Headscratchers / The Last Jedi Character Motivations

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Yoda

• Why didn't Yoda or Obi-Wan talk to Luke during his exile, why wait until now to encourage him to do something?
  • It was mentioned that Luke had basically blocked his connection to the Force during his exile. It could be that Yoda and Obi-Wan did try to reach out to him but it was only after Luke opened up again did they manage to do so.
  • But surely they could have done it before he went to exile. As in, after his New Jedi Order got decimated.
  • We don't know how long after losing the academy it was before Luke cut himself off. It might have been immediate. Or maybe they waited to give him time to grieve, but by the time they tried to commune with him, he'd already cut himself off.
  • Yoda might have tried to talk with him, and Luke just told him to bugger off. Yoda only gets through to Luke this time because his despair has already been shaken, and therefore he was a little more willing to listen.
  • Likelihood is that he really did shut himself away from the Force quite early on. Mind, Yoda and Obi-Wan may have been his Masters, but his exile was so thorough that he didn't even feel Han - a brother to him - pass on. That moment where he placed his own hands on the meditating slab seemed to be the precise moment where he reopened his connection to the Force - allowing Yoda to finally reach him and offer some much needed guidance. Not to mention, after losing his temple to -in his own words- his own hubris, he likely couldn't bring himself to face either of his mentors.
  • Hopefully this is the answer because otherwise we have a huge plot hole here; as the one man whose absence is rather telling here is Anakin. His son was hurting for decades and he didn't bother to try intervene with any advice? You would think that Darth Vader would have an invaluable first-hand insight into the motivations and psychology of men who are Sith Lords in all but name. Didn't feel like trying to stop his grandson from doing the exact same things he did? And did he ever talk to Leia? Give her any advice? It certainly isn't said.
  • In TFA we see Kylo 'talking' to Vader's helmet looking for guidance from his grandfather stating that he was 'Hearing the call of the Light'. It's my personal theory that the Call he was hearing WAS Anakin's Force Ghost who was doing everything short of screaming to try to reach him. Kylo ignored it because it wasn't what he wanted to hear.
  • Obi-Wan and Anakin may not exist as Force Ghosts anymore. The technique doesn't seem to be meant as a permanent thing, maybe only Yoda remained as one to guide Luke a little bit more before he's gone for real.
  • The "gone for real" bit was only really from the Thrawn Trilogy, though. There's no reason to think they're not permanent when TFA seemed to imply Obi-Wan was still around as a Force Ghost too.
  • Short version: Ghost Jedi are dicks. Obi-Wan Kenobi waited YEARS to appear, and he did so when Luke was about to die in the snow.
  • Considering the rather Buddhist beliefs on which the Force seems to be based, I'm thinking that these ghosts are actually the Force itself manifesting to its various users in A Form You Are Comfortable With. That's why (aside from the Doylist explanation) the only ghosts we see are those of people the Force user in question knows. Obi-Wan and Anakin were every bit as present to Luke as Yoda; in fact, Mace Windu and Qui-Gon Jinn and a great many other Jedi were there too, but the Force showed itself as Yoda because Luke was contemplating his failings as a trainer of Jedi, and Yoda was the one he'd known as his trainer. As the collective consciousness of all these Jedi, the Force has likely been hounding Kylo Ren as well, but not in the form of any visible ghosts, since he's never actually met any of them in person, including even his idolized grandfather Anakin.
    
    Indeed, Luke might even have figured out, by this point, that Yoda is merely a manifestation of this collective consciousness; he just finally decides to let the Force comfort him in the form of his late beloved mentor where he wasn't willing to before.
  • Something interest to note, both Sith and Jedi have a form of ghosting that lets them technically exist after physical death. But the two have very different bases in the force and as a result different connotations. Based upon the Book Of Sith, one of the expanded universe materials being sold as a physical book, Sith leave behind an imprint of their mind using the force with all their knowledge but effectively in read only mode. They react to stimuli as the original would have at the time in their life when they made the echo/imprint but don't develop further. Jedi meanwhile meld with the force which the Sith interpret as fading into the static of everyone else in the hereafter losing themselves in force. Given the Sith tend to be serious individualists, my power and my title, they look down on this giving up of self while the Jedi tend to be collectivist in mindset focusing on the bigger picture. Jedi can re-manifest but while they do retain their personalities and traits they are ultimately that person intermixed with the rest of the force. It is entirely possible they do eventually fade into the background after enough time either not actively appearing or become consumed by studying the force from the other side.

The General and her bridge crew

• If Leia could sense that Kylo Ren and his wingmen were coming to kill her by attacking her vessel's bridge, why didn't she warn any of the crew to evacuate? Sure, she managed to survive by calling on her Force abilities, but it turns Admiral Ackbar's death, and those of their Resistance subordinates, into a collective Senseless Sacrifice.
  • She had, at best, about five seconds, and opening the bridge doors when the bridge was about to be breached would have depressurized the entire command deck. She might also have been using that time to concentrate herself enough to use her force powers to shield herself from the blast.
  • They have to open the bridge doors to let Leia back in after she uses the Force to get back onto the bridge. Was she using the Force to stop the ship from depressurizing, and if so, couldn't she have done the same thing to allow the rest of the crew to survive (especially if she's powerful enough to survive the vacuum of space)?
  • There's a big explosion of air when she's let back in, before the door swiftly seals again. It's likely programmed for very quick opening and closing, just enough to get in and out. And Leia's force powers likely aren't that controllable, she's a general and diplomat, not a force adept. Her survival seemed more a matter of luck and adrenaline than anything else.
  • Aside from all the above, she was specifically sensing Kylo Ren (not the wingmen), and presumably either sensed that he was not going to be able to go through with the attack, or used that link to convince him not to. Either way, she would have come out of it not sensing immediate danger. (That's all assuming the mental link went as far as letting her know exactly what Kylo was up to: she may have only sensed he was near, not necessarily that he was gunning for the bridge.)

Completely Unnecessary Sacrifices

• Why did the captain of the medical ship stay on the ship to get shot down? I mean, it's not like the fuel tank running low was unexpected. And he wasn't doing anything special with the ship like a hyperspace kamikaze run or anything. He just sits there as the ship drifts uselessly into weapon range and gets shot down.
  • Maybe there wasn't room on the transports for him? If they were the medical ship, then there's probably a lot of injured on board, and that means stretchers, beds, and kolto tanks would need to be loaded with the patients.
  • I don't think that makes sense. He seriously couldn't just stand in a corridor, or sit on someone's lap, or sit cross-legged on the floor, or share someone's sickbed, or shove himself into a supply locker? There wasn't a single place where a non-obese man could stand, sit or lie on the entire shuttle? If that's true, then they've got bigger problems than the First Order to worry about, namely their hull bursting at the seams.
  • It may not seem practical, but my sister (who works in an ER in Milwaukee) claims that one of the most important commodities for a recovering person is space. Cramming critically wounded men and women into supply lockers is a good way to get them killed, and as far as we know, they had already done that to all able-bodied crewmen. Also, wounded people don't just get better on their own (well, actually they can. It's just much slower and far less likely). The resistance would also need the medical supplies to continue treating their current and future casualties, which would also consume a great deal of elbow room.
  • Drawing from the above, it's unlikely that people were the only things those transports were hauling around. Even for real-world modern armies, you need about seven to a dozen men handling logistics for every one solider who actively fights in the field. An army can't survive, let alone fight, without a buttload of supplies, so while the Resistance may try to prioritize their personnel whenever possible (such as when they abandoned the munitions in the opening sequence) they can only push that sentiment so far before they royally screw themselves over.
    • According to the visual guide, the Resistance's protocol demands that every ship be able to sustain itself apart from the others, so that they may continue fighting in the event of the rest of the fleet being cut off or destroyed. The Resistance had almost a quarter of the entirety of their supplies on that frigate; I'm amazed it even fit on two transports.
  • Because the captain goes down with the ship.
  • As for why the Frigate’s captain didn’t try a hyperspace suicide run, given how quickly the First Order ships blasted him into scrap he probably wouldn’t have had time. The only reason Holdo succeeded in her attempt was because the First Order had arrogantly written off the Raddus as a minor threat and were focusing on the transports.
    • That doesn't make sense. The whole idea of the Stern Chase was that the Resistance ships were so far away that the First Order couldn't hit them until they ran out of fuel first. So if the medical frigate had simply turned around before fuel ran short, it could have hyper-rammed the First Order ships without interference.
    • A 550M long ship can't exactly turn on a dime, even in the vacuum of space. Simply turning to face the F.O. would have given the pursuers a decent chance to get it within range and waste it before it could even line up for the charge. Again, the only reason the Raddus succeeded was because Hux idiotically dismissed it as not being a threat and was going after the transports like a dumb fish after a lure. Unfortunately for the Anodyne, the first order was giving it their undivided attention when the moment of crisis came.

No, really. Nice job breaking it, heroes.

• The heroes are pretty much directly responsible for most of the tragedy the Resistance suffers over the course of this film. Poe commits a mutiny to prevent the evacuation plan, without bothering to learn first why it's actually a good idea, costing them valuable time granted, it turns out NOT to be a good idea, but for reasons they couldn't predict. Finn and Rose get a hacker who sells them out, enabling Hux to pick off the evacuating craft one by one. Holdo never tells any of them the plan, which leads Poe and Finn to take the above actions. The huge casualties the good guys suffer are directly attributable to these three characters and their actions. So why doesn't anyone treat these moves like what they are- unbelievably, recklessly, destructively stupid? Why aren't these characters on a firing line by the end?
  • My guess is that the situation for the Resistance is really that desperate they're willing to let bygones be bygones. Less than a dozen of them survived abroad the Millennium Falcon by the time the film's ended. They can't afford to lose any more member, even if it's those 'heroes' who put them into this situation in the first place, albeit unwittingly. In spite of everything, Poe is still a darn good pilot, Finn has insights about the First Order, and Rose...probably gets away with it because both of them would have vouch for her, and she's still useful as a mechanic and field soldier if need be. Despite the troubles they caused, the Resistance need those people. Poe and Finn did play their part in destroying Starkiller Base also did them both credit. Leia is also pretty much the only Resistance leader left, and she seems like the forgiving type. Poe's like a son to her, after all.
  • Also it ultimately wasn't anyone's fault but the hacker that said hacker betrayed them. He'd already saved their lives when he didn't have to so they had a good reason to trust him.
  • Well, they didn't have to involve the hacker (slicer, I guess) at all, ultimately. If I remember right, Holdo's plan probably would have worked if DJ didn't supply the First Order with the means to pinpoint the shuttles. Meaning Finn's best option was to stay put. This feeds into Holdo being a moron for not explaining better, but there you are.
  • It's just a nasty case of Poor Communication Kills, simple as that. Everyone screws up in the movie, and in their haste to fix their mess on their own only ends up making things worse. Holdo could've revealed her plan to Poe, but she doesn't want to because she doesn't trust Poe because of his reckless altitude (he's been demoted by Leia herself earlier in the film), plus the probability of a spy on board. Poe, in turn, sees Holdo's passive actions as detrimental and tries to take matter into his own hands by sending Finn and Rose to find a slicer, which in the end they don't even needed. Finn and Rose were originally going to recruit a different slicer on the recommendation of Maz Kanata, who is probably more trustworthy than DJ and could've actually be helpful in their mission. But when they got arrested and coincidentally put into the same cell as DJ, who was also a pretty good slicer, they decided that he's good enough for the job because Rose said they're running out of time before the Resistance fleet run out of fuel. A combination of bad luck and poor communication means things go From Bad to Worse.
  • In which case, Poe didn't learn the central lesson of his story arc but doesn't show remorse or ultimately redeem himself?
  • But he did learn something. In the climax, he was up to his old tricks again and try to somehow destroy the First Order's heavily guarded cannon using nothing but outdated speeders that are falling apart. As more and more speeders are getting destroyed, he finally realizes that there's no way he could win this fight, so he orders a retreat. This time, it was Finn who disobeys his order, so Poe got a taste of his own medicine. Hopefully, the next film will show Poe becoming not only an ace pilot who could improvise his ways out of a dire spot, but also a responsible leader who thinks in long-term as well.
  • OK, he orders a retreat. Then what? What was his next move going to be if Luke&Rey didn't save the day? Also, he already was thinking in long-term. They were incredibly lucky that the dreadnaught wasted its shot on the useless base instead of the ship, and that it had such long reload, but leaving it alive was a suicide. So, he destroyed it. Later he saw that his superior is either insane or criminally incompetent, so he took charge and devised a plan that could, in theory, save them. Yes, the plan was a gamble, it failed and ultimately made it worse. But originally, as far as he was aware, there was no plan at all. Why would he go along with it? In the end it turned out that the plan was "bolt down in a defenceless hole and hope that someone saves us in the few minutes it'll take our enemies to kill us". Why would he go along with that?
  • The reason the characters aren't on a firing line at the end of the movie is that the Resistance is, like, forty people large at that point. They kind of need all the help they can get, and it's not like the main characters were intentionally trying to sabotage the Resistance or are active traitors or anything. Had they had the necessary information in the first place, they probably wouldn't have gone off half-cocked like they did. Since there was arguably some culpability for what happened on both sides and they don't exactly have manpower to spare, everyone decided to just draw a line under events and move on.
  • Plus, Leia is essentially The Boss at this point, and she knows, likes and trusts these people. She knows that Poe is not a traitor and would never knowingly or willingly sabotage the Resistance, he's just impulsive, and you can be damned sure he's learned a lesson and is going to be trying to wheel in those tendencies from now on. So there's no need to institute the death penalty.

Forgot we could call for help

• Was it really necessary for Finn and Rose to hijack a shuttle and warp over to Casino Night Zone? You have the means to contact Maz. Just use that to get ahold of any aid in the area. You don't even have to look for slicers to destroy the tracking beacon. Just find someone who'll offer reinforcements. Or a means of escape. Or a fueler to offer you enough reserves to outlast your pursuers. Why is it only Finn and Poe who realize that reaching for outside help is even an option? Why don't they suggest this to the Vice Admiral?
  • It shows Poe's arrogance in how he's convinced Holdo is unfit next to Leia and that they have to do this as she won't even listen. That slams him badly down the road.
  • As for reinforcements, if people weren't listening to a personal call from Leia Organa, why would they listen to some pilot and mechanic?
  • Other categories above cover how the entire mess of Poe and Holdo was a clear case of Poor Communication Kills.
  • To be entirely fair to Holdo, the entire point of sneaking on to the abandoned Rebel planet was so that they could use it as a base for calling for help; they just wanted to get rid of the massive enemy fleet right on their tail which was probably looking out for any signs of reinforcements and was ready to immediately intercept and destroy said reinforcements first. Under the circumstances the kind of reinforcements they were able to call upon were probably not going to be any better equipped to take on the Supreme Leader's personal super-death-battleship and its attending fleet at that point in time. So they sneak away, wait for the fleet to pass them by, contact outside support and regroup.
  • They also probably want to limit their communications with their potential allies as much as possible; after all, if the First Order can track them through hyperspace, who's to say they haven't tapped into their communications grid? Not much point summoning reinforcements if the First Order is listening in and preparing to instantly destroy them as soon as they arrive. So again, they trick the First Order and wait for them to disappear and then open communications.
  • Then send a ship. To whomever they hoped to reach via communications. Exactly like Finn and Rose went, except with an actual purpose instead of on a wild bantha chase. Surely a personal appeal would've held more weight to their allies than some disembodied cry for help that could always be a trap?

Why didn't Luke just show up in person?

• Even if he had been killed by the walkers or by Kylo, he would have immediately become a force ghost and everything else would have gone down exactly the way it did.
  • A Force Ghost doesn't look like a living person. Kylo would immediately notice his uncle is dead (and he probably knows enough about Force Ghosts to be unfazed by Luke becoming one) and then move on to kill the rest of the Resistance. Luke just had no way to fight and win, so he used his smarts to buy time for the escape. He seems to be weaker in the Force than Kylo, and he apparently knew his nephew well enough to know he'd focus all his firepower on Luke. He knew there was no way to win, so he decided to buy time instead, in a way that would make him literally seem invincible.
• Rey and Chewie took the Falcon while he was still too despairing to intervene, and his X-Wing had been underwater for twenty years, which can't have been good for it. (Also Artoo was on the Falcon, so even if the X-Wing had still been spaceworthy, if it got into trouble en route there'd have been no one to fix it.) The only way he could have got off-planet was via the Force.
• Even if his X-Wing was in perfect condition, he doesn't have their location or a tracking beacon like Rey has. Even if he had their location he probably couldn't have made it in time. Easiest way was to use his link with Leia and just flow through the force.
• I gave it some thought, and I think it's because if he actually shows up, and loses to Kylo Ren, Kylo would gain significant glory and power for having personally defeated the symbol of hope that the rebels have. We've also seen that in the Star Wars world, Jedi and Sith often complete their training by achieving certain accomplishments, such as how Luke was considered a Master after he successfully defeats Vader and refuses Sidious' offer. Luke would also heavily humiliate Kylo Ren in front of his men by tricking Kylo to waste significant firepower, resources and time just to attack an illusion.
• So why not at least fly a lot closer? Maybe at close range he could have done the astral projection trick, and lived to tell the tale, instead of, y'know, doing it from the other side of the galaxy.
  • The possibility of his X-wing not being in the condition to fly him closer still stands. Also, since Ahch-To is apparently strong with the Force and he'd been cut off from it for so long, he might have needed to be on it so he'd have the strength to send the projection at all.
• Luke meant it when he said nothing would get him off Atch-To; while Rey and Artoo awoke why he became a Jedi and Yoda helping him understand that failure is a teacher, he also carries enough guilt that he can't physically be Luke Skywalker, "''a legend'" again. As Rey noted later, there was peace and content in Luke passing on. The victory wasn't fighting Kylo Ren; the victory was establishing the message to both sides that there was hope and a new beginning of the Jedi religion once more.

If Luke just wanted to vanish from the galaxy and never be found, why go to that planet?

• He claims he went to the most difficult place to find, but that's far from true. If Luke could find it, others would be capable of finding as well. And any place that has a Jedi Temple of any sort, let alone the original Jedi Temple, is exactly the sort of place people will look for when seeking the last of the Jedi. If he truly wanted to just disappear, he could've picked a random uninhabited planet and found a cave on it to live in. Or for that matter just leave the galaxy entirely, and just allow himself to die in the middle of empty space. Instead he goes to a place important enough for there to exist a map leading to it.
  The idea that Luke's sole intention was to just disappear reeks of a poorly-thought-out retcon during the script rewrites, since Ahch-To is such a terrible choice for that purpose.
  • It was still a very remote location with seemingly no space traffic coming or going from it. In a galaxy filled with bounty hunters, the best place to lay low would be a low-tech planet with no visitors. Much the same as Yoda chose Dagobah. Even the First Order, who had the old Imperial star charts, did not know where exactly it was. Luke seemed to be suffering from severe depression. He even sunk his X-wing rather than keep it flight-ready in case he needed to leave.
    • The point remains that the best place to hide is the place people wouldn't even think to look for you. If Luke's only priority was hiding then he by all rights should've done the same thing as Yoda did with Dagobah: pick a completely uninhabited planet with no previous connection to the Jedi or himself. Instead Luke goes to a planet that might be difficult to find, but certainly not impossible and proceeds to set up camp in apparently the only population center on the entire planet. Meaning that if and when anybody does find Ahch-To, that inherently means they've also found Luke. Normally a planet is such a huge place that simply finding it doesn't mean you've found a person who lives on it, but when 99% of the planet is underwater and the person you're looking for is human, you can instantly narrow it down before even leaving orbit to that one archipelago that has buildings on it. Another reason why Ahch-To is such a terrible place to hide.
    • Also, I recall that the original Empire in the original "Empire Strikes Back" solved the "we don't know where our enemy is" problem with an elegant method of "send a buttload of droids to every planet and look for them". I don't see why this Empire couldn't have done the same - they clearly don't lack resources.
    • The Empire was looking for an army. That's a bit harder to hide than one person.
    • And the FO was looking for a huge temple complex. That's even harder to hide than a concealed military base.
    • "Huge temple complex" is perhaps overstating what's on Ahch-To a little here. From the outside, it's basically some ramshackle stone huts and an old tree, it's not exactly the Vatican or anything. The temple itself seems to be built into the natural rock formations without any exterior changes. Anyone who didn't already know what it was might just think it was a primitive village and overlook it.
    • Considering that it took bucketloads of time and effort for anyone to actually find Luke in the first place, it clearly wasn't a particularly terrible place to hide. It's not like the location of Ahch-To is common knowledge in the galaxy, it's clearly been lost to the mists of time. While no hiding place is 100% unfindable, he clearly didn't do too badly under the circumstances. Also, Luke himself says it; he didn't go there to hide, he went there to die. He feels that the Jedi Order has outlived its usefulness, and symbolically where better for it to end than where it begin? Honestly, he's clearly so beaten down and depressed in the movie that he probably honestly doesn't care if the First Order eventually find him and come knocking.
  • Luke tells Rey that he went there to die, but was that his original motivation? Perhaps he originally wanted to see if he could find answers to what he did wrong in losing Ben Solo, but when he found the temple and read the sacred Jedi texts he found they didn't help him. Then he decided that the Jedi were only making things worse, that they should end and that he would stay there until he did too. So what he told Rey was true from a certain point of view.

R2-D 2 and his map

• So given how Luke didn't want to be discovered to the point that he has shut himself off from the Force and resents Rey being anywhere near him, why did he leave R2-D2 a map in The Force Awakens that led to his planet?
  • R2-D2 didn't have the map. R2-D2 had all the rest of the Galactic Map that the Imperials had collated, but the piece that lead to the First Jedi Temple was missing from his star charts (the missing piece is the McGuffin of TFA and itself could only be made sense of when slotted into the rest of the Imperial's star charts).
  • Or maybe Luke did not intend to die on that planet at first, and really did intend to go there to find the Jedi texts and learn more. He spent at least a few years in exile, more than enough time to change his mind.
  • Luke had to find the First Jedi Temple somehow. If you know where he went, but don't know where that is, the map isn't necessarily to him, it's to where he went.

Luke using the blue lightsaber

• When Luke shows up at the end, isn't it kind of risky to be creating an illusion of the blue lightsaber? Sure, Luke may not know it had just been destroyed, but he did know it was in Rey's possession last. So if he uses it, isn't it more likely that Kylo will figure out he's just an illusion and will abandon him to go after the Resistance? Why not use the green one? Or even no lightsaber at all, given how he never actually crosses blades with Kylo. You could argue the ruse was already up when Luke wasn't affected by the walkers firing at him, but even when he appears at the base, he had the blue blade with him.
  • Well, by the time he pulls it out, he's already gotten what he wanted: Kylo enraged and wasting time on him. Kylo doesn't think straight when he's pissed off, so maybe Luke figured he'd either recognize the family saber and get even angrier, or that he wouldn't and would just assume Luke had made another one.
  • None of his appearance matches the actual Luke - his haircut fits his Jedi school time, the time Kylo would have last seen him (contemplating whether or not to murder him), his black-and-white robes somewhat resemble his RotJ outfit. The whole appearance can have two explanations in my opinion: Either it's designed to enrage Kylo as much as possible or it shows Luke at the moment he was most sure of himself as a Jedi.
  • Star Wars Explained offers another explanation. To summarize his theory, in addition to riling Kylo up, Luke's projection was also intended to inspire hope in the resistance. In order to achieve the maximum effect, he projected himself as what he perceived to be his most heroic form. He didn't use the green lightsaber because he used it in his most shameful moment, contemplating killing his own nephew, so he used the only other lightsaber he was known to use. Admittedly, this was the same lightsaber that Anakin used to kill children, but Luke might not know about that or if he does, he wasn't the one to do it, so he doesn't feel the same shame.
  • I figured he might have intended it to be Obi-Wan's lightsaber. Kylo presumably knows the story of Anakin and Obi-Wan, and so its would have been really symbolic in regard to both Vader/Obi-Wan duels.
    • The hilt is Anakin's design, however. Ironically, it was the green lightsaber that had the same design as Obi-Wan's.

Rose didn't think things through

• So Rose didn't want Finn to sacrifice himself to save the Resistance, fine. What doesn't make sense is that in order to stop Finn from dying, she rammed her speeder into his, which almost killed him and wounded her enough that she needed immediate medical attention to say nothing of the two of them being in the middle of a field with the First Order approaching and no vehicles to escape in. So her actions seem hypocritical and pointless. Also, while it is nice that she didn't want Finn sacrificing himself, he could have ensured their safety long enough for them to escape. She had no way of knowing if Luke Skywalker would hold off the First Order or if they could find a way to escape. Finn's actions could have been their only chance of surviving.
  • Love isn't always rational. Either she rams him and he may die, or she doesn't and he definitely will die. Her idea was that that they couldn't just keep throwing themselves at the enemy. That got Paige killed and accomplished basically nothing in the long run. They were just lurching from conflict to conflict slowly bleeding manpower.
    • Or, in other words, fighting a war. A loosing war, sure, but you never know for sure. Tides turn. They accomplished the destruction of an enemy capital ship, likely very expensive and hardly expendable one. How can you call it "nothing"? How were they supposed to win otherwise?
    • By being strategic. Wars are lost by throwing men and resources into the grinder with no concern for efficiency, it's how the Empire lost after all having sunk so much into not one but two giant deathballs and one all powerful leader that their loss cause them to collapse. Plus we have no real reason to think a busted up speeder hitting the laser battering ram would have done anything beyond the vague desperate hope Fin offer not knowing if it would work. At that point it's got an equal outcome either way of accomplishing nothing or the next best thing to it so you might as well go out briefly saving someone you care about.
    • Yes, the Empire keeps making huge engines of destruction, and the Resistance keeps blowing them up. Usually taking some casualties in the process, but far less than the Empire. That's their MO. That's how they win. How is this any different? Where is that "grinder" you're talking about?
  • Even so, the logical outcome of her ramming plan would be that she and Poe wind up on foot, and then they both get killed by the First Order AT-ATs long before they can reach the base. (It's like half a mile away.) And also the battering ram cannon blasts through the front door and all the Resistance fighters get killed. If she saved Finn because she wanted to try some other plan that involved saving the Resistance, or even just saving Finn in a more permanent way, that would make more sense. Instead she just goes it without a plan. IT's quite irrational, as you say.
  • The situation does look pretty hopeless, so she likely did it out of pure emotion and at least saving him from sacrificing himself in the moment. Anyone of them flying that close at that moment with those shoddy ships likely had low odds of making it back at that point anyway.
  • But she was practically betraying the Resistance and condemning all their comrades to death! Even if her "rescue" hadn't been pointless, that's still a reprehensible act. And the explanation she gives Finn... I could understand if Finn was indeed making a choice between attacking the enemy, perhaps needlessly, and saving his friends, but at the moment those were one and the same! What was it about?
  • Realistically, at that moment they were probably dead either way. Seriously, does anyone honestly think Finn remotely stood a chance to make any meaningful dent in the Mini Death Star Battering Ram Thing? It fired seconds after he was knocked out of its path, would have punched through him like tissue paper, and even if he had somehow managed to stop it chances are it would only have delayed the inevitable. So, based on the information Rose has at that moment, either Rose dies watching Finn pointlessly throw his life away for no reason whatsoever or she dies trying to save the life of someone she has come to care deeply for.
    • Finn's attempted sacrifice may not have been in vain; Death Star technology has proven to be as unstable as it is powerful; it's implied (and all but spelled out in the case of Star Killer base) that destroying the weak spot in each super-weapon destabilizes the energy already stored within, releasing the power to destroy a planet within said weapon. All Finn had to do was knock a single lens, focuser, or other vital component out of whack and the cannon would essentially blow itself up.
    • The cannon's target was more than several miles away. Even being a handful of degrees off-target at that range would have made a difference. Also, as frail as they appear, those speeders should easily weigh 40 tons apiece (about the same as an 18 wheeler) and pushing a speed of around a hundred MPH. As small as they were in comparison to the cannon, that's not an insignificant impact.
    • 40 tons? Overall, they appear to be about the same size as a WWII fighter plane, if not smaller. The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, famous in its time for being huge for a fighter plane, weighs 12,000lbs, or about 6 tons, fully loaded. The somewhat smaller Curtiss P-40 Warhawk was about 8,000lbs, or 4 tons. A four-engined heavy bomber, such as the Consolidated B-24 Liberator, clocked in at 65,000 pounds, or about 32 tons, fully loaded with fuel and bombs.
    • That is still at least several tons of metal rammed at high speed into a beam projector. No way in hell it wouldn't do at least some damage to it. Maybe enough to disable it or even make it explode, maybe not. In any case, that's a chance. Rose destroyed that chance.

Rose trusts Finn

• When Rose first meets Finn, she regards him as a hero. Then a minute later she realizes that he's trying to run away, so she tazes him, calls him a coward, and hauls him off to the brig. Then Finn mentions the idea of hyperspace tracking, they talk for maybe two minutes, and suddenly she trusts him so much that not only is she supporting him, but she follows him along on a dangerous mission in violation of Holdo's orders. That's some serious whiplash, and it doesn't make any sense. If she's willing to capture deserters, she should also be willing to tell her superiors about the plan and obey their orders.
  • Note she isn't willing to go along with the plan until she realizes how low on options they are. She's not in the most rational of states either given she is still grieving.
  • It's also how the conversation plays out: he explains he was leaving to protect Rey, because if the First Order can track the ship, they can find out where Rey is, and Kylo Ren wants Rey alive. Then when he mentions the tracking through hyperspace, they start talking alternatives. From what Rose knows, Finn's reason to leave was selfish for the Resistance, but selfish in that he wanted to protect someone he cared about deeply. Finn at that point isn't scared to die; he's scared to lose another loved one. Rose can understand that, having just lost her sister. She trusts for the casino plan to work, because Finn has a reason to want the plan to work: to save Rey. As they go through the mission, she sees that he is more than that, and he makes it clear he wants to help everyone.
  • Rose also doesn't realise that the situation is worse than she thinks. Note how she starts paying a lot more attention to him when he points out that the First Order can somehow track them through hyperspace, which makes his claims that he's trying to get away to protect someone else — which might initially seem like the lame excuses of a Dirty Coward otherwise — start to sound a lot more credible.

Rose ramming

• On a related note: If Rose could speed on over to Finn fast enough to crash into his speeder, why didn't she just crash into the cannon herself?
  • Because that leads to the same problem, just with a different person dead. Assuming she even thought that through enough.
  • Also because it would have done nothing to alter Finn's course—he still might have crashed into the cannon, either because he's too close to stop the speeder or because he's even angrier now with Rose dead.
  • Better question is how she managed to get that angle. Finn is traveling a straight line between himself and the weapon. Rose had turned and returned to the base, saw Finn didn't, took a curved line and then still managed to catch Finn while covering more distance and being under enemy fire.
• Here's a better question. How does ramming into Finn's barely functional speeder not kill both of them instantly! It's not like they are in crash cars with airbags and crap. They are using dinky as hell speeders and ramming into each other at presumably maximum speed! That's the only way Rose could have caught up in time! She is lucky that not only is Finn still alive, but that she is alive hersefl!

Finn and Rose parking

• Was there a reason given why Finn and Rose parked their ship in the wrong place? It's a spaceship - obviously it will be spotted, so there's no use in hiding it, and what was wrong with landing it in the spaceport or something? Don't tell me they didn't have any money to pay for it - how they were going to recruit their master-hacker then?
  • They did not have time to waste on inspection and paperwork with immigration, I guess. They probably underestimated how soon their ship would be found.
    • They were told they had landed their ship in an illegal area shortly after landing. They were busted before they even entered the buildings. Not moving the ship is a sign of either extreme stupidity or a ridiculous level of arrogance. Neither reflects well on the two.
    • Also, "inspection, immigration"? It's a gambling den. As far as everyone was aware, they're just a couple seeking to relax and waste their year's savings, just as everybody else were. If there was a place with lax (or at least easily laxable) entry procedures, that would be it.
  • They're inexperienced (and perhaps a bit overconfident), they're under stress, they're trying to keep under the radar, they don't have any kind of papers or clearances that officials at a port might demand to see before allowing them to dock, they don't look like the casino's typical clientele, and they're kind of on a ticking clock. Stupid, perhaps, but it's not egregiously so under the circumstances. You're judging them as someone looking at them from the outside with the benefit of seeing all aspects of what's going on and the luxury of not being in the actual situation having to actually work under the same stresses the characters are having to deal with.
  • As for the money, they're friends of Maz, who the master-codebreaker apparently is as well. They were likely planning on appealing to his existing friendship with Maz, her sympathies with the Resistance and his own possible better nature as well.
• "they don't look like the casino's typical clientele". You're right, they don't. So much so, in fact, that it begs the question how were they even admitted in? Actually, that would've been a much more believable explanation for their arrest, fitting with the whole "den of corrupt rich assholes" theme: they're denied entrance, sneak in otherwise but are caught.
  • Casinos tend to always be looking for more suckers to get money from. They don't care if the suckers are rich or poor or whatever, so long as they can get money from them. They don't want to keep people out, they want to keep people in. A lot of casino design (no windows or clocks visible, free drinks, etc.) is done to exactly that end.

Finn and Rose's romance

• Rose rams Finn in order to save him from his own suicide run, and afterwards they kiss. Wait, what? Did these two fall in love at some point? Because as far as I could tell, they've known each other for maybe one day, and they spent that whole time running around on this secret mission.
  • She hero worshiped him, they share a romantic ride at night on an alien planet, and she probably thought she was about to die and wanted to go out in a romantic way.
  • The hero worship was quickly undercut by his attempted desertion; she actually tased him and hauled him of to the brig! The "romantic ride" had little time for romance, since they were fleeing for their lives and the safety of the whole Resistance was at stake. The best explanation here is that she figured she was going to die soon anyway so she figured "Why not?".
    • The hero-worship very likely came back when she saw him willing to die to give the Resistance a fighting chance. His character made a giant leap from "This is a doomed fleet so I'm deserting it so I can stop my friend from coming back to it" to "We're down to a dozen people but I'm still going to ram this ship down that giant cannon so they can escape." If audiences are meant to see how this formerly cowardly, looking-out-for-myself ex-Stormtrooper became willing to die for the cause, then Rose was meant to see it too.
  • It isn't really a romance (yet); Rose kissed Finn, they didn't kiss each other, and afterwards Finn looked very confused.
  • Finn just defected from the First Order and got mixed up in the Resistance. Rose just lost her sister. Both are in a rather intense life-or-death situation. Poorly-considered affairs under circumstances such as this are not unheard of.
  • She's attracted to him from the start, is in a situation where she thinks she's about to die, and gives him a little peck on the lips. This isn't exactly a sudden romance-of-the-ages here.

Put Poe in the brig

• Poe shows up on the bridge (again), learns that they're fueling the transports, and then loudly accuses Holdo of both cowardice and treason. Holdo orders him off the bridge...but why doesn't she have him thrown in the brig? This guy is clearly on the verge of mutiny. Surely the normal procedure here is to have the guy locked up for insubordination. Instead she lets him wander around freely, which gives him all the time he needs to stage an actual mutiny.
  • Despite her superior attitude, Holdo had to be aware that this was a no-win situation. Poe is the man who blew up Starkiller Base after all. Leia could get away with disciplining him. But for Holdo to throw him in the brig would have likely have only resulted in his friends and supporters mutinying anyway. At this point the number of Resistance personnel was low as it was, even including attempted deserters that were already in the brig.
  • A better question is why she didn't tell him right then and there what the real plan was. Up to that point, she had the excuse that he was being insubordinate and had gotten a bunch of his own team killed. There however, he had flat-out said that her plan was crazy and doomed to fail, and the her response of a worried look and awkward silence only made it seem like he was right, which in turn led to several officers siding with him and relieving her of command, putting her actual plan in danger! Whatever (arguably flimsy) justifications she may have had up to that point for keeping her plan secret, the fact that she continued to do so even after Poe was doing all that is just plain stupid.
  • This is covered above, but it's when Holdo shares the plan that the First Order finds it out, so even after the mutiny, her decision can come off as justified to not let just anyone know because of how easily the wrong people get it. That’s on top of Poe having no obligation to know in the chain of command. Her awkward silence might be interpreted in different ways and maybe she could have at least said something reassuring at that moment, but maybe she did get the feeling that Poe was stoking a mutiny against her at that moment and underestimated how insubordinate he would be.
  • Wait, is that how it happened? I seem to remember that Poe finds out about transports (just by seeing the refueling status on a screen), but doesn't find out about the cloaking devices. Then he radios Finn and tells him about the transports. DJ independently figures out that the transports probably have cloaks. Finn and Rose continue their mission, it fails, and then Holdo tells Poe about the cloaking devices. Right? Because if Poe had known earlier that the transports had cloaking devices, then he would have radioed Finn and told him to abandon the mission, because there'd be no point in disabling the tracker if they're going to escape with cloaks regardless. So if Holdo had just told Poe about the cloaks in the first place, this wouldn't have happened. And if Holdo hadn't let Poe onto the bridge and let him see the partial plan, this wouldn't have happened. And if Holdo had let him onto the bridge but then thrown him in the brig (and taken away his radio) after his outburst, this wouldn't have happened. There's no scenario I can think of that lets Holdo off the hook. Sure you can blame Poe and Finn for being impulsive, but you can't deny that Holdo could've handled this a lot better.

Why does Snoke care so much about Luke?

• If we're to believe Snoke is telling Rey the truth, it seems that his plan was simply to use her to find Luke and then kill her. He doesn't seem to be interested in trying to turn her to the Dark Side or anything. But this begs the question, why does Snoke care so much about Luke, to the point of making Large Ham speeches about bombing entire Ahch-To to oblivion just to make sure he's dead? At this point it would seem evident that Luke doesn't care about the Resistance and is intent on dying on his island; from Rey's mind Snoke can read that even Han's death and Leia's pleas for help didn't change his mind. (At this point neither Rey nor Snoke knows that he's decided to help the Resistance after all.) And Snoke displays such aptitude in Force that even Luke would have a hard time defeating him, especially if he has Kylo Ren at his side. So why does Snoke pull such a risky scheme that could potentially alienate Kylo and make him turn against Snoke (which is indeed what happens) just so he could reach a guy who has given up the Force, who poses little threat to him, and who isn't even interested in fighting him?
  • Remember, Rey (and perhaps Leia) are the only ones who really know that Luke has given up. As far as everyone else knows, he’s still out there plotting some big Jedi plan to strike back against the First Order. So by killing Luke, Snoke hoped it would severely demoralize the Resistance and see how futile their efforts were. Also recall that Luke is still seen as a living legend by many. I’m sure even Snoke knows this. The fact that Luke doesn’t want to fight anymore wouldn’t even bother him — it’d just make things easier for Snoke to blow him and his planet into oblivion. Killing Luke would be a symbolic gesture, his way of saying, “Look, I managed to kill your so-called ‘living legend’. If he couldn’t beat me, what hope could you possibly have?”
  • To the above, indeed Snoke had no idea Luke had given up. He outright expresses surprise at Luke's "wisdom" once he gets that knowledge from Rey. Course the symbolic meaning of killing Luke and ending the Jedi by his own hand remains a motivation for him. Also, Snoke did have some desire to turn Rey to the Dark Side, it's only after meeting her that he determines she has the "heart of a true Jedi" and thus won't turn.
  • Snoke also utterly fears Luke Skywalker. He knows that the Force will always balance itself, and he says himself that, "Darkness rises — and light to meet it" originally believing it to mean that Skywalker was the one destined to become stronger, then meeting Rey and realising that she is the one the Light has called to counter him and Ben. Killing Rey solves the immediate problem, but what if the Force decides to rebalance itself through Luke. Even if it doesn't and chooses another unknown, just because Luke hasn't taken any apparent action now, doesn't mean that he won't change his mind, after all, Rey did witness that Luke had reopened himself to the Force both when he called the aerial to him in the staff fight against Rey and again in a much more subtle way when he uses the Force to break his fall when Rey swings the lightsaber at him. Snoke can't take the chance that now that Luke is once more accessible by the Force the Force won't do something to get him back in the fight (and, of course, it does by sending Yoda to give him a much need kick in the cassocks).

Snoke and the Great Bipolar Disorder

• In The Force Awakens, Snoke is calm and collected throughout the entire runtime (the only time he raises his voice is to shout at Hux, and that was only a mild rebuke). He's so low-key that even the destruction of Starkiller Base fails to phase him. Come The Last Jedi, and when Hux loses a single ship, Snoke loses his composure entirely and smacks the guy around as if he were a rag doll. Keep in mind that these two events happened only minutes apart, so there's no way for Snoke to experience any Character Development. Just to make things more confusing, he does nothing more than shout at Hux and throw him around the room — hardly the way a dignified villain such as Snoke should act. If anything, that will weaken his hold over his officers^note Hey, Phil! I lost a fleet and all I got was a stern talking-to and a few bruises! Don't worry too much.
  • One was the destruction of a weapon that had already fulfilled its purpose (and seemingly only had two shots until it exhausted its power source) which was destroyed by crazy off the wall tactics and inside knowledge. The other was 100% incompetence. As for not killing him or getting rid of him; well it really depends on how much the FO has in terms of replacements. If Hux is the highest-ranking military leader they have then Snoke probably doesn't have a lot of options for replacement or at least not ones he can so easily manipulate.
  • The movie goes out of its way to portray Hux as an idiot. Am I seriously supposed to believe that Snoke can't find one officer in his entire military who could be a better leader than Hux? Or, failing that, take control of it himself? He certainly wasn't too busy to join the party with his own flagship.
  • Indeed. An organisation like the FO should be crawling with eager and ambitious officers eager to prove themselves, especially with the Supreme Leader himself watching. And yet Snoke keeps Hux in charge because... "he's a mad dog whose anger can be easily directed". So that mad dog spends the next few hours playing it incredibly safely instead of crushing the Resistance immediately with brute force and zero regards for casualties. What sense does that make?
• One could say the same for General Hux. TFA Hux (apart from that Large Ham Hitler-speech) was mostly a sinister, calm, cool and competent military commander whereas TLA Hux is a shrieking, mincing, incompetent Large Ham Butt-Monkey dork.
  • Snoke has other plans (Kylo Ren, finding Luke, Rey, Force Bond, ECT.) He doesn't have time to find a replacement and doing so is small compared to everything else.

Kylo's Split From The Jedi Order

• So by Luke's account, Kylo recruited five of his fellow Jedi trainees and butchered the rest. Had he and the other five been planning a schism in advance, or did he offer them a "join me or I'll chop your arms and legs off" deal on the spot? If it was the former, how did Luke not catch on?
  • Well, both Luke & Leia believe that Snoke had begun tempting Ben long before that night and this movie establishes that Snoke was capable of doing somewhat casually a feat that proved fatal to Luke - projecting Force telepathy across interstellar distances. Safe to assume, until demonstrated otherwise, that Snoke was visiting the young Jedi from afar and Ben was the only one who couldn't hide it.
  • If Ben had sowing seeds for a schism over time, Luke not catching it may well have simply been his own hubris - something Luke admits to. Once he agreed to take Ben in, it seems to be implied that put a lot of focus on the boy and believed in his own legend so much that he didn't catch it until it was too late: not unlike the fallen Jedi Order he had been trying to model himself after.
  • It certainly is confusing that they would have this tidbit included if we're supposed to feel sorry for Kylo Ren/Ben Solo. Granted, Luke was controlled by fear for a moment and this isn't good in a master/mentor trying to help you. But, the fact that Ben seems to have cultivated a following with like-minded individuals ready to fall with him, and Luke sensing all the darkness and the screams of likely potential victims in Ben, leads to the implication that Ben was likely to fall one way or another regardless of Luke's actions that night or his prior attempts at helping Ben reform. The sense that Ben was always going to listen to his darker impulses makes it harder to sympathise with him and believe that Luke's knee-jerk reaction to kill him was somewhat justified to spare billions of people's lives.
  • It's also possible turning them wasn't pre-meditated, but another consequence of Luke's Moment of Weakness. If Kylo told them about Luke trying to murder him in his sleep (from his perspective), some of the students might have joined him on the spot out of shock, fear, and horror. It would also make Luke's failure that much harsher.
  • It's likely a nasty fight like that got everyone's attention, and there was mass confusion. We have thirteen students. Five of the students sided with Ben. Seven sided with Luke. It's possible that Ben and his loyalists suspected Luke was going to betray them, and caught the seven who sided with Luke off guard as they had no reason to suspect that Luke would pull a damn Jedi Covenant stunt or that their fellow students would turn on them. Ben's loyalists knew that the axe was going to fall, and were a lot more prepared for when things did go off the rails.
  • That does still leave the question of when and where they all got matching black leather outfits and masks without anyone suspecting anything amiss.
  • Snoke is capable of forging Force Bond between two people, one of whom he hasn't even seen. Kylo may have been the one Luke drew lightsaber on, but others already affected by Snoke's corruption may have perceived same thing, just illusionary.

Kylo's betrayal of Snoke

• Snoke muses that he can sense that Kylo is about to kill his "true enemy", and then he kills Snoke. So I guess Snoke is his true enemy, then. But why? When Vader turned against Palpatine, it's because Palpatine was murdering Luke right in front of him, so the love he had for his son overrode the loyalty he felt toward his master. But Kylo's motivation is much weaker, if it's even there at all. I guess he's upset because Snoke insulted him earlier in the film? Or maybe he cares about Rey, and he's unwilling to kill her? They try to play up that latter angle, since Kylo asks Rey to join him a moment later. But Kylo and Rey have had maybe six conversations at this point, they're not related by blood, and they don't have much in common other than the fact that they're both powerful force users. I don't see why Kylo would care about her very much. And if his unwillingness to kill her is what motivates him to turn, let's note that it takes maybe ten minutes before he decides that he does want to kill her. (This in contrast to Vader, who had no intention of killing his son, and did everything he could to have him captured alive.)
  • Kylo's motto through this movie is that holding onto the past is the "true enemy" that must be destroyed or killed, and he's come to regard Snoke as part of that, and as such he has to be killed so Kylo can continue to realize the destiny he is seeking for himself. Snoke's treatment of him may have been a catalyst, but his action was already part of his belief system about the past holding him back. As for his flip flopping attitudes toward Rey, he had come to see her as a kindred spirit thanks to Snoke's mental manipulations, and really seemed to want his vision of her turning to the dark side to come true (the fact that he knew Snoke had manipulated his mind didn't remove the feelings he was experiencing). Becoming then willing to kill her when she refuses to turn is pretty in character though given his unstable nature and tendency to see Murder Is the Best Solution toward so many situations. And likewise by refusing to turn and abandon her past, Rey became something holding him back, and Kylo's philosophy is to kill what holds him back.
  • To Kylo, Snoke was another manipulative tutor, forcing him down a path that didn't fit the destiny Ben saw for himself. He wanted to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Rey wasn't a part of his past, but of his present, and he felt similar feelings of inner conflict in her. However they arrived at the same conclusion - that you decide who you are going to be, and your own destiny - from opposite paths which coloured their approaches; Ben had a legacy and a "destiny" that he didn't want and weighed on him, while Rey desperately wanted a legacy to explain who she was and what she needed to do. Once Rey decided their approaches to the same problem of creating your own identity were too different, she changed in Kylo's eyes into a reminder of the past to be done away with.
  • It was the Rule of Two playing its natural course. Kylo Ren already saw a potential apprentice in Rey back in the Force Awakens and was disillusioned with Snoke when his patricide did not bring him the promised peace of mind. Without Rey he could not kill Snoke, but with her he saw an opportunity to be the master instead of the servant, to achieve what Vader never could, yo "finish what he started" if you would. Furthermore Rey and Ren can relate to each other loneliness and disappointment in their respective fathers both biological and "adoptive".
  • Also note that Kylo isn't exactly an emotionally mature individual; he's called a "child" multiple times (by Snoke and Luke) and reacts like a kid throwing a tantrum when he's angry. Mission to capture the droid failed? Lash out and destroy the console. Reprimanded by Snoke? Lash out and destroy his helmet. And so on. His reaction to Rey leaving is essentially the same thing—didn't get what he wanted, lash out. In lieu of actually having anything to destroy (the room's falling apart, and as much as he hates Hux he doesn't seem to make a habit of killing his subordinates), that lashing takes the form of declaring he'll kill her. So it's likely he genuinely wanted to save her so We Can Rule Together, got upset when she refused, and overreacted in typical Kylo fashion—the last time he sees her he's a lot calmer and just stares with this kind of regret on his face, not the hate or anger you'd expect if that statement had been heartfelt.
  • A key theme through out the sequel trilogy so far is also that Kylo Ren talks a big game about how pure in the dark side he is, how he's cutting himself off from his past entirely, etc., but isn't quite as certain about his confident declarations in practice as he is in rhetoric, and when the disconnect becomes too much he lashes out in anger. He has some kind of connection with Rey and reaches out to him. Rey rejects him. He lashes out and decides to kill her. It fits a pattern we've seen throughout the movies so far.
  • Master is any Sith apprentice's truest enemy. Snoke may not have seen himself and Kylo as Sith, but a guy who up until recently tried to follow in the footsteps on of one of the most iconic Sith in the galaxy sure is as Sith as it gets.
• What precisely did Snoke foresee? (And similarly, what precisely did Emperor Palpatine foresee in Return of the Jedi when he talks about having foreseen what was happening?) Clearly, they hadn't foreseen what would actually happen, even though what happened fit the prophesies' Exact Words. Normally, one would foresee the events, then use words to describe them.
  • He has to care more about her than the guy that abused him and openly gloat about violating his mind. Plus he gets an empire by doing that.
• "Master is any Sith apprentice's truest enemy". That is so true that I have an opposite problem from the OP. Namely, how could Snoke not expect a betrayal from Kylo and how could sensing the "true enemy" vibe not alarm him? Not only should any significantly powerful Sith be Properly Paranoid by default, but Rey barely classifies as Kylo's enemy, let alone the "true one"! The entirety of their mutual grudges by that point amounted to him killing a guy she barely knew and her besting him in a meaningless fight, which both seemed to have pretty much got over. She'd never thwarted his plans in any significant way, and even their allegiance to opposing factions didn't seem to affect their personal relations that much, and after learning the truth about the circumstances of his fall, Rey was clearly sympathetic to him. Snoke could expect Kylo to obey his order, but there's no reason Kylo would've been eager to do so. I guess, if you squint really hard, you could say that she was the enemy in the sense that she was trying to sway him from the Dark Side, but that's really contrived and besides, she'd failed in that, meaning that Kylo would rather regard her as a potential convertee at best and a nuisance at worst.
  • You mean a villain was short-sighted, overconfident and thought he knew everything when he didn't? What a shocker.
  • Well, kinda, yes. Because short-sightedness or overconfidence are not, or at least should not be a get-out-of-jail-free cards for any dumb decision a character makes. Weaknesses should be at least somewhat consistent with their character. Not to shy from the obvious comparison, when Palpatine was caught of guard by Vader, the latter was performing a Heroic Sacrifice out of fatherly attachment. Concepts that should be utterly alien to the Emperor, so it's understandable that he wouldn't expect it. Hell, take the grand twist of the prequels (yes, I'm doing that too). Clones were just as serene and obedient as ever when they received Order 66, so the Jedi couldn't sense a change in their disposition and were caught off guard - and it was deliberately designed that way by Palpatine. More or less makes sense. Now compare this scene. Snoke has trained Kylo in the way of the Dark Side, the way of treachery. It was a relationship built upon the premise of constantly expecting betrayal from each other. And then Kylo tricked him by loudly broadcasting "I'm going to kill you" right into his head? What was is that Snoke "didn't know"? This is no more believable than if Snoke just fell down a manhole because he was too arrogant to look where he was going.

Rey not killing Kylo

• Why doesn't Rey kill Kylo after she comes to after their fight? He refused her offer for redemption, and it's clear that he'll continue to be a threat to the Resistance and the galaxy, as long as he's allowed to live. Neither is there any indication of Rey being too Lawful Stupid (or brainwashed by the Jedi) to finish an unconscious enemy. So what gives?
  • She's not that cold blooded, apparently, and getting the hell out of there took priority. You don't have to be "brainwashed" to not want to murder an unconscious, defenseless person. Plus, what's she going to kill him with? Her lightsaber's broken, they almost certainly would've taken her blaster, and Kylo Ren's lightsaber was knocked across the room earlier. She and Kylo were knocked out at the same time by the same thing, so she probably didn't think she had the time to go looking for a weapon before he woke up. The other option is to strangle him, and if Kylo wakes up in the middle of that — extremely likely — he's going to overpower her, easily. So what most likely happened is, she just got up, marveled that she was somehow still alive, grabbed the pieces of Anakin's saber and GTFO before either Kylo woke up or guards arrived.
  • They've just killed a dozen armed guards. Floor should be littered with weapons. And the guy murdered his own father in cold blood (and also, you know, tons of other people). Executing him would've been justice, not murder.
  • Because most people with halfway functioning moral compasses would probably have some issues and difficulties with cold-bloodedly murdering a defenceless, unconscious person just to save them some possible problems down the line. That's the kind of thing Kylo Ren himself would probably do, and the whole point of the movie is that for all their similarities ultimately Rey is a better person than Kylo's, and part of what makes her a better person is not ruthlessly murdering her enemies when they can't fight back. Besides which, just because he's rejected her offers of redemption once doesn't mean he can't still be redeemed later. After all, Luke Skywalker never gave up hope that Darth Vader for all his sins could one day redeem himself, so why should Rey give up on Kylo? What kind of hero would she be if she did?
  • And remember also that the moral dilemma faced by Luke at the end of Return of the Jedi was whether or not to strike down Darth Vader at a point when he was defeated and incapable of fighting back... and he refuses to do so, because that would be murdering someone in anger and would corrupt him. The movies clearly take the moral position that killing a defenceless person = bad, no matter what the person has done previously.
  • In fact, if we've reached the point where we're trying to seriously ask the question "why didn't the hero of a Star Wars movie cold-bloodedly murder the villain when they were powerless and incapable of fighting back?" as if it were a Headscratcher, then frankly I suspect we've reached the point where we're just being a little bit petty and looking for things to complain about.

Luke's half-baked distraction

• So, Luke shows up to distract Kylo and give the others time to escape. Except, how was it going to work in his mind? Escape only became an option once, a) foxes showed them the way out, and b) Rey arrived and cleared up the exit, neither of which had he anything to do with, as far as we saw (and if you want to say that he directed those foxes through Force or something, what was stopping him from doing that before a ton more people got killed?). And why didn't he tell Poe the plan (I'm sensing a pattern here...)? Yes, I know, Poe had to "learn a lesson", but all their lives were at stake, and Luke couldn't have known how things would turn out, could he? On the contrary, after he seemingly survived that blast, the logical thing for the rebels to assume would've been that he's invincible and is going to kill/scare all the imperials away know, so they should sit tight and wait for him to do so and come back, or indeed help him. This was the absolutely worst moment to start fulfilling his Trickster Mentor quota and giving out SecretTestOfCharacters!
  • Luke trusted in The Force at that point that things would work out. He would have known as well as the others that Chewy and Rey were nearby, and you're seeing a Luke with faith again.
  • Right. He got into this entire mess by acting irrationally, so sure, acting irrationally again is going to fix it. Also, trust in the Force is fine but isn't the core tenant of any informed belief that it's ok to hope for help from the Higher Powers, but one shouldn't rely solely on them? Wasn't there an educational episode about a Light Side Master refusing an offer from a Sith to jump of a roof just to test if the Force would arrest his fall, because that's not how the Force works?

Why is it so important for Rey who her parents are?

• During The Force Awakens, Maz forces Rey to confront the reality that the people she is waiting for are never coming back and that the family she wants is not found in her past, but in her future. It's an emotional moment that brings Rey to tears, since waiting for her family to come back for her has been a driving motivator for her. But thanks to Maz that is now resolved. So why is so much importance put on Rey trying to find out who her parents are and why is so much emphasis put on Kylo Ren revealing that her parents were nobodies who sold her for booze money? Even if Rey still wants to find her family, she never expressed any desire for, or believe in them to be important people. They seemed perfectly fine with the idea that her parents were just normal people the whole time.
  • Most deep-seeded psychological issues are not solved in a single conversation.
    • True, but wanting for her parents to be important people, to the point that them being random nobodies is presented as an unwelcome revelation, has never been established as being a deep-seated psychological issue with Rey. Just that she was waiting for them to return to her.
    • Sure it has. It's the classic Changeling Fantasy. Just because she didn't say it doesn't mean she doesn't want her parents to have been important — for there to have been some important reason for them to ditch her. I'd venture to say that most children want to believe their parents are important, and "they sold you for drinking money" is obviously going to be unwelcome to hear. Nobody wants to hear that their parents — the people who are supposed to love and cherish and take care of them — literally sold them for a few drinks. That really should go without saying.
      
      Picture this. You're Rey. You've been waiting for your parents for a decade and a half. To cope with abandonment, you're basically in denial, telling yourself of course they'll come back, they just had very important business to do in the meantime. They didn't abandon you, they hid you, to keep you safe from their enemies! Yeah, they must be rebels or something!
      
      And then you not only are drawn to the most (in)famous lightsaber in the galaxy, but find out you have the Force! You must be related to the Skywalkers or some Jedi or something from all that! You were right! Your parents were important! Maybe even Jedi! And you're going to meet the Legendary Luke Skywalker! Maybe he's even your dad!
      
      But then no. Turns out you were lying to yourself this whole time. Your parents were nobody, they didn't care about you, except for what kind of price they'd get for selling you.
      
      You really, seriously think that's not going to be unwelcome news?
    • But that's the thing: She doesn't say it. She doesn't even allude to it. Everything you said makes perfect sense for her to feel, but the character itself never expresses any of it on screen. As far as I can remember, not a single line of dialogue is actually dedicated to Rey wondering who her parents were and wishing that they abandoned her over something important.
    • Most normal people do not abandon their children to a lifetime of slavery in a desolate wasteland. Therefore, since Rey's parents did abandon her to a lifetime of slavery in a desolate wasteland, Rey essentially has two possible options to consider why her parents might have done this rather out-of-the-ordinary thing: (A) they simply didn't care about her; or (B) her parents did care about her but had Vital, Important, Universe-Shattering Reasons for abandoning her. It surely shouldn't be a reason why an abandoned child might find it more comforting to believe in option B even if option A is probably more likely, since no one likes the idea that their parents simply don't care about them. The fact that the filmmakers left this mostly implicit rather than spelling it out for us is simply them trusting that the audience is sufficiently capable of understanding this.
    • Or maybe it's just lazy writing. Rey expressing this believe in her parents being important, would've made for a perfect way to explore her character a bit and could've easily been integrated into her dialogue with Han or Maz. Why they didn't do that, when it is so important to her, is beyond me.
    • They didn't do it because it's obvious, and it's blatant That Makes Me Feel Angry, shoddy writing if you have to have characters spell out what they're feeling and why all the time. That you couldn't figure out what everyone else seems to think is obvious doesn't make it lazy writing.
      
      I mean, did you grasp that Ren was angry when he pointed and bellowed, "Blow that piece of junk out of the sky!" or did you need a line of dialog from him saying, "That ship belonged to my father, who I hate, and I killed him, and seeing it again is making me angry!"?
    • Any more blatant that characters repeatedly spelling out that Kylo Ren "feels conflicted"?
    • Yes. Because A. the nature of denial is different than feeling conflicted. Rey isn't going to admit she's in denial about it because she's in denial. "Not saying how you really feel" is what denial is. And B. other characters calling Kylo Ren conflicted is not the same as Rey declaring about herself how she feels.
    • It's not about Rey admitting that she's in denial about her parents. It's about her expressing any amount of wishes, dreams or hopes about them. Having her talking to Luke/Finn/Han/Chewbacca/anyone about how she always dreamed about her parents coming to whisk her away to a life of adventure among the stars. Or something like that. One of those quiet moments of characters talking and showing some personality, that they used to have in the original trilogy.
    • If she says "I hope my parents are like this," that is admitting they might not be. She is, again, in denial. That means she's trying to convince herself that her parents are important and will be back for her eventually. And part of that is "assuming" it to be true, not "hoping" or "dreaming" that it's true. How she feels about her parents is obvious; she doesn't need to go into exposition about it.
  • It doesn't have to be said because those things are obvious. Of course she wonders who her parents were. What person in her position wouldn't? And of course she hopes she was dropped off over something important — she's going to rationalize and deny, which she is absolutely, obviously doing. That's the whole point of being in denial — you don't say what you're really feeling because you're denying those feelings. If she tells herself her parents will be back for her soon, they just stepped out to do something very important for 15 years, maybe she'll believe it. That's how denial works. These things go without saying and should be obvious just from the nature of her situation without needing to have her vocalize it. Show, Don't Tell, dude.
    • A Show Don't Tell approach still needs to be integrated into the story itself. Expecting the audience to piece this all together after the fact in order to make sense of things is just lazy writing. All it took was one line of dialogue from Rey to show us that she believes in her parents being important people who left her for important reasons. Her just saying "You're wrong!" when Kylo tells her that her parents were nobodies, would've done the job.
    • It was integrated into the story. It doesn't need to be "pieced together after the fact," because again it should be completely obvious how Rey feels from how she acts. Explaining everything in dialog was one of the major scripting problems with the prequel trilogy, and it's a good thing that this trilogy doesn't rely on awkward, hackneyed lines like, "You're breaking my heart!" or "It is clear that this contest will not be decided through knowledge of the Force, but through skill with a lightsaber," or "From my point of view, the Jedi are evil!" That is "lazy writing." Letting your characters actions show what they're doing and feeling is the opposite of that. Your failure to pick up on what was obvious to the rest of us doesn't make it lazy writing.
    • Plus, it was her own actual spoken aloud goal half TFA to go back to Jakku to wait for her family. It seems pretty obvious to me that it's an issue needing of a lot of solving.
  • Also worth noting that the conversation in The Force Awakens discussed above ends with Rey responding to Maz's urge for her to leave the past and walk into the future by rejecting Luke's lightsaber by yelling "I'm never touching that thing again! I don't want any part of this!" and running away. Contrary to what the OP suggests, this is a pretty clear sign that this particular issue of Rey's has in fact not been resolved.
• Here's a problem I have with this interpretation. Would Rey even have a concept of a loving family to long for? If her parents were some scum willing to sell their own daughter into slavery, I guess they hadn't been Parents of the Year even before that and that their neighbourhood probably wasn't brimming with exemplary families either. It'd be one thing if they'd abandoned her as a toddler and she'd grown up never knowing them, while seeing normal families around her, wondering why can't she have that and inventing a comforting answer, but in her flashback she looks... what, six-seven? That seems quite enough to build up resentment, isn't it?
  • Four-five, official material confirms she's nineteen and has been on Jakku for about fifteen years. It's also possible she deluded herself into remembering their life was happy (your brain can trick you with false memories) or just doesn't remember life before being abandoned.
  • They probably weren't Parents of the Year by any means, but just because they were neglectful and uncaring doesn't necessarily mean they were actively abusive. It's pretty apparent that they didn't care enough about her to not put her above their own interests when the crunch moment arrived, but while she was with them they might have treated her well enough for her to convince herself that they did care for her. They might have been assholes, but not complete monsters, so to speak.
  • Depending on how WMG we want to get with it, they might even have genuinely cared for their daughter and regretted doing what they did, on some level at least. Assuming that they actually were alcoholics or addicts, they might have been in thrall to their addiction and not strong or selfless enough to put their daughter before their own addiction. Addicts can still love their children. Which shouldn't be seen as a defence their actions by any means, since selling your kid into slavery just to feed your addiction is still a scummy thing to do no matter how much you regret it, but just that we don't really know enough about Rey's family pre-abandonment to really be able to know one way or another.

Rose electrocuting deserters and the nature of the Resistance in general

• The Resistance may have military ranks and a military command structure, but it isn't actually a military. It's a volunteer force made up of men and women who signed up to protect their homes and families. So two things strike me here: 1) Does she have authorization to electrocute and imprison these volunteers trying to flee for their lives and 2) just how voluntary is this voluntary army if she does and why is no one stopping her if she doesn't? And I would like to remind everyone that this decision gets all but a small cargo hold full of them killed by the end of the film. This is very similar to the Holdo problem of her expecting everyone to blindly follow her orders without question, because people who have signed up to fight an authoritarian government presumably just love being expected to take because I told you so orders. It has to be wondered whether rumors of the Resistance being this unyielding is part of their recruitment problem.
  • Rose says she has stationed there to catch deserters, and there's absolutely nothing In-Universe to indicate she's lying, so yes, she did have authorization. You also can't pin the entire Resistance story-line going south because Rose caught deserters—it's Poe and Holdo who were making the major decisions there, she was doing her job.
    • She is a technician. Why would they ever put a technician, armed with but a tazer, in a position that might involve overpowering desperate and armed people? If they wanted the pods guarded, why not guard them properly? Actually, why weren't they properly guarded anyway?
    • The Resistance is a small group that's not only understaffed, but it's just lost a crapload of people taking out Starkiller base. Probably, Rose is there because she has no other duties and there's nobody else available to do the job. Or her technician job is near enough to the pods that she got deputized into it.
    • There were four hundreds people on that ship, and none of the soldiers were doing anything. You cannot tell me they couldn't have found anyone better for guard duty than a pudgy technician girl, who, by the way, should have her hands full to the brim with maintaining the shields or watching over the engines or something.
    • Sure I can, unless you have a duty roster handy and you can tell me that all of them have such free time. Just because you think it's a dumb plot point does not allow you to reject any and all explanation.
    • What I have is common sense. And it tells me that in a situation with no immediate fighting but with a heavy stress on ship's defence and propulsion systems there's no way a technician would be less occupied than a couple of grunts. And also that it's absurd to assign a tazer-wielding technician to a duty that involves overpowering deserters who are, by default, desperate and, most likely, armed.
    • I'm seeing less "common sense" and more armchair quarterbacking, assumptions and sarcasm. That does not an argument make. You asked a question? You got several plausible answers.
  • As for the nature of the Resistance, there's also nothing to indicate Holdo's style of leadership is the norm—in fact, it's implied to be the opposite when Leia is in charge, because everyone is so uneasy at Holdo's style.
  • I'd also point out that there's a difference between volunteers wanting to leave, and volunteers wanting to leave during a battle. They're being chased by First Order ships, if people abandon their posts (repairing the ship, medical, operating guns, etc), then that puts more people in danger than if they'd left after the mission was over.
    • A. There was no battle - they were fleeing. B. Holdo was planning on continuing the flight alone. You cannot tell me a few people leaving would've made any kind of difference. In fact, Holdo would want as many people off the ship as possible, so that if the planetside evacuation goes awry, at least some would escape.
    • A. They're getting shot at, that's a battle. B. The point is also to keep the Resistance functioning. Having mass desertions defeats the whole purpose. Allowing your people to desert without stopping them is tantamount to admitting defeat and giving up — not just on the battle, but on your cause.
    • So is every crook being pursuit by the police - are they in a battle as well? There was no mission, no battle plan, no goal - just escape with their lives. Next, if it's organised, it's not desertion - it's scrambling, a tactics an underground organisation should be closely familiar with. While keeping your people an a seemingly doomed vessel is bound to decimate morale. Who knows, they might even start plotting a coup if they get desperate enough! Also, see above. If Holdo cared so much about preventing desertion, she would've posted proper guards at the pods. Actually, she would've posted them there simply if she was half-competent, since it's a crucial part of the ship you certainly wouldn't want sabotaged.
    • A) From the crooks' perspective, yeah, being pursued and shot at by the cops kinda sorta is a battle. Not one that's going to make it into the history books, maybe, but kind of a battle nonetheless. And if your criminal buddies try and ditch you to face the music alone, you're probably not going to be too thrilled with them either, for what it's worth. B) "Organised scrambling" does not equal "letting people steal escape pods whenever they want". The latter is the exact opposite of 'organised'; it's chaos. Also, note that Holdo and the higher-ups actually try an attempt at "organised scrambling" later in the movie. They were simply waiting for what they thought was the best moment. C) There is a guard posted at the escape pods; Rose is guarding the pods. Under the rather desperate circumstances where manpower is clearly stretched, however, "guard" is likely stretched to mean "person who is given a gun and told to guard the pods".
  • An army retreating is not remotely analogous to crooks running from the police; the situations are completely alien to one another aside from the absurdly broad "guys running away from other guys" premise. You might as well be comparing it to a running back being chased by a linebacker. The "escape" is organized — it's the capital ships getting to an old base. An organized retreat is absolutely not the "every man for themselves, get the hell out of here" scramble like you appear to be proposing. Ditching the ships — you know, the giant capital ships that likely take months and billions of credits to build — would be, again, as good as a surrender.
    • But they were ditching the ships. All the auxiliaries had been picked off during the chase, and, according to Holdo's plan, the flagship was supposed to lead the FO away for a while until it runs out of fuel and is destroyed. That's. It. They were planning to reach the base by shuttles and then call for someone to come and pick them up, provided, of course, that the FO doesn't think to check the planet just in case or intercept the signal, and that none of the receivers sell them out. Please explain how, in practical terms, is it any better than if they began to clandestinely trickle the personnel off the ship along the way. Not putting all the eggs in one basket, you know, and also not making people feel like they're doomed, which is bound to decimate morale. Who knows, they might even start plotting a coup if they get desperate enough!
    • Yes. They had a plan to ditch the ships as a way to draw out the First Order and convince the First Order that they were falling apart, so that when they ditched the final ship, the First Order would think that they'd been defeated for good and back off to do whatever else it has in mind. You know what happens with your "trickle" option? People start worrying about who's being sent off first — they start worrying that if the officers go first, the others will be sacrificed. And if it's the lower-ranks that get sent first, they worry that they're being sacrificed to test the First Order's response. And if the First Order does manage to find out and pick them off as they trickle out, then hey, that means the whole thing's screwed, everyone panics, and they've lost. Or someone from the "trickle" gets captured, interrogated, gives up the secret of where the Resistance are going, and the whole thing's lost. Bottom line? There was a plan. A plan that doesn't work alongside, "Let people desert at their leisure." Just because you don't like the plan and think you can Monday-morning quarterback up something fool-proof doesn't mean there's a problem with the movie.
  • Getting back to the main question, there is something I wanted to note here: Finn IS NOT part of the Resistance at this point. His whole arc throughout the film is him deciding in his own way whether he wants to join officially or not. Finn is NOT a deserter because he is not a member, surely he is the one person on the ship who has more right than anyone to leave? And what I find truly funny is that there really was nothing stopping him from just smashing this woman half his size about the head and stealing the ship once they went off on their mission together so not quite sure why she was so trusting.
    • "Finn is not a member" is just semantics. He's on the team, he helped hand them their biggest major victory, and he's allied with their cause. They're not in a position of "anyone who wants to leave can leave." If Finn leaves, others will desert. It's a slippery slope.
  • This question smacks a little of Ron the Death Eater-ing, combined with blatantly and disingenuously skewing an obvious point to try and twist it into a headscratcher. The Resistance is a "volunteer" force in the sense that they don't forcibly conscript unwilling people to act as cannon fodder for them. They give people the choice to sign up to fight for them, and if people don't want to, they're willing to accept that they have a right not to. However, as with any volunteer military force, there is also a clear expectation that if you are going to volunteer to join up, you are making a commitment to stay for as long as required or necessary, you have an at-least basic understanding of the risks involved, and are going in with the expectation that you don't just get to cut and run the second that things become inconvenient or dangerous. Put simply, if you're on that ship, you volunteered to be there under the knowledge that there was a good chance that you might end up in a situation where the enemy would be shooting at you, and with the understanding that you wouldn't be allowed to just steal an escape pod and run away if you ended up not liking this fact. To compare: the United States Military is currently a largely volunteer force. The recruitment sergeants will try and convince people to sign up. If someone doesn't want to sign up, they won't make them. But if someone does want to, they will be told that they're making a commitment they can't just walk away from whenever they want.
  • Not to mention that Rose in particular had good reason to be opposed to deserters considering that her sister just died for the Resistance, something she explicitly says to Finn.
  • That's all well and good. It doesn't change the fact Finn is not a member of The Resistance. Aside from his two friends and a hero worshiper, most people, or at least a significant portion of the remaining brass, don't consider "Storm Trooper" to be either. But, due to the circumstances that got Finn where he is, The Resistance does have credible reasons to keep him under thumb. He deserted to save one of their aces, they owe him, he can go. They save him while fighting off a First Order invasion. They are even, he can still go. He comes to them with information on the wonder weapon threatening The Resistance and all that they stand for, on the chance it will help save his friend. Mutually beneficial relationship there, Finn is in no way obligated to take part in the scouting and dismantling of the wonder weapon himself but chooses to do so anyway. The Resistance should be greatful. During the anti wonder weapon operations Finn is overpowered and cut open. Nonetheless he goes above an beyond the call of duty. All things considered, The Resistance owes him. Also, the friend he happen to save is now entrusted with a special Resistance mission, which reinforces that debt. The Resistance somehow nurses him back to health and moves his paralyzed body out of harm's way while they are at it, saving his life twice over. They could have easily dropped him off anywhere(okay, not really but Finn wasn't awake to know that) or just deemed him an acceptable loss due to lack of medical supplies, lack of time, lack of space or lack of available personnel. From The Resistance's point of view, they can argue Finn now owes them, despite never officially joining, and has one more debt to pay before he can leave. Successfully allowing their fleet to escape probably would have been that debt, but as you know, that failed. This also wouldn't have been as funny as watching Finn get tasered, nor as heart rending as listening to Rose talk about her sister's death, so the writer decided to take an emotional approach. Still, it should be noted neither Finn's self declaration to be rebel scum nor Finn's attack on the bunker buster make him an official Resistance member. He's still acting out of his own self interest. He hates the First Order very much, and while he wants to passively put them out of his life through fleeing, he will rush to risk and even give his life if an opportunity to hurt them is before him. In this sense Rose knocking Finn off course can be read as denying Finn a chance to pay his debt and opt out of any future Resistance operations, but the writer already committed to an emotional route, so we get love.
  • Three points: 1) What does it take to officially join the Resistance? We don't really know. Finn might have formally joined off screen after he volunteered to disable the shields on Starkiller base in the last movie. Certainly they treat him like he's a member after that. 2) Can you desert without consequences? Yes the Resistance are an all-volunteer force. So are all the current US armed forces, but once you join you can't desert without getting into real trouble. When you join the Resistance you agree to follow orders, accepting the possibility that you may get in trouble if you don't obey orders. 3) Why is Rose on duty to zap people trying to desert instead of doing, you know, technician stuff? Well I like to think her CO gave her what he thought would be a nice quiet alternate duty that would give her time to think after she just lost her sister in the attack on the dreadnought.
  • Even if people have the right to desert the Resistance, they do not have the right to take one of the Resistance's shuttles with them when they do so. They'd need to wait until they landed on a planet or a space station, then find their own transportation from there.

When did Finn learn how to fly a ship again?

• Seriously, it's a major plot point in TFA that Finn is not a pilot. He directly states this to Poe when he frees him and again to Rey on-board the Falcon. And yet in this film he can fly a shuttle through hyperspace and one of those salt skimmers just fine. And bear in mind, not only have mere days passed since the start of TFA to the end of TLJ, he spent a good part of that unconscious in a bacta suit.
  • Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Rose the one who flies the shuttle? At least, I remember seeing her in the pilot seat when DJ demands her necklace. As for the salt skimmer...maybe it's simple enough that an amateur can fly? Rose doesn't seem to have a problem with it either.

Was DJ the real master codebreaker all along

• Was DJ the person Maz was referring to all along? Or was the guy in the casino the real codebreaker and there just happened to be another master codebreaker in the same place and in the very cell Finn and Rose would get put into?
  • Maz specifically says they'll know the codebreaker by the lapel rose. They see him in the casino.

Rose and war profiteers

• At Canto Bight, Rose says she hates war profiteers. Later we find out that both the First Order and the Resistance feed them by buying weapons but we never see her reaction to that information. How does she reconcile her hatred of war profiteers with her participation in a war that benefits them?
  • Because the alternative is not fighting the First Order, and she's driven to fight the First Order.
  • No, she isn't. She's driven to save what she loves by not fighting what she hates. So by extension, this gets worse. She is going to claim the high ground when in fact she is working as yet another keg in the destabilizing conflict.
  • It may be that she doesn't LIKE the idea, but she can put it aside because she realizes that the First Order is even WORSE. Or she simply hates the people who PROFIT from war, while also accepting that the Resistance bought from them because they need weapons (as an analogy, it's someone who hates pharmaceutical companies, but knows that they need to buy the products)

Why were Poe and the others watching out the portal when Leia did the Mary Poppins thing?

• Did she force notify them to expect her?
  • Maybe. Seems kinda tame in comparison to what she did.

Why Did Luke try to kill his nephew?

• He believed there was good in his father, who was a monster for a long time. For context, this was a monster who murdered children, did nothing to stop Tarkin from blowing up a planet, committed even more war crimes as a Dark Lord of the Sith and was ruthless without any mercy shown to his enemies, or even his allies for that matter. Meanwhile, Luke's nephew from the benevolent Leia Organa and the cocky but well meaning Captain Solo, who apparently had a proficiency with the dark side, became a terrible threat? Sounds a bit too forced, no pun intended, all just too make Luke a flawed hero.
  • 1. Despite believing there was good in his father, Luke still attacked him and very nearly killed him, only stopping in the last moment at least partially due to the fact that Palpatine couldn’t keep his mouth shut about Luke’s journey to the Dark Side almost being complete, and even that wasn't enough to bring Vader back - only Emperor's dickishness did. Please stop portraying Luke's "conversion" of Vader as something safe and assured. 2. That Luke was a naive and optimistic 23-year old. Please stop ignoring the 30 year gap and the effect of hardships, responsibility and PTSD. 3. Yes, Vader was a monster for a long time. He had murdered countless people, including children, before he even began considering a Heel–Face Turn. Luke, shockingly, didn't want a repetition of that. 4. Luke didn't try to kill Kylo in cold blood. After looking into his mind and seeing that great darkness and danger, he instinctively ignited his lightsaber for a single moment. You know, "It came, and it went away, leaving only shame".
  • Agreed, Luke was probably stunned when he saw that Kylo Ren was going to become a replacement Vader and his first instinct was probably to protect the wider galaxy and by extension his friends, before realizing what that would accomplish. Only for Ben to get the wrong impression and cement this as a tragic case of self-fulfilling prophecy. This isn't helped by the first flashback which seems to portray Luke as evil, which is intentional from Kylo's perspective, followed by a second flashback that showed what really happened. A lot of people probably saw the first version and were so distracted by it that they didn't notice the context of the second flashback.

Why are the Resistance so okay with the New Republic to the point they want to restore it?

• So a key aspect of the Resistance in this movie is their desire to restore the New Republic, or rather lighting the fire that will restore the Republic. But there is a problem with this. The New Republic was a failing institution that did not succeed in the wake of the Galactic Civil War. After the Rebels defeated the Galactic Empire, the New Republic was the force that was put in place to assume the role of intergalactic superpower. And this same organization became corrupt, weak, complacent and ultimately useless against the threat of the First Order. In fact, a key point from TFA is the ability for the First Order to almost effortlessly wipe out the New Republic with Starkiller Base. The New Republic also did not officially sanction the Resistance and basically saw them as acting outside the law. So the Resistance and the New Republic are seemingly not as allied as one is led to believe. And yet, never, not once, do the characters seemingly question why they want to restore the New Republic as the superpower when said superpower is responsible for the mess they are in right now. It doesn't seem to work. Which begs the question, what is the Resistance truly fighting for? A solution that didn't work after the last war?

Why do people put up with Crait as a viable solution?

• Why does nobody seem to react poorly to the final outcome of the Resistance in this movie. Waiting on a lonely abandoned world, hope the First Order doesn't find them and then call for help. For characters in extremely dire circumstances, one could make a reasonable argument that this plan is almost suicidal and depends on too many things happening for it to work. It's assuming the First Order can't spot the Resistance ships fleeing, nor the planet they are fleeing too, nor that they might just destroy them before they can even get to this planet. There is also the fact that once on this planet, they presumably have no escape route. The First Order could just pin them on this world and starve them of resources. Crait doesn't seem like a world with any advanced industrial capabilities of resources. So why is nobody rebelling against Leia and Poe and anyone else involved. This seems like a horrible plan and one that would justify a mutiny in its own right. Some soldiers might just surrender under these circumstances, or at least try to. But again, this is never brought up or explored in the film.

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