In
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Kylo Ren finally embraces the Light side of the Force after Rey saves his life and his mother dies (seemingly in a bid to reach out to her son one final time). As all this happens, Ben Solo sees his father, Han Solo, and earns his forgiveness after killing him in
The Force Awakens - an act that Snoke said split him down the middle.
Talking to
Vanity Fair, director J.J. Abrams shed some light on what led to Harrison Ford returning to the
Star Wars franchise as Han Solo despite him seemingly being done after his last appearance back in 2015.
"Well, I called him and I said, ‘We want to have a scene in the film between Kylo Ren and his father, would you do it?’ And he said, ‘Okay,’" Abrams said.
"It's not more interesting!"
"We had a meeting and talked about what it would be," the filmmaker continued. "Harrison, who is one of the great people ever, and incredibly thoughtful about everything that he does, all he ever wants is to understand the utility of the character. 'What is my role?' It was about sitting with him and explaining what our intention was. We talked about it for quite a while, I sent him the pages. He got it, and of course, as you can see, he was wonderful."
Interestingly, screenwriter Chris Terrio went on to reveal that Han isn't a Force Ghost of some sort and is actually just something the former Kylo Ren was seeing in his head.
"At least for J.J. and I, we thought that this finally was Ren, after the death of his mother, being able to really ask for forgiveness, to ask his father for forgiveness, and make some kind of peace," he says, "He cannot go back and take back what he has done to his father, but as Han says, ‘Your mother's gone but what she stood for and what she fought for, that's not gone," so he still can make amends in the future."
For Abrams, it proved to be particularly touching to see Ford back in the role one final time. "I just love having these two men not behaving in a way that you'd necessarily expect to see either of them... And of course having Han get to pay off the "I know" with his son, that was incredibly touching."
What did you guys think of this Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker cameo?