**Warning: Minor spoilers ahead**
Like so many others, nearly $180 million worth of others on its opening weekend, I rushed to the theatre this holiday season to take in the latest installment of Star Wars. Having been raised on the original movies and the prequels after that, I always admired the strong-willed women that occupied those screens.
When The Force Awakens was released in 2015 it was refreshing to see Daisy Ridley’s character, Rey, take on the lead role. Finally, a woman who portrayed the same emotional vulnerability and tenacity as characters like Princess Leia and Padmé Amidala had before her, was at the center of the narrative.
Although I enjoyed following Rey’s journey, her struggle with identity and her discovery that family lays beyond the bonds of blood, there was something I had hoped that in the decade since the last prequel was released we had moved past as a society.
I’m not naïve enough to believe I was the only one who saw Kylo Ren and Rey’s potential romance coming, from the first movie in the revival trilogy. But does every movie really need to have a love story? In the case of Star Wars, I think not.
Throughout the story, Rey and Kylo Ren are obviously bonded by their parallel struggles with their light and dark sides. Ren doing his best to deny his light, and Rey desperate to keep out the darkness. However, in The Rise of Skywalker, the audience is fed the same, in my opinion, toxic narrative, that in traditional romance has been seen time and time again — that women should try to fix bad guys.
That we shouldn’t give up on the men who mistreat us, or in this case, try to kill us and everyone that we care about. No, with a little persistence we can change someone into the person we want them to be. Had Rey not given up on Kylo Ren out of her love for Leia, or respect for Han, this would have been a different story, but to be with a guy that for three movies has been trying to manipulate her? No, we’re leaving that kind of poison in 2019.
Or the writer’s choice of Rey being unable to defeat Emperor Palpatine without Kylo Ren’s help, it sends the message that to succeed she needs a man in her life. And what about Finn, what do we think he wants to tell Rey every time they end up in trouble? This is just a stereotype about how male/female relationships can’t solely be platonic.
So yes, please put more women in leading roles. But let’s tell a different story, a better story, Disney got it right with Frozen, now let’s keep the momentum going.