alternate tros ending

explanations behind my ending of tros PART 1

In order of when they came up in the short story:

1. So this is really about the first sequence of the ending, and it's regarding the jedi ghosts talking to Rey, and really what's going on in her head then.

So in between each message from a different jedi ghost, I wrote in a very simple description of what Rey's mind was seeing at that moment. Sadly, the memories of moments between her and Ben (although his name isn't mentioned until he speaks) were, unbeknownst to Rey, the last effects of the dyad.

In this moment, time is passing quicker than it feels, time isn't too stretched out, just as we can hear and imagine things rather quickly. So Rey, being too weak and hazy at the moment to notice, is actually caught in a fleeting force bond moment: the moment Ben is seeing his life flash before his eyes as he dies in the trench.

So, Ben's jedi ghost voice to Rey wasn't the last one she heard just for dramatic effect, no. It's because in the same time she's hearing the other jedi speak to her, Ben is actively dying. And once he actually dies, he is then able to contact Rey through the force as a jedi ghost. And his body remains there on Exogol just like how Rey's stayed in the movie. It's because Exogol is a part of the chain of the World Between Worlds (WBW).

The way I wrote it was very intentional, the split between things she's feeling in her own reality, and then small memories interrupting her reality as a result of the dyad/ force bond. Although she is seeing his memories of them two together, she's remembering her own experience of the memory in a way. If that's not confusing haha.

2. I was really inspired by Rian Johnson's the Last Jedi, and just the themes he used and really the fundamentals of their relationship that he put down in that movie. I pulled thematical strings from the Force Awakens too, like the "at night, desperate for sleep..." was pulled from the first true interaction between Rey and Kylo.

I found that this concept of loneliness and searching for this island amidst an ocean was the perfect analogy that JJ set up in tfa, and that Rian would show in tlj, while I decided to explicitly say it. The fact that during the Last Jedi, the force bond allowed them to find each other and hone in on each other's presence despite there being a sea of other things going on around them in their realities is really the key part to how their relationship is allowed to develop, and ultimately how they're able to stay connected until the end.

I mean come on, the first time they actually had a force bond moment in tlj Rey was literally and not even metaphorically on an island surrounded by a seemingly endless ocean, and at that moment the force bond happens. Even the more intricate parts of their settings during the first force bond moment help to really show you their mental state at that minute.

Rey is sitting within her hut on this island, very little light is coming in, and the interior of the hut is virtually completely dark. She was distressed and taking a breather during that scene, and her setting actively enforces that idea. Just as I tried to incorporate the "suffocating cavern" at different times to show that they were alone and that every feeling and thing happening in there was constraining in its own way.

Meanwhile in their first force bond, Kylo is getting his stitches removed from his face. Now this might seem a bit far fetched, but I interpret this moment to be very important, this little part before they even speak: he is getting his stitches taken out, a symbol that his face is healing and thus the events of the night Rey did that to him are being erased, or at least he's trying. And although it's clearly out of curiosity, he does push the robots away from him the moment he sees her, as if he was pushing away the idea of erasing what happened between them. He will let his face remain scarred because it means there's a part of her that he can hold onto.

Setting tells you a lot more than you think.