‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’: Let’s Debate That Controversial Reylo Kiss

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker landed on Disney+ this morning in honor of May the 4th, aka Star Wars Day. That means that Star Wars fans can now watch every film in the Skywalker Saga on Disney+ and it means we have an excuse to dredge up one of the biggest debates over Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s controversial ending. Should Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Rey (Daisy Ridley) have kissed?

In one corner, we have Decider’s Managing Editor Alex Zalben, who thinks the kiss was one of the worst things he’s ever seen. And in the other we have Decider’s Deputy Editor Meghan O’Keefe, who believes the kiss was “kinda hot” and “honestly the most interesting thing in the whole movie besides Babu Frik.”

So in honor of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hitting Disney+, we’re having a good old fashioned Decider Debate: Was the Reylo kiss good or bad?

ALEX ZALBEN: First of all, Meghan, I appreciate you giving me the first — and I assume, final — word on this. The kiss is bad. Very bad. Bad, bad, bad. I am a professional writer and know how to use words.

But before I explain why the kiss was bad, I do want to talk about the visceral reaction I had in the theater seeing Rey wake up from literal death, smile, and then kiss the man who wiped out multiple solar systems before abruptly changing his mind. I cringed. Like, full on, full body recoiled from the screen involuntarily, and whispered, “oh no” out loud… In the Alamo Drafthouse, no less, a place I am deathly afraid of being tossed out if I make too much noise crossing my legs. I couldn’t help it, it just happened.

To give even more context, I don’t think Rise of Skywalker is what I’d call a “good” movie, but the rest I sat there pretty much silently, reacting to some of the dumber twist with a silent “okay, fine, I guess,” laughing out loud at some parts, enjoying some of the action… You know, normal movie watching behavior. The kiss stirred something in me; an awakening, if you will. And though I wasn’t particularly engaged with the movie before that, the kiss turned me off entirely, to the point that Rise of Skywalker is the only Skywalker Saga movie I’ve only seen once. I know, you admire my restraint. Thank you.

I’m curious, what was your overall moviegoing experience like, and how did the kiss fit in for you?

MEGHAN O’KEEFE: Much like you, I found the movie to be pretty unremarkable up until the very end. That means, as a life-long Star Wars fan, I was rather disappointed. I didn’t like how every choice director J.J. Abrams made seemed to erase all the funky, artsy, egalitarian notes that Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson had injected into the series. Moreover, I didn’t like how suddenly Rey was the secret grandchild of an inexplicably cloned Palpatine. I also thought visually many of the shots were either derivative or over-stuffed, to the point that my eyes didn’t know where to focus.

So I was rather blasé about the film…until the kiss.

The kiss is…interesting. It’s a bold choice in an otherwise safe film. As you said, Kylo Ren is a man who has obliterated entire planets, and now he gets to be redeemed by sacrificing himself for love. I know in real life, this is ethically unmanageable. However, in the world of myth and parable, the redeemed sinner is one of my all-time favorite tropes. (See also: Edmund Pevensie being the best Pevensie.) So I wasn’t really all that bothered by it as Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is kind of the last bar of an insanely operatic story sequence that is essentially a morality play with laser swords. If Kylo Ren was a real person? Oh no, he would have to go to jail. No kisses for genocidal maniacs in the real world, but in a fantasy story about magic warrior monks in space? Sure.

I also liked it because I think Star Wars needs more romance. Like, it’s more common for someone to have their hand chopped off with a lightsaber in this universe than it is for them to go on a nice dinner date. Not that Ben Solo — BECAUSE THAT’S HIS NAME IN THIS SCENE AS HE HAS BEEN REDEEMED — and Rey have a tremendous romance going on, but they have chemistry. The only other characters who have this kind of spark in the sequel trilogy are Finn and Poe, and you know they can’t kiss because foreign box office concerns. So if we’re going to get a kiss, this is the kiss we get, and I will take it! I will enjoy it! I will scour the internet late at night for fan fic, damn it!

ALEX ZALBEN: I 100% agree with you that the modern Star Wars trilogy suffers from a severe lack of kissing. Issues with Han Solo and Leia’s relationship from a modern perspective aside, that’s part and parcel with the franchise. Even sand-hatin’ Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala formed the emotional backbone of the prequel trilogy. That’s part of the reason the extremely late in the game smoocheroo, from that perspective, felt like “Reylo shippers can have a little kiss, as a treat,” versus anything motivated by the action.

I’ll take a little side note to say that I’m not a Rey/Kylo ‘shipper, but I’m not not a ‘shipper, if you get my meaning. Force Awakens, Kylo is clearly obsessed with Rey. Last Jedi, I read the connection as something off romance and more on the side of deep understanding, but the best scenes between them are up for interpretation. If you want to read the scene where Rey sees Kylo shirtless as sexy? Sure, go for it. Him reaching his hand across space to hold her hand is hot. I screamed when I saw that.

So some of the groundwork was there, but the movie that came before it didn’t put in the effort to show us anything other than Rey trying to redeem Kylo (again) and Kylo… I honestly don’t remember, was he looking for the knife shaped like the Death Star, or working for Palpatine, or… In any case, there were ways to build to that kiss that didn’t feel so abrupt. You could open that up to talk about Ben/Kylo’s whole arc, which found him switching sides in one scene, rather than gradually over the course of the movie. I heard a suggestion somewhere, and I’m forgetting where so I’ll steal it, that if the scene on the Death Star happened at the beginning of the movie and they had taken Kylo with them on the Millenium Falcon for the rest of the mission, it would have built that relationship more organically — everyone being like, “why is Space Hitler here?” and not trusting Rey that he’s Ben Solo now. Versus him putting on an unwashed sweatshirt and falling down a hole on Palpatine’s Planet of Evil. For example.

MEGHAN O’KEEFE: For sure, and I agree with you that the film would have benefitted from just dropping us onto Death Star planet, in media res, and then building a more streamlined, character-driven narrative.

I think you also touched upon something that’s contributed to my feelings about the big bad space smooch, and that’s I really can’t remember the plot of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. As you said, the convoluted treasure hunt is J.J. Abrams at his worst. The film sort of smudges together in my memory as a series of ferociously noisy action sequences with little to no emotional underpinning.

Something I do remember? Kylo putting on that dirty ass sweatshirt and slicing through those Knights of Ren. Man, I know the meme killed it over the winter, but the way Adam Driver suddenly takes on the physicality of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo while in Jedi mode set my nerd heart aflame.

So by this point, I had finally found something to cheer for and it was Adam Driver mowing through bad guys in a desperate rush to help Rey. I mean, maybe that’s why I liked the kiss? I got horny for Ben Solo?

ALEX ZALBEN: Star Wars: Episode 10 – Horny For Ben… I can picture the opening crawl now!

That aside, the other thing I want to point out/that made me cringe a second time with the kiss is that it was… Funny? To me? Maybe it’s a dark sense of humor, but after full body recoiling at the idea, watching Rey die, come back to life, kiss Ben, and then him immediately, literally ghosting her made me bark with laughter.

I get that the idea was to do a whole Romeo and Juliet thing, and that’s fine. All due respect to my boy Willy Shakes. But even in the context of a space fantasy where Grandpa Clone just exploded thanks to magic lightning, the kiss seemed ridiculous. There was a part of me that wanted it to keep going, with Ben dying, Rey cries, she gives him her life energy, he comes back to life, kisses her, she dies, rinse, repeat. As it was, I just felt embarrassed. For everyone. Especially myself.

MEGHAN O’KEEFE: Having just rewatched the moment, it is funny. A lot of Star Wars is corny. I can’t watch newly hatched Darth Vader learn his wife is dead and reacting like Frankenstein without guffawing. Why? Because it’s funny, and because something is broken inside of me.

Speaking as someone who is okay with the kiss, here is the thought that has been haunting me since leaving the theater: are they going to reboot the series in 20 years with a new trilogy about the Force baby that Ben Solo’s life energy breathed into Rey’s belly? Huh? Eh? You see my logic? One, the Skywalker Saga doesn’t just poetically “rhyme” as George Lucas once eloquently blustered. It is a voracious machine that repeats its own cycle every few decades to feed the hungry corporate beast.

I’m okay if the kiss is just a kiss, much as a sigh is just a sigh, but if we learn in 2038 that Ben Solo put little Leia Skywalker in Rey’s Palpatine tummy, I will scream. Oh, and you’ll owe me $20. Not that money will mean anything in 2038.

ALEX ZALBEN: I mean… You’ll probably right, and I’m excited to see you try and buy half a micro-sized popcorn with that $20. Like you touched on, though, things like the kiss remind us that Star Wars is ultimately a series of flawed movies, not religious texts. The mistakes — or perceived mistakes, depending on what side you fall — are the bad moments that make the best moments stand out. And Rise of Skywalker, like the rest of the Saga, has some absolutely wonderful moments that remind us why we fell in love with Star Wars, in between the bits everyone disagrees with. I will always cringe when I see that kiss, you will always swoon, and both perspectives are completely correct even though they disagree. Perfectly balanced, like the force.

One thing we definitely agree on, though: everyone loves Babu Frik.

MEGHAN O’KEEFE: HEY HEY!

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Where to stream Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker