kylo Ren doesn’t kill his own men. Hell, he rarely kills anyone in this movie to begin with. He has a whole body count of two people in this movie. The old guy in the beginning that gave Poe the map, and Han Solo (three if you count Rey’s vision).
But for the most part, his anger is shown to be wild and he lashes out at whatever’s nearest. When BB-8 escaped on the Falcon and he was informed, he destroyed a computer console (yeah, he kind of choked that lieutenant guy that reported to him, but we never actually see him kill the guy). When Rey escaped, he destroyed the interrogation room. After killing Han, his anger actually became a lot more focused on people rather than things.
His anger is wild, an indicator that he’s struggling with his personal Force imbalance and other issues. He shows his instability when he slams his blaster wound during the duels, causing him to bleed and likely causing tremendous pain.
6.) He really was toying with Finn.
And beat him pretty handily, beyond getting hit that one time. Kylo Ren finished the fight after he was hurt by Finn. He immediately disarmed him and struck him down. He wasn’t taking it seriously and was more blowing off steam than anything else. But even with that, it’s not too terribly surprising that Finn was able to even kind of hit the wounded, mentally unstable Kylo Ren.
7.) Finn is a lifelong trained soldier.
Granted, stormtroopers never come across as the most elite soldiers ever to fight. But still, they’re professional soldiers through and through and Finn is no exception. Like much of the First Order’s soldiers, he was kidnapped as a child and forced to train as a solider for like 15–20 years (I don’t know for sure how long he was trained).
And granted, Finn isn’t exactly battle-tested like others, he was a janitor on Starkiller Base, but him landing a single, grazing hit on Kylo Ren (with all of his accompanying baggage) isn’t too far out of left field.
8.) Kylo Ren was going to win, until he didn’t.
The Ren vs. Rey duel can be broken up into two parts. Pre-Force and post-Force. In pre-Force, or before Rey began to use the Force in some way, they were merely dueling with lightsabers, and in terms of pure martial skill, Ren had the obvious advantage. He was the one setting the rhythm and driving Rey back, always on the attack. All Rey could really do at this point was try and delay Ren.
It came to a fever pitch when they locked sabers and a chasm opened up, Ren spouted something about the Force which reminded Rey she had a superpower, and she began to use it allowing her to gain the advantage and eventually win.
Okay, on its face I understand is kind of frustrating. A lot of problems come with it. She’s untrained (though more on that in the final point). Why didn’t Ren use the Force? Maybe his personal conflicts were making it unreliable for him. A couple of obvious problems, however…
9.) Rey’s own past is a mystery.
This point is pretty much entirely speculation, so take it as you will. If you want, you can just sum up the fight’s finish as a kind of MacGuffin or Rey as a Mary Sue.
But, we don’t know pretty much anything about Rey. Her past is a mystery. It seems like she was dumped off on Jakku as a young child, where she stayed, waiting for a family she doesn't remember. Beyond that, we know nothing.
To hazard a guess, though, I would say she does have some Force training, of some kind, even if she doesn’t remember it. We see her discover she has an unnatural strong talent in the Force that she learns to develop rather quickly. Mind tricks, pulling objects, reading minds, enhancing her martial ability (maybe, I don’t know what she did exactly in her duel with Ren to beat him). All these, regardless of how innately powerful she is, indicates that she has had some training, and that she is just working off of latent, forgotten training in the Force.
To begin with, she has an innate connection with the Force with her vision when touching Luke’s old lightsaber. This isn’t something we’ve ever really seen in the movies. There has never been an object that is connected to the Force in a way that creates visions or echoes or anything like that. The Force flows through living things, not objects. But she may not be alone in this either.
Kylo Ren was talking to the half-melted helmet of Vader, asking his grandfather to show him visions of the power of the dark side. While this is not conclusive and could just be his own delusions of grandeur, it implies he is able to see visions similar to Rey’s, with another object strongly connected to the Force.
There is one more vision that Rey has had, however. One that is not explicitly stated as being a vision. During his interrogation of Rey, Kylo Ren mentions her escape fantasy planet: a planet of water with an island. Fast forward to the end of the movie, she ends up finding Luke on a water planet, dotted with islands. She had a Force vision about where Luke was.
In the past movies, the only other characters that had Force visions were powerful Force users. Yoda, Anakin, and Luke. However, when they had theirs, they were either fully trained Jedi, or in the middle of training. Kylo Ren’s supposed visions from Vader’s helmet falls in line with this as well. The Force should be fairly strong in him, since he’s a Skywalker, so he can see these visions, plus he is still training in the Force.
It seems reasonable that Rey has had some training as a Force user, albeit with a wiped memory, which is why she was able to beat Kylo Ren despite surface appearances.
In sum: The wounded, half-trained, emotionally unstable, Force-conflicted Kylo Ren lost to a trained soldier and talented Force user with a mysterious past.
