It was around this time last year when Vanity Fair published the first major cover story about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, even if it seems like that (and the public’s subsequent disappointment) was about 17 years ago. But it’s been long enough that the article’s writer, Lev Grossman, is now sharing what didn’t make it into the final piece.
One of the big things Grossman learned from speaking to the cast and crew is that Adam Driver wanted to explore Ben Solo/Kylo Ren’s backstory, “to show us more about why he turned to the dark side,” as the writer told Inverse Happy Hour. “[Adam] had a lot of interesting thoughts,” specifically about Ben Solo’s childhood. Grossman continued:
“This is actually something Adam Driver said. He said that both Han Solo and Leia were way too self-absorbed and into this idea of themselves as heroes to really be attentive parents in the way a young and tender Kylo Ren really needed. There wasn’t really that much of it in the movie, so I just think we have to assume his childhood sucked.”
That’s a fair assumption, and something that would have been interesting to see in The Rise of Skywalker (maybe Disney will make a Kylo prequel series about a young boy who turns to the Dark Side and becomes the ultimate evil — I don’t think that’s been covered in Star Wars before). Instead, we got Ben’s instantly iconic final words: “Ow.”
