Adam Driver says Kylo Ren redemption wasn’t part of the original plan for Star Wars sequel trilogy

Last Updated on December 29, 2023

Star Wars: The Force Awakens may have set the stage for a new trilogy, but it’s no secret that the subsequent sequels didn’t follow through on the original plan. Adam Driver spoke on The Rich Eisen Show and revealed that his arc as Kylo Ren was majorly changed over the course of the sequel trilogy.

Kylo Ren was eventually redeemed as Ben Solo in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, but Adam Driver says that wasn’t part of the original plan. “I had an overall arc that in mind that [JJ Abrams] wanted to do,” Driver said. “His idea was that [Kylo’s] journey was the opposite journey of Vader, where Vader starts the most confident and the most committed to the dark side. And then by the last movie, he’s the most vulnerable and weak. He wanted to start with the opposite. This character was the most confused and vulnerable, and by the end of the three movies, he 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 while shooting. But I was still focused on that.“

Given Kylo Ren’s actions in the sequel trilogy, starting with killing Han Solo in The Force Awakens, some fans had difficulty swallowing the character’s redemption in The Rise of Skywalker. Driver added that although Rian Johnson took a different approach with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the story “still tracked” with the original plan for his character. But that all changed with The Rise of Skywalker.

“The last one, it changed into being, you know, about them and the dyad, and things like that,” Driver said. “And evolving into Ben Solo. That was never a part of it. He was Ben Solo from the beginning, but there was never a version where we’d see Ben Solo when I first signed up for it.” It would have been interesting to have seen Kylo Ren’s full and complete descent to the Dark Side, but it was not to be.

Adam Driver will next be seen starring in Michael Mann’s Ferrari, which will hit theaters on December 25th. You can check out a review from our own Chris Bumbray right here.

Would you have preferred Kylo Ren to have gone full villain in the sequel trilogy or were you down with his eventual redemption?