When you see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, you’ll notice that Kylo Ren has a new — or at least, reconstructed — helmet. You’ll remember Kylo smashed his previous helmet to smoking shards in Star Wars: The Last Jedi after big meanie Snoke demeaned him as a “child in a mask.”
Kylo’s new helmet is made of the reassembled pieces of the original, with glowing red seams where the fragments are fused back together. Why does Kylo opt to have his mashed helmet recycled rather than build a new, fancier one? Adam Driver sat down with Entertainment Weekly to talk about how his character’s battered headgear is a poignant extension of the man inside.
“It’s another good example of (writers J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio) kind of leading what’s going on externally with the character with what is going on internally,” Driver said.
"That’s not a new detail — it’s been happening since The Force Awakens for that character. Even the first time we talked about putting on his suit, the suit was appropriately uncomfortable and that seemed like a really fun thing to play with — maybe he’s literally uncomfortable in his own skin. It’s restrictive in a way. And then he kind of goes through a rebirth over the second movie and starts to shed that a little bit and become who he is."
Obviously, Driver has been excited to develop Kylo over the course of the final trilogy. “He’s a very unformed person,” Driver says, “which is exciting to play and to have that be represented physically in a costume piece, or a lighting choice or, in this case, a helmet. It’s a coming together, he’s cherry-picked things he’s looked at through his history and that he’s decided he wants to claim for who he is. So it’s a physical representation of how that character has grown.”
The Rise of Skywalker opens today! And boy do people have things to say about it:
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