Kylo Ren/Ben Solo.

I know he’s not popular with a good chunk of Star Wars fans, but I connected so strongly with Kylo. To me he was like a walking representation of the ugly side of mental illness and surviving abuse. When you didn’t quite survive it, when you’re still a victim, when you’re still carrying so much pain you can hardly stand it. When you’ve felt like a monster your whole life. When you lash out and build walls and wear a mask because anybody who gets close is just going to hurt you again. When your parents might have been good people and loved you, but they put so much of their own bullshit on you that they fucked you up regardless.

Until Rise of Skywalker, I had so much hope for Kylo’s story and what his turn back to the light could mean to those of us who’ve spent so much of our lives feeling like irredeemable lost causes.

And then Rise of Skywalker happened. And Ben Solo comes truly to life for the first time in the entire trilogy. Everything down to the way he carries himself and gestures shows that this is a man free of his mask for the very first time. His soulmate finally accepts him, metaphorically takes his hand, they defeat the evil that’s plagued him since birth. He brings his soulmate back from the dead, gets to kiss her, gets to smile, gets to feel truly loved for the first time in decades.

Then he dies. And that’s it. On the ground, in the dark. And his soulmate walks off to join her friends and celebrate. No grief. No mourning. No catharsis. He doesn’t even come back as a Force Ghost at the end. There’s nothing to indicate that this connection that meant so much to him that it inspired him to live again wasn’t just unceremoniously severed.

Yeah, I’m still bitter.