This particular scene is not discussed often and I want to share it today.
I will tell you that it breaks my heart every time I see it. You can see the sadness in Rey and Finn, but what is interesting is how Rey gets increasingly angry. She doesn’t want him to go, and what should be noted, she was not going to let him. Of course, this is all happening before Finn’s heartfelt confession.
Rey: You can’t just go. I won’t let you.
Finn: I’m not who you think I am.
…Then you can hear Rey’s voice slightly breaking…
Rey: Finn, what are you talking about?
I think it’s their best scene in The Force Awakens. It sealed the potential of romance between them. The music even hinted at it.
This was the scene that really cemented them as a ship for me. Granted, I was lowkey shipping them because of their interviews together but as a known shipper of crack pairings, I was prepared for them living in an au/canon-divergent world. This scene though was what really made me believe in this ship more than any other scene in the movie.
I mean basically everything the OP said.
And the fact that later when he’s confessing to her he’s been lying, she just stares at him like, ‘okay, you lied and that’s not cool but I still care about you and I still need you to stay’ and it was just so simple yet so kind of revolutionary. So many movies and shows would have turned this into some contrived argument to cause angst between the couple but Finn and Rey understood each other. That’s just the crux of it.
They know each other and they trust each other and they care about each other. That’s all that matters. Everything else? That’s white noise. That’s stuff they can talk about later if they need to because right now, there’s a war and there’s the possibility of death, and for the first time, they have someone who cares about them and they’d rather focus on that than anything else.
Everyone loves a good hate-to-love trope but hell, everyone loves a good oblivious-best-friends-to-love trope too. And I kind of see that for them. Rey being the oblivious one and Finn being the lowkey-in-love-with-his-best-friend one. But yeah, this scene. This scene is what shipping dreams are made of.
And he couldn’t even bear to tell her until the moment he felt compelled to leave her to run from his demons (which were nearly literal, in this case). It was at the moment of their parting that she realized there was no more time, no time for Resistance adventures together, no time to sneak him admiring glances, no time to baske in his smile and see if the warmth between them would in time burn with the heat of romance.
Though she had just met him, their attachment was already so strong that the reality of losing him triggered memories of her abandonment and trauma. She already loved him so much that losing him felt like being left all alone in the universe. Again. She ran from the horror of it only to be alone, fighting on her own against overwhelming numbers and a nightmare personified, fending for herself with her wits and awakening powers.
Then the impossible happened: He came back for her. He fought through the First Order’s defenses and his own nightmares just to come get her. She was more than capable of taking care of herself, yes, but it meant everything to her that someone cared, that he cared, and she was no longer alone.
That moment closed the gaping wound in her heart and gave her the courage to seek her destiny. It gave her the courage to leave him as he slept, even though she was terribly afraid to go just as she had been afraid to leave Jakku. For the first time in long years she had faith that wherever they were in the galaxy she would find him and he her, because he had shown her that the bonds of love are greater than fear or distance. She believed that. At long last, she could believe.
*sob*
People like to reduce it to a ship that exists only because two characters were in the same vicinity of each other for most of the movie, but it’s so much more than that.
Published
myblog 