While Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been out for months, that hardly means we’re done learning new and interesting things about the film. The newest nugget of information comes in the form of examining a part of the set that had been left unexplained, and possibly unnoticed, until now. It turns out Kylo Ren keeps a table full of ashes around because he likes to collect the remains of his victims in one place. Damn, this guy is even darker than we thought.
It’s possible you didn’t even notice the ashes the first time you saw the film, however, as you probably saw it several times (we all did, right?) you probably eventually noticed that when Kylo Ren removes his helmet while interrogating Daisy Ridley’s Rey, he kicks up a bunch of dust when he puts it down on the table. According to Entertainment Weekly, that table actually contains human remains that Kylo Ren has been collecting from those he’s eliminated. J.J. Abrams tells them where the table originally came from.
The backstory is, that that table has the ashes of the enemies he’s killed. That moment was actually shot for, and meant to be used in, the scene where he was talking to the Vader mask.
Apparently, the scene in which Kylo Ren is communing with Darth Vader’s mask was shot two different ways, once with the mask on, and once with it off. In the version where the mask was off, it included him slamming it down into the ashes of his victims, a shot which J.J. Abrams loved, but then ended up not using after they decided to hold the reveal of Kylo Ren’s face until later in the film. When it did come time to have the mask come off, and simply be placed on part of the set, it was deemed to be utterly unimpressive, thus the table of burned bones made a return.
We didn’t know it was possible to make Kylo Ren an even more terrible person than he already was, and yet, here we are. We see him kill Max Von Sydow’s character early in the film, so we know he doesn’t have a problem killing people. However, the idea that he may have had Lor San Tekka’s body brought on board so it could be cremated and added to a collection of other ashes, is a new level of sadistic we had not previously attributed to the son of Han Solo. We’re fairly certain if Han had known about this he could have saved himself the trouble of trying to reason with his kid.
What does this do to your perspective on the future of Kylo Ren? Is there any possibility of redemption for him, or is the guy just too far gone at this point? Let us know what you think.
