A shipper’s guide to Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Reylo (Rey/Kylo Ren)

Reylo was the tenth most talked about ship on Tumblr in 2016, a year after The Force Awakens came out, but it has largely divided fans as to how canon the relationship between Rey and Kylo Ren is.

Fans have also been questioning how abusive it is, what with her witnessing the murder of her mentor and the attempted murder of her best friend, not to mention the incapacitation and torture she herself experienced at his hand.

But there’s no denying that the pair are two sides of the same coin. There’s a reason that Supreme Leader Snoke is excited by their meeting — “Darkness rises and Light to meet it.” Kylo and Rey understand each other.

They can even astral project themselves across an entire galaxy to speak to each other, which is something most people can’t even get right when they’re on the same planet. There’s definitely something there.

The Last Jedi only added fuel to the Reylo flames. We’ve known that Kylo is conflicted simply from the flare of his nostrils back on Starkiller Base, and with Rey feeling it too, to the point where she wants to reach out to him — that is some pure shipping-fodder right there.

There’s still some pretty questionable stuff between them. We’re not entirely here for a ship that relies on the woman having to sacrifice herself emotionally to save the man from himself. He demeans her, calls her “nothing”, all while she puts herself out on a limb to bring him back to the Light side.

The message of The Last Jedi seems to be that Kylo is irredeemable, particularly since he murdered the big bad villain, not to destroy him, but to become him (RIP Snoke. Was that a thing?). Their relationship is definitely not one that you could call healthy. 

But it’s also true that Reylo shippers everywhere have been pretty happy with their lot since The Last Jedi came out. Whether Rey and Kylo’s paths can ever truly converge again is up for debate, but there’s no doubt that they will cross.  They have a connection.

We get the feeling that their fates are pretty tied, for better or worse. At this point, Reylo is so infuriatingly shippable, even the non-shippers ship it.

Help us. We’ve fallen. And it’s got nothing to do with the fact that Kylo Ren actually is, as it turns out, shredded.