The Rise of Skywalker’s big Reylo scene was almost cut

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is quickly coming to rival The Last Jedi when it comes to controversy, but it turns out that one of the scenes being heatedly almost didn’t make it into the movie: the kiss between Rey and Kylo Ren.

Reylo shippers have long been clamoring for a kiss between the trilogy’s lead and its main villain, while others adamantly opposed the idea. In an interview with HuffPost, The Rise of Skywalker editor Maryann Brandon broke the scene down, admitting that Brandon went back and forth over whether the big moment should be included. She went through different cuts to figure it out, and ultimately decided the kiss was worth keeping. “I always said, ‘The movie will tell us whether they should kiss or not,” she explained. “We will know by the time we get to the end of our process, if it should happen. And I felt it should, and [director J.J. Abrams] agreed with me, and other people who saw the film agreed.”

That consensus seems to be what led to the scene’s inclusion, but Brandon said they knew some fans wouldn’t be thrilled with the kiss. After all, not everyone ships these two together. And even those who do support a romantic relationship between Rey and Kylo had some complaints about how the scene unfolded, especially given Kylo’s — or Ben Solo’s — swift death afterward.

“I know there will be people who wish they hadn’t, but this is a film that was never going to please everyone, and I think that the reviews are kind of reflective of that,” Brandan said. “The things that certain people love, other people hated. And that’s the phenomenon of Star Wars.”

She’s certainly right about that last part, as the Star Wars fandom has dominated the internet as of late, arguing over whether the final installment was worthwhile. Whatever your feelings about The Rise of Skywalker, though, it definitely wasn’t going to please every fan — but at least the creatives behind it took that into consideration when making major decisions about the story.

Brandon also talked about some of the film’s other controversial decisions, like bringing back Emperor Palpatine as the movie’s main villain, and how much the movie would reveal about how he’d stayed alive this whole time. Originally, there was “a little more information about it, what was keeping [Palpatine] alive,” Brandon said, but “it seemed to go off topic.”

"There was so much information in the film and so many characters that we wanted to have an audience concentrate on. I think we felt we didn’t want to clutter the film up with things you didn’t need to know."

Another example of that: we see that Palpatine has a bunch of Snoke clones growing in tubes, which tells us his deal without taking up a lot of screentime. “I just think that came up as a visual effect that we thought would be really fun for an audience, to create a visual that would tell that whole story,” Brandon said. “I believe that’s successful. We didn’t have to change a lot of dialogue. You just see one shot […] and you kind of get it. I love stuff like that. We can just have a moment where you just see something in the background and you go, ‘OK, I totally get that.’”

Unfortunately, that same philosophy — of keeping the movie focused on just the things the filmmakers deemed most important — meant we had to spend less time with characters like Rose Tico, who had prominent roles in The Last Jedi. “There were a lot of characters in the film, and because J.J. wanted to make this film about a journey of the three main friends and then Rey’s conflict with Kylo Ren, it became very hard to service a lot more characters,” Brandon said. “She’s an important character in the Resistance, and we tried very hard to show that in the film, and I think we did, but the film just really couldn’t handle much more character stories.”

"We all love Rose. And we want to make her character sing. And that’s why she’s in the end battle. And I cut to her a few times in the end battle because I know she’s a fan favorite, and I wanted to show her being involved."

Were these the right choices? The debate continues.

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