NEW HOPE, OLD SAGA: STAR WARS AND CHRISTIAN ESCHATOLOGY
Final Judgment. Image courtesy of Flickr.
The ninth and final Star Wars film, The Rise of Skywalker, has been criticized heavily since its release just over a year ago. Some say it’s too fast-paced, too nostalgic, too neat and tidy. Ending the Skywalker saga in a way that would please everyone was probably an impossible task. But while the film is contentious among fans, it is also, to me, the most theologically profound of the whole lot. I don’t mean that Star Wars films are works of Christian theology, but that like all things, they can inspire our reflections about God and the world. In particular, The Rise of Skywalker might prompt our thoughts about the branch of theology known as eschatology, which studies “the last things,” like final judgment, heaven, purgatory, and hell.
This final Star Wars film concludes a long story, begun in Episode One, which has been building across nine films. It wraps up the storyline and shows a vision of how things turn out in the end. Christian thinking about “the end” serves a similar purpose: it gathers up the previous threads of the story and points towards a vision of completion, a culmination of all that’s come before.
Christians throughout the centuries have given various accounts of final judgment, of heaven and hell, and who goes where and when. One of the most frequent depictions today is inspired by C.S. Lewis. In his book, The Great Divorce, Lewis describes how it is that some human beings could end up in hell forever. According to Lewis, God always offers salvation to all people, but some people refuse it forever. “The doors of hell are locked on the inside”, he famously writes, (1) meaning that God does not desire hell for anyone. Instead, individual people choose it themselves. According to these accounts, people in hell have become increasingly hardened in their resistance to God’s love until all hope for their redemption is forfeited.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard C.S. Lewis referenced when discussing the difficult doctrine of hell. His account is appealing because it insists that God loves all people and desires their salvation (1 Tim 2:4), even as it explains the possibility of damnation. The evil of hell is our fault, not God’s. But even if this view safeguards God’s goodness, it inevitably remains tragic at its core. Some people are lost, and irretrievably so.
The Rise of Skywalker challenges this logic of tragedy. In the redemption of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, the scope of salvation is widened to even those most hopelessly lost. Ben Solo’s story echoes the redemption of Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker, who eventually left the dark side for the light, but this new story takes the theme of return even further. Instead of a momentary decision to repent, these films show a long, complex drama of repentance that unfolds over three films and culminates in the last. Even though Ben’s redemption clearly takes place on this side of death, his story nevertheless challenges the basis for a view like Lewis’s—that people can become so set in their evil desires, they cannot be redeemed, even from hell. In the Star Wars universe, even villains, it turns out, are never too lost to be saved.
We’re introduced to Kylo Ren in the Force Awakens (2015) as a new villain with an incredible capacity for cruelty. He kills an old man in the opening scene, orders the slaughter of an entire village, and by the end of the first film, brutally kills his own father, Han Solo. In the last scene with Han, Kylo Ren appears conflicted, torn between killing his father or returning home with him. As the film closes, however, we see him as a person cementing his allegiance to the dark side.
In the next movie, The Last Jedi (2017), Kylo Ren’s moral status is muddier. On the one hand, he continues to solidify his identity in the violent, hate-filled ways of the dark side. But on the other hand, he wrestles with the evils he’s committed, especially the betrayal of his father. Through his strange Force-connection with Rey (endearingly called “Force Facetiming” by fans), we see his internal wrestlings continue. Both characters are suffering, and both desire, above all else, not to be alone. The film ends in ambiguity. Kylo Ren saves Rey’s life and betrays his dark side mentor, yet remains wedded to the dark side. He wants to be with Rey, but only if she reigns over the empire with him. When she refuses, he embraces the role of Supreme Leader of the evil First Order.
In the final film, The Rise of Skywalker (2019), the cracks in Ren’s dark side commitment deepen. He is increasingly drawn to Rey, who remains devoted both to the light side and to persuading Ren to return to it. He’s also haunted by the murder of his father, and his attraction to the light continues to fester. Yet, as Kylo Ren tells Rey, “it’s too late.” He thinks he’s done too much harm, gone too deep into the dark side, to return home.
Those who love him disagree, and Ben’s eventual return to the light happens on the heels of three significant moments. First, his mother calls out to him across the galaxy with her last breath. He hears, pauses mid-fight with Rey, and drops his lightsaber. Rey grabs the saber and thrusts it into Ren’s side. Then, in the second noteworthy moment, Rey draws from her own life-Force to heal Ren and restore him to health. Just minutes later, in the third moment, Ren sees a vision of his father who still, despite everything, loves him and tells him to “come home.” With his father’s help, he casts his lightsaber into the sea, and Kylo Ren returns to the light as Ben Solo.
Ben’s story is brimming with a radical kind of Christian hope. It’s the hope of the lost sheep and the prodigal son, who are never too lost to be found again. It’s the hope for all of us too acutely aware of our sin, who hope that if the thief on the cross can be saved, maybe we can too. And it’s the kind of hope that challenges any account of hell in which some people are so steeped in evil that they can never be restored again.
A “self-chosen” view of hell depends on a certain notion of what it means to be human. It assumes that people are independent entities who make their own choices according to what they want and desire. In this view, people are autonomous, we might say, literally a law unto themselves. A choice to remain in hell, then, is ours alone.
But in the character of Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, this definition of the human being breaks apart. The story of his redemption doesn’t follow a solitary individual making a single choice. It’s a story of whole cast of people, bound up together in their lives, choices, and loves. Ben initially turned to the dark side, in part, because he felt betrayed by those closest to him. And Ben’s return to the light was only possible because of the persistent hope of his mother, the relentless love of his father, and the unyielding faith of Rey who always believed he was redeemable.
This last connection, between Ben and Rey, introduces a new concept in the Star Wars universe. The two are a “dyad,” we learn, a pair uniquely connected in the Force. Together, they form a whole stronger than they could ever be as individuals. The Russian Orthodox writer, Pavel Florensky, talks about human beings as existing in friendship “dyads.” (2) To Florensky, a person cannot be defined outside of their relationships to others. There can be no A without a not-A, no “I” without a “Thou.” To be a person is to be in relationship. As Ben and Rey discover, they are never alone. And if this notion of “dyadic” connections is true, then it’s difficult to imagine a person freely choosing hell forever in isolated, self-absorption. (3) As we see in the story of Ben Solo, the loves of his mother, father, and Rey continue to act upon him, constantly reminding him that hope is still alive despite his inability to see it.
In many forms of thinking about eschatology, there’s a division between the redeemed and those beyond redemption. But this logic isn’t confined to thinking about the “last things.”
The criminal justice system in the U.S. is one obvious and tragic example. Rather than seek restoration and healing of those who commit crimes, our system locks people up, isolates them from others, and, in the most egregious of cases, murders them. In this carceral logic, some people are irretrievably lost. The examples can be multiplied many times over. It’s a parallel logic to a “self-chosen” notion of hell, clothed in different terms.
The Star Wars saga ends much less tragically. It’s never “too late” for Ben; no one is ever too far gone. It’s a picture of hope, deep and wide, that stretches our theological imaginations past neat and tidy divisions in this life and beyond. As Ben’s redemption shows, hope is still alive as long as love is. And if God’s love is never-ending, let us never cease to hope, for others and for ourselves.
Though it follows his depiction in The Great Divorce, this quotation is from The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 130.
As translated from the original Russian by Boris Jakim in Pavel Florensky, The Pillar and Ground of the Truth: An Essay in Orthodox Theodicy in Twelve Letters (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
I offer a fuller version of this argument in an article on Florensky’s contributions to conversations about hell and universalism, which will come out in the Scottish Journal of Theology later in 2021.
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