Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Director J.J. Abrams Addresses if Kylo Ren Is Beyond Redemption

Kylo Ren has been a huge part of this new Star Wars trilogy, and that isn’t going away with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. J.J. Abrams got a chance to talk about the complicated side of the character at D23. MTV News flagged the director down and asked if Kylo Ren could possibly be redeemed. Obviously, Abrams wants to talk about the film and told the interviewer that Adam Driver had a fantastic performance in this movie.

Driver has had a sort of seething anger and bubbling emotion in every scene he’s appeared in during this trilogy. His screen presence is one of the things that was pretty much agreed on coming out of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. It is only natural that things between him and the heroes of the story would come to a head in The Rise of Skywalker.

“I will say that with an actor like Adam Driver, you can never limit what that man can do. I will say, without talking about redemption or not, that he is mind-blowing in this. He’s brought a whole other level to this, so I can’t wait to see what happens with him,” Abrams elaborated.

Kylo Ren and Rey have been on a collision course this entire trilogy, and things will get even more serious in Rise of Skywalker. The Last Jedi provided a window for each side of this personal conflict to understand each other, but it sounds like the gloves are off, and this philosophical disagreement will be solved on the battlefield.

Daisy Ridley plays Rey, and she teased a show-stopping lightsaber duel between the two characters on the Happy Sad Confused podcast. She, like others around the film, argues that this clash will have lasting effects on the entire franchise going forward.

“I just think they’ve done a great job with all the relationships. With the fun friendships, and with the sort of strange thing with Rey and Kylo… also we have a great fight. A great fight,” Ridley said. “And I was really happy that the Vanity Fair pictures did show a bit of it. It’s a great fight. Like I’ve become such a better fighter and they made the lightsabers lighter, so it actually looks like we’re swinging light and not like heavy [swords].”

She is right to point out that fans have already gotten a little taste of this battle in photos that have been released. Ridley even went as far as to compare the scene to that jaw-dropping battle with Snoke’s guards in Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

“[The Throne Room fight] felt pretty cool, and also that was really hard because everything had to match up. There’s like a dolly shot coming through and it ends with me and I think I was fighting James at the time, who’s the stuntman with the two swords,” Ridley continued. “It was so tiring. We did like 25 takes because if one thing was off we had to keep going. But I was really proud of that fight.”

She concluded, “This fight, it was November, we had water being thrown at us—I’m not gonna complain about the cold, I’m just not gonna do it (laughs)—so it was like a real thing of stamina. It felt really epic, and it felt epic even at the time. One can only imagine what it’s gonna look like.”

Fans will learn Kylo Ren’s true fate when Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premieres in theaters on December 20th.