Adam Driver is a solid actor, who has proved his talents and range in a variety of genres, and the fact that Kylo Ren will forever be seen as a divisive figure isn’t on him at all. Adam Driver didn’t fail Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren and the Star Wars writers failed Adam Driver. The setup was there. Kylo Ren, formerly Ben Solo, son of original trilogy heroes Han Solo and Leia Organa, Luke’s star pupil, turned dark. There was so much the Star Wars sequel trilogy could have done with Kylo, from choosing to keep him as the villain, to giving him a proper, emotional redemption arc. In the end, they chose neither, and by doing so they doomed the character.
Driver’s career, where he’s been nominated for a Tony Award, two Academy Awards, and four Primetime Emmy Awards, speaks to his capabilities as an actor. He first gained recognition for his role of Adam Sackler on HBO’s comedy-drama Girls, and after a slew of supporting roles, from Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln to the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis and Martin Scorsese’s Silence, he went on to garner consecutive Academy Awards nominations – one for Best Supporting Actor in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman and another one for Best Actor for Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story.
Back when he got the role of Kylo Ren, an actor of his range made sense. Kylo was not the main character of the trilogy, but he was set up to be the main antagonist, and as the main tie to the original trilogy, fans were predisposed to love the character. How could they hate Leia and Han’s son, after all? This was a character the fandom at large had been waiting for.
And it was a character that hardcore fans had seen before. Prior to the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, the “Expanded Universe,” meaning all books, video games, and merchandise that existed outside of the main Star Wars movies, was removed from official Star Wars canon. But before that, for many years, fans had met Han and Leia’s son(s) – and daughter!
Jacen and Jaina Solo, the twins, and the younger Anakin, are the offspring of Han and Leia in the “Legends” canon. Though most fans of the new movie don’t really know or care to know these characters, there’s a lot about what Kylo Ren would end up being that was directly lifted from Jacen Solo’s arc in this “Legends” canon. It’s just that Jacen Solo’s arc, as tragic as it is, makes a lot more sense than Kylo Ren’s.
For fans who grew up with the Expanded Universe, it was easier to love or hate Jacen, because they’d followed his story for so long and knew him so well. They were invested not just in him, but in the relationships with the people around him – his immediate and extended family. This is something Kylo Ren was always lacking, and something that the movies, instead of correcting, compounded by saddling him with an inconsistent character arc. All of a sudden, the fandom had Han and Leia’s son in front of them, and they didn’t care. Bad writing makes everything possible.
Driver, however, is very clearly not to blame. Fans and critics alike have lauded his performance, especially in the last few moments in The Rise of Skywalker, when he finally sheds Kylo Ren and becomes Ben Solo, once again. A lesser actor wouldn’t have been able to show the difference without dialogue, but Driver made it obvious. Fans knew when he was playing Kylo Ren, when he was wavering, and when he was playing Ben Solo.
He just didn’t get the chance to do much wavering, or to play Ben Solo that much, either. His storyline was that of a villain, a petty, silly one at that. He was meant to be imposing – something Driver can physically pull off – but the lack of direction always made the character, despite the actor’s best attempts, feel cartoonish. Who was Kylo Ren? The writers didn’t know, and that meant the fans were never quite sure.
Much like Daisy Ridley’s Rey, the problem with Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren came down to a confusing story arc, and lack of one coherent vision for the sequel trilogy. Was he meant to be Rian Johnson’s tortured but ultimately redeemable villain? J.J. Abrams’s (in The Force Awakens) Darth Vader-like villain who killed his own father and never thought twice about it? Or J.J. Abrams’s (in The Rise of Skywalker) half of the force dyad that would ultimately save the galaxy? The three characters are impossible to reconcile with each other, and that’s why, no matter how good Driver is, the character never fulfills its promise.
Kylo Ren could have been the character that anchored us to the sequel trilogy because of his connection to the original movies, and the promise of his parentage. When Adam Driver was cast, fans had reason to believe they were going to get the character they deserved. But as with most everything else, the Star Wars sequel trilogy failed to give a good actor a chance to create a great character, and the movies – and the entire franchise – suffered for it.