Rey and Finn Spend Most Of Star Wars: The Last Jedi Apart

Rey and Finn are the heroes of the sequel trilogy, but it sounds like they’re going to spend much of Star Wars: The Last Jedi apart. The pair became quick friends in The Force Awakens, each pushing the other on to do the right thing despite their own personal apprehensions, but at the end parted ways; Rey went off to find Luke Skywalker while Finn recovered from his wounds fighting Kylo Ren.

We’ve got a lot of The Last Jedi news this week care of Entertainment Weekly‘s exhaustive cover story, with a lot of it centering on this pair. There was surplus details on the complex, uneasy relationship between Rey and Luke, as well as Finn and Rose’s mysterious undercover mission (after he recovers from his injuries, of course). We also learned that the past of both characters will be important; Rey’s secret family and Finn’s past as a Stormtrooper respectively. But that may be their biggest connection for most of it.

In the text of his online EW articles, Anthony Breznican states that “they are separated for much of the film“. While it’s not an official quote from the filmmaker, due to his knowledge of the film this is the first confirmation of the pair being apart.

All things considered, this isn’t the most surprising development given the characters’ clearly delineated plots – everything we know about Rey has centered on her Ahch-To training, while Finn’s mission is a jet-setting adventure – but does mean they’re not going to link up even at casino Canto Bight.

We do know the pair will eventually reunite on Crait thanks to a mixture of behind-the-scenes footage and toy reveals, however. A salt flats planet, this Hoth-like battle – the First Order have beefed-up gorilla walkers and the Resistance skimmer speeders – looks to be the film’s climax, which fits with a reunion. Rey’s role in this is unclear (it likely involves Kylo Ren and Snoke) but we did recently learn Finn is one of the rebel pilots.

While this certainly makes sense within the narrative constructed so far, it does repeat one of the consistent criticisms of The Force Awakens; the central trio of Finn, Rey and Poe were kept apart to the point Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac’s characters never shared a word. This is compounded given how many have Rey and Finn pegged to be this trilogy’s romantic duo. Of course, this time around the relationship between Finn and Rey is established, so there’s less of a need for chemistry set-up and, as they say, longing makes the heart grow fonder.

It also brings up the questions of overt The Empire Strikes Back parallels – Luke was separate from Han and Leia for most of Episode V – although that’s something director Rian Johnson addressed directly in the EW coverage, saying it was accidental from the way he wrote the script.

KEY RELEASE DATES
Star Wars 8/Star Wars: The Last Jedi release date: Dec 15, 2017
Untitled Han Solo Star Wars Anthology Film release date: May 25, 2018
Star Wars 9 / Star Wars: Episode IX release date: May 24, 2019