There are a lot of things about Star Wars: The Last Jedi that have divided fans. One of these divisive elements involves the side plot that brings Finn to the casino city Canto Bight. The stormtrooper turned freedom fighter joins up with Rose, a Resistance mechanic, to find the Master Codebreaker who can help the rebels escape the reach of the First Order.
The plan ultimately fails, with Finn, Rose and BB-8 getting captured, but this isn’t what has fans bothered. Even if Finn and Rose’s plan succeeded, it wouldn’t have had any positive impact since the Resistance was planning on evacuating General Leia’s cruiser anyway to make a final stand on Crait. All the plan ultimately resulted in was the death of a bunch of escaping Resistance fighters.
So was this plotline a waste of time? Well, it depends on how you look at it. With Rey on Ahch-To learning the ways of the Jedi from a begrudging Luke Skywalker, and with Poe planning a mutiny, Finn needed something to do for the bulk of the movie. While I would have rather seen more scenes with Finn and Poe together, the adventure Finn embarks upon ends up serving the character pretty well. After getting thrown in jail for parking illegally, Finn and Rose meet a slicer known as DJ who can help them complete their mission. However, the group gets caught and DJ trades information about the Resistance for money and the chance to escape.
Finn’s interactions with DJ and Rose play an important part in his character development. When we first saw Finn in The Force Awakens, he wasn't exactly a hero. After defecting from the First Order, he spends most of the movie’s runtime trying to get as far away from their reach as possible. However, once Rey gets captured by Kylo Ren, he decides against running away and joins up with the Resistance for real. The bravery he shows in confronting Kylo Ren proves that he had really grown throughout the movie, but at the start of The Last Jedi, he once again tries to run.
Finn wanted to jump ship to make sure Rey is safe, but it looks like that was more because of how he feels about her than it was about her importance to the Resistance. Ultimately, he’s still running away from the fight—and this is part of what makes Finn an interesting character. For every few unabashed heroes, like Leia and Luke in the original trilogy, there should be a reluctant one as well. However, by meeting someone who actually sees him as a hero, at least for a second, Finn changes his path.
DJ also causes Finn to reevaluate his choices. When the two talk privately, DJ tells Finn that the light side has done its fair share of shady dealings as well. DJ advises Finn against taking a side in this fight, but this conversation helps him decide to stick with the Resistance, despite their flaws. He realizes that he has something to fight for, and by the film's climax, he is willing to sacrifice himself to help save his friends and buy the Resistance some time. Finn goes from someone who wants to run away from the cause, to someone who is willing to die for it.
However, there are a lot of valid criticisms of Finn’s plotline as well. It seemed like the whole point of the Canto Bight sequence was to deliver in-your-face allegories about animal abuse and war profiteering, and to introduce us to some new creatures. It also doesn’t help that compared to Rey’s storyline, Finn’s adventure was pretty uninteresting. Since Luke’s return and Rey’s destiny were two of the most hyped up parts of the movie, any scene spent with the space horses felt kind of like a waste of time.
Finn’s arc was definitely not executed perfectly, but it does establish him as a full-fledged member of the Resistance, one of the few that are left. It will definitely be interesting to see what Episode IX has in store for him.