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maybeitstheireyes · 4 years

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ZUKO VS. KYLO REN

recently i’ve been thinking a lot about kylo ren (mostly because one of my friends is a hardcore reylo shipper) and it made me think about zuko- both characters were afraid of disappointing their father figures. both characters had a lot of pressure on them to be something they weren’t sure they could become. both would’ve done anything to succeed at some points.

kylo ren and zuko are NOT the same person tho. i want to make that very clear. while their backstories are kind of similar, one is written way better than the other (*cough* zuko *cough*).

as a child, the only person to truly support zuko and make him feel loved is his mother. and then she disappears, and zuko is left with azula and ozai. we all know their feelings about zuko especially after zuko’s first agni kai.

this is one of zuko’s most pivotal points in his plot because this sets him up for going on this seemingly hopeless quest to find someone who supposedly doesn’t exist anymore.

he’s set up for failure, and he knows it. but his driving instinct is to please his father and become a worthy person to take over the throne of the fire nation when in reality everyone knows that azula is the favorite. she is more powerful than zuko, she has the same tendencies as her father, and she’s incredibly smart. all of this drives zuko to find the avatar, no matter the cost. he has something to prove, something to get to, something to stand for.

and then there’s kylo ren.

unlike zuko, i hate him. i hate everything about him, and i can’t forgive him for anything he’s done like i’ve forgiven zuko.

kylo ren was raised to be ben solo by princess leia and han solo. yes, leia would have been busy rebuilding an entire democracy, but what was han doing?

killing an entire camp of children and attempting to kill your uncle also isn’t usually what happens during tantrums. for kylo ren to go so off the rails like that was so out of touch.

darth vader came to be through manipulation by emperor palpatine. he saw palpatine as this superior figure, and he wanted to please them. of course, anakin skywalker also had deep character flaws within the writing. killing an entire village of people after his mother died showed emotional vulnerability that was capable of being manipulated for someone’s own purposes, but having padme just brush that away was even more confusing.

i suppose that by having ben solo murder all of those children, they were trying to draw a parallel between him and anakin skywalker. the difference was the manipulation.

snoke getting to ben solo also had no real grounds. force communication was never a thing in the previous six movies, so how does it exist now?

the most steady character arcs happen through karma (in my opinion). what they do to other people must be done back to them (every action must have an equal and opposite reaction).

so what do they both get?

zuko loses his honor, his mother, and i guess it isn’t fair to say he lost the love from his sister and father because he never truly had them. he (at one point) lost his place on the throne to the fire nation.

but what did he do in return? he did exactly what his father ordered him to do. he found the avatar. he burned villages, and he made enemies along the way. but he faded into the background when he began to question everything. he joined the people he swore to arrest and turn over to the fire nation in order to gain his honor back. he helped the avatar, and he almost lost everything for it.

he lost iroh, his true father.

his change was neither smooth nor quick. he struggled with himself and his identity, and he was swarmed with guilt over the actions he was taking. even through season one when zuko is first introduced as the bad guy, he still makes sure his crew is safe before he continues his search for the avatar.

kylo ren dies in the arms of his “love” for his actions. he sacrifices himself in a way that is never seen before in all of the star wars movies.

if anakin skywalker was given the chance to save padme like that, he would’ve taken it. anakin was manipulated into the dark side through talk of ways that he could save the ones he loved from ever dying.

but he still paid for virtually none of his actions. he destroyed villages, killed people, blew up planets, and killed his own father. his father extended a hand of mercy, and ben solo used that hand to stab him through the chest.

yet he still gets the girl at the end. he struggles with himself through some parts of the second and third movies, yet when it comes down to it he was still the villain to the end. he helped rey kill snoke, yet he took snoke’s place right after. there was no more excuse of snoke being the one to order everything as snoke was now dead. everything that happened after that was on kylo ren.

dying was not enough for that character arc. instead of a full curve, you’re left with a flatline.

TL;DR kylo ren was a failed version of zuko.

#this is just me shitting on the news trilogy #atla #star wars #the last jedi #rise of skywalker #i hate kylo ren #kylo ren hate club #i heart zuko

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