What Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will do with Rey and Kylo Ren

With new details from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker starting to emerge, fans have new speculations on Kylo Ren and Rey’s relationship.

Rey and Kylo Ren are complicated, and that’s putting it in about the mildest terms we can manage. It’s all throughout Vanity Fair‘s extensive coverage on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, even getting an article devoted solely to what it calls “the intergalactic will they/won’t they.”

We here at Culturess have argued that Rey and Kylo Ren getting together would not be a good turn for the franchise to take before, and it’s important to note that neither Daisy Ridley nor Adam Driver, as quoted, seem to think it’s a romantic relationship. It’s a “relationship,” since Driver uses that word explicitly, and he elaborates by saying “I don’t think it’s any one thing.”

In other words, shippers or anti-shippers, you neither can get your hopes up nor feel that they’ve been crushed, which is appropriate considering that we’re still about seven months away from the movie. At least, you can safely do that with the quotes we have from the pieces.

But what are we to do with the covers? Writer Joanna Robinson noted that the two covers have “a pretty clever hidden meaning.”

And of course, there are shippers having some strong feelings about it.

But there are more mundane, non-romantic interpretations as well, focusing in on other details of each cover.

Let’s face it, a Skywalker losing a hand is practically tradition at this point, and The Rise of Skywalker should get credit for waiting until the third movie to actually pay off on it. Notably, Kylo Ren typically wears gloves as well, so it’s entirely possible that he’ll have a mechanical hand beneath one of them by the time The Rise of Skywalker ends.

Now, Rey could as well, since we don’t see one of her hands, either. Still, we lean towards Kylo Ren losing a hand if one of them does, because, well, it’s usually the male Skywalkers that lose their hands.

Of course, there’s one other significant detail to be found here:

Whether or not Ben Solo returns in Kylo Ren’s place is also up for debate, but not only is Rey holding a weapon, she’s holding her staff instead of the Skywalker lightsaber. It does get reforged, and we know she has it in the trailer, so to go for the staff seems like a particularly pointed choice.

Will she give the lightsaber up at some point? Will we see Kylo Ren duel-wield his old lightsaber and the family heirloom?

Everything is possible, Star Wars fans.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is set for a December 20 release.