Adam Driver revealed that Ben Solo/Kylo Ren’s redemption arc in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was not originally part of plan for the sequel trilogy.
“I had an overall arc in mind that [Star Wars: The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams] wanted to do, which then changed, but his idea was that — almost the opposite journey of Vader, where Vader starts the most confident, the most committed to the Dark Side, and by the last movie, he’s the most vulnerable and weak,” Driver said on The Rich Eisen Show, per @adamdriverarchv on X.
“He wanted to start at the opposite, this character was the most confused and vulnerable and, by the end of the three movies, would be the most committed to the Dark Side. I tried to keep that arc in mind regardless if that wound up not being the journey anyway, because it changed, obviously, while we were shooting. But I was still focused on that.”
Introduced in The Force Awakens, Ben Solo was the son of Han (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) who fell to the dark side of the Force and became the leader of the Knights of Ren under the power of Supreme Leader Snoke. Aspiring to be as powerful as Darth Vader, Kylo killed Han and eventually Snoke to become the Supreme Leader of the First Order. Kylo was ultimately redeemed after a dying Leia projects the memory of Han to him following his final lightsaber battle with Rey (Daisy Ridley).
Colin Trevorrow’s Duel of the Fates
Originally, Jurassic World‘s Colin Trevorrow was set to direct The Rise of Skywalker until creative differences with Lucasfilm led to J.J. Abrams’ return to the franchise. Trevorrow’s script, titled Duel of the Fates, leaked in 2020, reaviling that Rey would fail to turn Kylo to the light before training the next generation of Jedi. Many of Trevorrow’s script ideas for Kylo’s story were discarded following the polarized reception of Rian Johnson‘s Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
“With Rian, he took it into a different direction, but still tracked, with the character,” Driver added. “Then the last one, it changed into being about [Kylo and Rey] and the dyad and things like that. And evolving into Ben Solo, that was never part of it. Well, Ben Solo, he was Ben Solo from the beginning, but it was never a version where we see Ben Solo, when I signed up for it.”
All nine movies in the Skywalker Saga are streaming on Disney+.
