Ever since the new Star Wars trilogy began, people have been pointing out parallels to older Star Wars films. Things like Rey’s origins on Jakku, similar to how Luke Skywalker’s journey began, Starkiller Base being a big Death Star, Rey going to a desolate location to be trained by an old Jedi. Many have begun wondering if Star Wars Episode IX will have another particular parallel involving the evil Kylo Ren.
As we all know, at the end of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, Darth Vader manages to redeem himself by essentially sacrificing himself to kill his master, Emperor Palpatine, saving his son Luke Skywalker and helping destroy the Empire in the process. It shows that despite all of his evil acts, there is good in Vader and his last act before he dies was for the good of the galaxy. There has been some question as to if this will happen to Kylo Ren who has annihilated planets, murdered countless people including his own father, and more. Is there still good in him? The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson weighed in on the topic in an interview with IGN by saying he thinks it’s possible but he has no creative input on that choice.
“Are you kidding? Vader was worse than Kylo ever was, I think, and Vader got redeemed.” he says. “I should just for the record [say] that I’m not involved in the writing of the next movie. I’m an audience member in it, just like you, so when I talk about what’s going to happen next it’s in the context of, as a fan, what I’m thinking of.”
Both Vader and Ren have done some pretty messed up stuff. Ren killed his dad, attempted to kill Luke Skywalker, murdered his mentor, blew up like three or four planets, but Vader killed a bunch of kids, his wife (on accident), and much more. It’s hard to say who is eviler but there is certainly a lot of darkness in both characters, however, Ren seems to be left with a lot of rage and immense hatred at the end of The Last Jedi.
We’ll just have to see what director J.J. Abrams does with the character he created in The Force Awakens when he concludes this trilogy in December 2019.
