u/IncidentCalm4454

When I was reading it I thought this would be a great place for an illustration. Has anyone actually tried painting these?

Legacy is a book about Rey and Leia, but, as the small image of Kylo lurking in the shadows of the cover art suggests, it's also a book that's haunted by Ben. Reading this book, I noticed several ways that he's present in the story, even when he's not present:

• The broken kyber crystal seems to be a symbol for Ben. Every time Rey tries to heal it, she has a vision of him. When she's feeling violent towards him, the crystal cracks further. She's not able to heal the crystal until she finally comes to terms with the present state of her relationship with Ben. What's more, the healed crystal acts like a beacon in the Force that brings the real Kylo to Rey; metaphorically, it's as if he senses the potential for his own healing and is drawn to it.
• Gav (much to this Reylo's dismay) acts like a stand-in for Ben while he's on the dark side. He looks like Ben (per the author's concept art). He flirts with Rey, and acts like a son towards Leia, taking her arm to help her cross a bridge, etc. This seems like a bit of a provocation towards Ben, as if Roux is saying, "If you're not going to be there for the women in your life, someone else will!"
• The nameless former Sith in the story also seems to serve as a warning about how Rey must not act with regards to Ben. She was sincerely trying to change, but the Jedi were so suspicious of her that they wound up turning on her. After this tragedy, her spirit haunts the temple, begging Rey: "Help me. Find me. Stay. Look closer." Rey seems to grasp the meaning of this story in and of itself, but I'm not quite sure she's thought about how it relates to her own situation yet. In TROS, she will re-enact this scenario when she stabs Kylo on Kef Bir . . . but then she does stay and take a closer look, helps Kylo . . . and finds Ben.
• One might also say that Gav and Ziff represent the dichotomy between Ben and Kylo. Gav chooses to fight the First Order with patience and prudence, while Ziff is so impatient and reckless he turns traitor. Ultimately Ziff is killed by Brilla (who Roux has said is meant to parallel Rey, if she had made all the wrong choices). So if Ben turns back to the light (choosing to be Gav), he can be reconciled with Rey and Leia, but if he persists on the dark side (choosing to be Ziff), he will ultimately be destroyed by Rey.

I think a strength of this book is that it describes Rey's psychology very well. Here are some (not very spoiler-y) parts that stood out to me:

Trauma responses

I've asked myself before what Rey's go-to trauma response would be (fight, flight, freeze, or fawn). There were a few things in this book that seemed to suggest flight:

"Hers was a turbulent, ever-racing reservoir of the Force. Tumbling. Roiling. Never quite still." (7)

"'Whatever it was, I'm sure I can outrun it.'" (11)

And then of course, there's the way she's always in a rush to go fix the lightsaber, and not willing to sit with the feelings she's actually grappling with in the present.

However, there are also hints of dissociation (a freeze response) in this passage that describes how Rey endured life on Jakku by imagining she was elsewhere:

"Anything was better than sitting alone in that hot, hollowed-out AT-AT imagining a hundred lives she would never get to live. She was never in that AT-AT, not really; she was either scavenging or on an adventure in her head, refusing to believe that her life was what it was." (70-71)

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has a theory about this!

Morbidity

Legacy repeatedly brings up Luke's observation on Ahch-to that "you went straight to the dark." But this book seems to offer a more explicit explanation for Rey being drawn to the dark side than the movies did:

"Lightness. What would it feel like to forget abandonment, loneliness, loss, sorrow? Was it even possible? Floating. Light. It was hard to remember the light when she was always drawn to the dark." (137-138)

This reminded me of Jane Eyre's childhood, and how her mind was also often in a dark place, just because her entire adoptive family was abusive, so there was a lot of pain in her life, which trapped her in bitter thoughts that she never had the space to heal from.

To me, this suggests a more satisfying explanation for Rey being drawn to the dark side than just being a Palpatine, as it never really struck me as the sort of thing that would logically be hereditary.

I'm sure there's a lot more to analyze regarding Rey's psychology in this book, but these are just some things that stood out to me after reading it once.

The recently-released novel Legacy contains some hints about how Rey wants to run her new Jedi Order, and specifically what she would change from the past:

>"The more I learn about the Jedi, the more I . . . I don't know, the more I want to change things."

>"Oh?" Leia sounded impressed at that, and surprised, took a step back to take Rey in more fully.

>"Sitting high up in this mountain with trials and riddles. Master Luke's temple burning down. Parents giving away their children just because they could use the Force. It doesn't work, does it? . . . I would have lost my parents either way. The Jedi would have taken me, separated us, and that loss never goes away. It could be different. Not a temple hidden in the mountains, not the Jedi and everyone else . . ."

>"I know a thing or two about governance," Leia chimed in. "If that's what you have in mind. Not an academy, a community."

>"Yes," Rey said, brightening. She knelt and took up one of the Jedi texts, opening it to a page and passage she had memorized. "Jedi were taught to let go of all attachments, but everyone needs something to fight for, and more than just ideas, people."

What do we think this means? It sounds like family attachments will be allowed, and maybe the whole thing will be less hierarchical and less formal?

Spoilers for The Last Order ahead!

Today I want to consider an aspect of Rey, Finn and Ben's character journeys. Each of these characters experiences a radical change in beliefs over the course of the trilogy. Whether they gain a belief, lose it, or modify an existing one, they all follow a trajectory from "control" to "connection."

Rey

Rey is the most straightforward example. When we meet her on Jakku, Rey has no particular belief in the Force: "Luke Skywalker? I thought he was a myth!"

At the same time, Rey is on the "control" end of the spectrum. Although she herself is powerless, she tries her best to control people anyway (and consistently fails). She attempts to manifest her parents' return through sheer stubbornness, tells Finn she "won't let him leave," tries to force Luke out of exile, thinks she can turn Kylo, etc.

Rey is surprised by Han's mention of the first Jedi temple but he tells her, "Crazy thing is, it's true. The Force, the Jedi, all of it. It's all true." Rey gets proof of this when she encounters Kylo Ren. She soon discovers her own ability to use the Force, and starts on the path of a Jedi.

However, this isn't a path that she can walk alone: Rey really does need someone to "show her the ways of the Force." In TLJ she fails at controlling Luke and Kylo. In TROS Rey finally connects with Leia and forms a trusting relationship that can guide her on her Jedi path. Through Leia's training, Rey eventually manages to connect with the Jedi who came before, which is necessary for her to defeat Palpatine and become a Jedi.

So Rey's journey is from unbelief to belief, but this also requires a secondary journey from control to connection.

Finn

In one sense Finn's journey is the opposite of Rey's, as he goes from belief to unbelief. But it is still a journey from (external) control to connection.

In The Last Order, we learn that stormtroopers begin and end each day with a "morale session": "They always began the day like they ended it--in dedication. Not to themselves. Not to each other. To a purpose. To conviction. To order." It's clear that the First Order values control and discourages connection: the stormtroopers' daily mantra promotes the erasure of personhood altogether.

Nevertheless, when the story begins, Finn is an enthusiastic supporter of the First Order, believing the twisted version of the galactic news presented in the "morale sessions" that paints the First Order as heroes who uphold justice in the galaxy.

>!During the course of the book, Finn is assigned to work under Major Gohl, the intelligence officer who writes the "morale sessions," and discovers that he is actually a smuggler, murderer, and slaver. Finn realizes that the cause of the First Order was a lie: it was really about control the whole time.!<

When we first see Finn in TFA, he's refusing to participate in the slaughter of the Jakku villagers. He has lost his belief in the purpose of the First Order. After rejecting the First Order's control, throughout the trilogy, Finn embraces genuine connection on successively greater scales: with his fallen comrade and the innocent villagers; with Poe, Rey, and the Resistance; and ultimately, with the Force.

Ben

Finally, Ben neither gains nor loses a belief, but the nature of his belief in the Force changes. At the same time, he is also on a journey from control to connection.

In TFA, Kylo considers the Force only as a means to gain power, telling Vader's mask: "Show me again, the power of the darkness, and I will let nothing stand in our way." Kylo tries his hardest to conform to this mistaken ideal, even though it causes him to suffer greatly when he kills Han, and loses Rey at Crait. His pursuit of control is stripping away his connections.

On Kef Bir, Kylo destroys Rey's wayfinder in another attempt at control, provoking her into an enraged attack that ultimately severs the sympathetic connection between them, and ends in her delivering him a fatal blow. Just when Kylo's belief in control has failed him, Rey's belief in connection saves him, as she regrets her actions and heals him. Ben finally realizes that a proper relationship to the Force, and other people, is one of connection, not control.

Control takes various forms in the sequels: for Rey, it's codependency; for Finn, it's fascism, and for Ben, it's the dark side. By adopting correct beliefs, rejecting false ones, or discerning properly between the two, these three characters all manage to make the journey from control to connection.

On a recent rewatch of TFA, I was struck by the exchange Rey and Finn have in Maz's castle, when Finn attempts to run away from the Resistance:

>REY: You can't just go. I won't let you.

>FINN: I'm not who you think I am.

>REY: Finn, what are you talking about?

>FINN: I'm not Resistance. I'm not a hero. I'm a Stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a family I'll never know. And raised to do one thing . . . But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn't going to kill for them. So I ran. Right into you. And you looked at me like no one ever had. I was ashamed of what I was. But I'm done with the First Order. I'm never going back. Rey, come with me.

>REY: Don't go.

>FINN: Take care of yourself. Please.

There are so many interesting things going on in this exchange. What strikes me the most are the parallels with Rey and Kylo's exchange in Snoke's throne room.

Parallels with Rey and Kylo

Finn explains his attachment to Rey by saying, "you looked at me like no one ever had," and these words could equally well apply to Kylo. Beginning with Rey's "look" into his mind in the interrogation scene, Rey is constantly "looking at Kylo like no one ever has," and this consistently motivates him to action, the same way that it does for Finn.

Finn's lines, "I'm done with the First Order. I'm never going back. Rey, come with me" are also echoed by Kylo in TLJ, as he says, "It's time to let old things die . . . Rey, I want you to join me."

Rey's reply to Finn is "Don't go," just as she replies to Kylo, "Don't do this, Ben."

Finally, both Finn and Kylo end their respective exchanges with a heartfelt "Please."

Triggering Rey's abandonment trauma

Another interesting thing about Rey and Finn's exchange is how it shines a light on Rey's abandonment trauma. After the exchange is over, Finn leaves, and this seems to trigger Rey into a flashback, as she hears her own voice as a child screaming, "No, don't go!"

I've written before about how her trauma leads Rey to attempt to control people, and we see that at the beginning of her exchange with Finn, when she tells him, "You can't just go. I won't let you." Of course, her attempt at control doesn't work here, just as it doesn't work with Kylo in TLJ.

Interestingly, shortly before her exchange with Finn, Rey seems to be similarly triggered by the minor "abandonment" of Han retracting his offer of employment. Whereas she's initially excited at the prospect of a job, when Han says "I'm thinking about it," Rey immediately takes refuge in an old coping mechanism, saying she needs to get back to Jakku. This is a sort of codependent attempt at "controlling" her parents' return, but of course it only succeeds in keeping Rey trapped in the past.

I'm not who you think I am

Finn's line, "I'm not who you think I am" is also interesting--this seems to be a recurring theme in the sequels. Kylo is not who Rey thinks he is in TLJ (and Rey is not who Kylo thinks she is, either, as each of them mistakenly expected the other to turn). In TROS, Finn tells Rey, "I know you," and she replies, "People keep telling me they know me. I'm afraid no one does." In all these instances, we see characters assuming they understand others, and failing to take into account the complexity of the other's struggles or beliefs.

Spoilers for The Last Order ahead!

Major Chetachi Gohl of the First Order Security Bureau is responsible for twisting galactic news into propaganda to be fed to stormtroopers in their daily "morale sessions." The Major himself explains it to Finn like this:

>>!"We are supposed to be heroes."!<

>>!"And who do you think manufactures those heroes? I do! The idols you worship, the soldiers you champion, the history you commemorate--I create that! I build your adulation. I design your rage and thirst for vengeance. I am the First Order! Without my words, you would have no purpose! No motivation."!<

He's one of the main villains in The Last Order, but I feel like that book didn't really have room to do justice to just how much he messed up the galaxy. We get some shocking hints when Finn tries to expose him by recording his words:

>>!"What do you think that will do?" the major asked. "You have no way of getting that off-planet, not by ship or by comm relay. I control all of the ships and comm relays in this system. I am information, I am the message, I am the news! You are a body with no brain, because I am your brain."!<

I just feel like this is begging to be expanded on. Give us another novel, a TV show, a movie, a comic, something!

Don't get me wrong, I would have enjoyed watching Rey and Ben fight Palpatine together a lot more! But I think maybe this solo fight was necessary in order for Rey to become a Jedi.

I imagine that in order to become a Jedi, Rey has to overcome her attraction to the dark side and commit herself to the light.

In my post The dark side of Rey, I discussed the nature of Rey's temptation to the dark side. She still has abandonment issues due to her parents leaving her, and the 13 years she had to survive alone on Jakku. Rey wants friends, family, a lover. But in her pursuit of these things, we see a consistent need for control, and an inability to trust the Force.

I think the appropriate trial for Rey to become a Jedi, therefore, is to demonstrate that she can commit to the light before she gets what she wants, even with no guarantee of getting what she wants, because this requires her to relinquish control and learn to trust the Force.

So, she has to show that she is willing to commit to the light even if she is doing it alone.

And that's what we see when Ben has fallen down a chasm and Palpatine's Force lightning is destroying the Resistance fleet. After resisting the temptation to become Empress to save her "new family" (again an attempt at control), and when she finally has no strength of her own left to rely on, Rey finally reaches for the Force trustingly, with a pure motive of defeating Palpatine. And when she does, she finds that she has everything she needs, because she finally succeeds in hearing the voices of the Jedi who came before, who give her strength.

It's worth pointing out that, at the beginning of this fight, Palpatine drains the life force from Rey and Ben, symbolizing all that evil has stolen from them in their lives (I think the novelization makes this clearer). Then, after defeating Palpatine with the last of her strength, Rey dies. This shows that she legitimately needs the support of other people, and so, having once proven herself by overcoming this trial, Rey is given back her "new family."

I know Reylo gets compared to Pride and Prejudice a lot, but I think it really has a lot more striking similarities with Jane Eyre (I'm specifically referring to the books here). With the caveat that I've only read it once, and am mostly going off memory (with a bit of help from Wikipedia), here are some of the similarities I see between Jane Eyre and Reylo (spoilers ahead!):

• Jane, like Rey, is an orphan who grows up struggling for survival (in a boarding school for orphans where many students get sick and die due to the bad conditions). She has a small build, green-hazel eyes and brown hair.
• Mr. Rochester, like Kylo, is a dark and brooding aristocrat. He has an athletic build, a "decisive nose," and black hair, and his voice is a "mellow, powerful bass."
• Jane is drawn to Mr. Rochester because they are intellectual equals, just like Rey and Kylo are both strong in the Force.
• While their class disparity and age difference should produce a power imbalance, Jane is strong-willed and insists that she is Mr. Rochester's equal (in a famous speech, ending in "equal, as we are!"), like Rey does to Kylo in the interrogation scene.
• Jane, like Rey, has a strong conscience, while Mr. Rochester, like Kylo, starts off on the "dark side" (he keeps his mentally imbalanced wife locked in the attic and pretends to be single!) Jane initially refuses Mr. Rochester on moral grounds, just like Rey in TLJ, with perhaps the book's most famous quote: "I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."
• Jane and Mr. Rochester are separated for a time, then reunited when there is no longer a moral obstacle to their being together, just like Rey and Kylo in TROS. Unusually for this genre, Jane and Mr. Rochester have a telepathic connection, like the Dyad bond, that aids them in being reunited, as Jane can hear Mr. Rochester's voice calling to her over an impossible distance.

I think the only thing Finn says about his family is in TFA, when he's talking about being a stormtrooper: "Like all of them, I was taken from a family I'll never know." It sounds like he might've been kidnapped as a baby, and might not remember his family at all. Now that he's free of the First Order, I wonder if he ever thinks about finding them. Especially since Rey and Jannah are so curious about their families, he must've considered his own.

The TROS artbook contains a tantalizing hint about Finn's family:

>On October 16 [2017], a new idea was shared with the art department: a garbage planet, echoing Rey's home planet of Jakku, inhabited by First Order rejects, possibly prisoners, who were 'not up to being stormtroopers.' There, Finn might find a sibling and learn of a weakness in the First Order's technology (p. 91).

That planet, of course, wound up being Kef Bir. It sounds like Jannah might originally have been conceived of as Finn's sister! Given that both of them are Force-sensitive, and we know Force-sensitivity runs in families, this would make sense. It would also make sense, if all the First Order stormtroopers were kidnapped as kids, that if Finn had any siblings, they might've been kidnapped at the same time he was.

Elsewhere in the artbook, Glyn Dillon, Chief Costume Concept Artist, talks about Jannah's costume: "The idea is that they scavenge stuff from the Death Star, so you see little bits of elements of what she would have found--which is echoing Rey and The Force Awakens, with her stormtrooper goggles" (p. 59). I also like the idea that Jannah has something in common with Rey (being a scavenger), which may be part of why Finn is drawn to both of them. If Finn "searched his feelings," would he remember that he had a resourceful, Force-sensitive sister?

Since TROS reaffirmed that Force-sensitivity tends to run in families, we might even expect Finn to have some famous ancestors like Rey. It's also possible that the First Order targeted him because he was the son of a prominent figure in the Rebellion. Again, in the TROS artbook, Chris Terrio writes:

>The first people that the First Order targeted were leaders of the old Rebellion; they went for their kids. They went for Lando's daughter. They went for Ben Solo, which begins to make more sense when you look at the wider context of their machinations--the long-game plan (p. 49).

Now, if Jannah winds up being Lando's daughter, then Finn and Jannah can't be siblings, because Lando often talks about his lost daughter, but never his lost son. But it's still possible the First Order targeted Finn because he was descended from some other prominent figure.

Looking at the covers of the three artbooks that u/arkhamassassin54 posted here, it struck me that they follow the same thesis-antithesis-synthesis pattern of the trilogy itself, but specifically in relation to the main character.

We can consider Rey and Kylo as two halves of the same character--the abandoned child.

In the first image of Kylo, the abandoned child gives in to destructive rage. We don't see his face, because he doesn't see himself clearly, either--he has externalized his pain, blaming others rather than examining himself. His posture speaks of power, and his inner state is reflected in the snowstorm around him. Amidst the obscuring darkness and snow, only his rage, represented by his red lightsaber, glows clearly.

In the second image of Rey, the abandoned child suppresses that rage, sparing the world while destroying herself. This time, we do see her face, but it is a face in pain, and the way her body leans suggests uncertainty. Her inner state, too, is reflected in the isolated, windswept landscape, depicted in faded colors, with blue predominant. Her dark clothing suggests mourning. But the means of her escape--a starship--is also present.

In the third image, the abandoned child confronts her rage, finally processing it and healing her wounded inner child, with the result that both the world and herself are spared. This image is striking in its duality, divided through the middle into a top and bottom half. But there is also a strong sense of unity. Rey and Kylo finally inhabit the same image, mirroring each others' postures, and are in communication through their clashing lightsabers. The colors are interesting. Rey's background is red, suggesting her repressed rage, which matches the color of Kylo's lightsaber. His background is blue, suggesting repressed sorrow, matching the color of Rey's lightsaber. Through their battle, each will learn to accept the unacknowledged half of themselves, achieving inner unity, and ultimately unity as a dyad.

Jakku

Rey's story begins in a literal desert, the desert of Jakku. The characteristics of the desert are that it is harsh and barren, a place where one struggles to survive.

In the midst of this literal desert, Rey is also living in a metaphorical desert--the desert of loneliness. This is beautifully illustrated in the TFA novelization, when, in Maz's castle, Rey is struck so forcefully by loneliness that it seems to make her delirious, like heat stroke:

>All the discussion and debate was making Rey weary. Coupled with Finn's confession and his walking out on the rest of them, it made her wonder, not for the first time, what she was doing here. She felt lost and alone.

>No different, she told herself, than she had felt on Jakku.

>Alone . . . alone . . . It echoed in her mind as she sat there. Under the weight of her loneliness Han's voice seemed to fade, and Maz Kanata's as well, until there was nothing surrounding her but a silence as deep and profound as the distant reaches of space itself.

But the desert is not only a place of trial. Because the desert removes every attachment, every worldly distraction, it is also a place of clarity and mystical connection. And indeed, this is the moment when the Force first calls out to Rey, from Maz Kanata's basement.

The monastery

In TLJ, Rey has left her desert home for a place of more voluntary asceticism--the monastery on Ahch-to. This man-made desert is also a place of spiritual trial and temptation.

Like St. Anthony in the desert, Rey in her cell sees a vision of a tormenting demon, intent on luring her away from her spiritual path, who she will have to do battle with. This allusion is especially clear in the TLJ novelization:

>She rose, blinking at the sunlight streaming through her narrow window--and then stopped.

>For a moment she'd thought she'd seen someone in the hut with her--a tall, pale figure, sitting quietly, with a dark bulbous shape hovering over it and touching its face.

>And it was almost as if she felt something pulling at her own cheek, tracing a line up from her jaw.

>She looked up and her eyes widened. Kylo Ren sat there, his cheek bisected by an angry red line--the wound she had branded him with in the snows of Starkiller Base.

In TLJ and TROS, Rey will have to confront and overcome her greatest temptation--to sacrifice everything for the sake of connection--in order to continue on her Jedi path. And like a hermit, this path, for her, seems to lead from the desert, through the desert--to the desert.

Tatooine

At the end of TROS, Rey's story comes full circle back to the desert, this time on Tatooine. The desert has not changed, but Rey Skywalker has. Perhaps the sequel trilogy leaves us with the thought that life doesn't get easier--you get stronger.