As the final installment of the Skywalker saga approaches, Star Wars fans have flooded the internet with questions and predictions. Will Rey break bad? Will Kylo turn to the light side? Will Leia die? Will Baby Yoda make an appearance? All important topics, but not the most important. My sights are set solely on The Rise of Skywalker’s greatest potential ships—not dreadnoughts or TIE fighters, but the relationships between characters: good and bad, alien and droid, and everything in between. There are a lot of lonely hearts out there in the galaxy, and this movie is the last chance for their thirst to be quenched. So to prepare—mentally, emotionally, spiritually—for The Rise of Skywalker, let’s run through the film’s biggest potential romances, ranked by how likely they are to achieve happily ever after.
8. General Hux–Kylo Ren
Some of the most iconic Star Wars romances begin from a place of hatred (see: Han and Leia), which is why we need to take a moment to consider the First Order’s foremost frenemies, General Armitage Hux and Kylo Ren. Theirs is not a healthy relationship—Hux is near apoplectic every time Kylo makes a questionable decision, and Kylo is a little too quick to Force-throw Hux into the nearest wall. But there’s a thin line between love and hate, and it would be irresponsible of me to not consider the possibility of a post-Rey Hux-Kylo rebound. I’m certainly not the first to think of it—there are currently 9,878 separate works written about this pairing on the fanfic site Archive of Our Own. For reference, there has been half as much fan fiction written about Twitter’s favorite ship, Poe Dameron–Finn. It appears that Hux-Kylo is actually a stunningly popular ’ship. Your move, J.J. Abrams.
7. Maz Kanata–Chewbacca
No one in the Skywalker saga appears to have a more active love life than Maz Kanata. In The Last Jedi, she strongly hints at having a past relationship with Justin Theroux’s “Master Codebreaker.” But that affair is long over, and Maz has her spectacles focused on someone else—the biggest bachelor in the Star Wars universe. In The Force Awakens, Maz asks Han, “Where’s my boyfriend? I like that Wookiee.” She has good taste. Justin Theroux may be the one that got away, but Chewie is husband material. (That said, I’m assuming Abrams did not etch out time to address this in Rise of Skywalker.)
6. C-3PO–R2-D2
The Bert and Ernie of a galaxy far, far away. The only Star Wars ending I want is one in which C-3PO and R2-D2 settle down on Tatooine and raise a family full of little BB-8s. Is that how robot reproduction actually works? I don’t know and I don’t care.
5. Rey-Finn
Alright, now for the actual canonical romances. Rey and Finn’s romantic future seemed like a sure thing in The Force Awakens. True, they met as she smacked him upside the head with her staff, and he proceeded to lie to her about his entire life thus far. But that’s actually pretty textbook rom-com, and their bond formed quickly and only strengthened as they fought Kylo, lost Han, and ultimately took down the Starkiller Base. In The Last Jedi, Rey and Finn weren’t together long, but all great romances require some distance, and Finn’s purpose for most of the film revolved around getting Rey back to the rebel alliance. However, also in The Last Jedi, both Finn and Rey developed relationships with other people—more on that in a second—and at the end of the movie, they appeared to be solidly platonic friends.
4. Rey-Kylo
Reylo: the Skywalker trilogy’s most compelling and problematic ’ship. Let’s get this out of the way right now: Kylo and Rey should not end up together. Kylo is an objectively terrible person who has murdered countless innocents and treats Rey like garbage. He actively tries to kill her several times, negs her constantly (“You come from nothing. You’re nothing. But not to me.”), and casually tries to turn her soul to the dark side. He also murders his dad in front of her, which is tough to come back from. There is, however, an undeniable chemistry between Rey and Kylo, primarily exhibited during their Force-powered FaceTime sessions (ForceTime?) in The Last Jedi. Rey may be the only person in the galaxy privileged enough to see Kylo in his shirtless, high-waisted-pants ensemble. And we can’t forget that iconic throne room scene, in which Kylo betrays Snoke, saves Rey, and proceeds to fuck up a bunch of Praetorian Guards alongside her. You love to see it.
Then again, by the end of The Last Jedi, Rey shuts the literal ship door in Kylo’s metaphorical face, seemingly accepting that she can’t change him (girl, we’ve all been there). Whether that resolve holds in The Rise of Skywalker remains to be seen, but fingers crossed that Rey finds herself a man who has not murdered scores of children—and who wears his pants at a reasonable height.
3. Poe Dameron–Finn
To refer to Poe and Finn as any old bromance is to do a massive injustice to the relationship between the rebel pilot and his former Stormtrooper pal/boyfriend/forever love. No one wants a Poe-Finn relationship more than Oscar Isaac and John Boyega—I’ll let just them do the talking here.
It’s a Disney film, and to paraphrase Oscar’s comments above, Disney executives are a bunch of cowards, so we’ll never get the onscreen Poe-Finn romance we deserve. But they’ll live on on the internet forever.
2. Rose-Finn
Lying to girls and getting laid the fuck out: A Finn Story.
Much like his introduction to Rey, Finn kicks things off with Rose Tico by lying about his intentions and then getting Tasered when she catches on. Ultimately they patch things up and bond throughout their journey to find the Master Codebreaker on Canto Bight in order to disable the First Order’s tracker. For some reason, Rose falls in love with Finn extremely quickly and ends up sacrificing herself to save him when he makes a suicide run in defense of the rebel base on Crait. I support their love, but I do not support her actions. Too many women in these movies have to save men from doing stupid shit. “I was almost there, why would you stop me?” Finn asks her, legitimately pissed that she stopped him from hurtling himself into a giant death cannon. “I saved you, dummy,” she replies, before kissing him and then passing the fuck out. Power move. (They’re definitely getting together in Rise of Skywalker.)
1. J.J. Abrams–Greg Grunberg
You thought Poe-Finn was the ultimate bromance of the Star Wars universe? Think again. Director J.J. Abrams has put his childhood friend Greg Grunberg in nearly every project he has ever directed, produced, or been remotely involved in. Grunberg and Abrams started out making home movies together as children while on playdates. Since then, Grunberg has been in Lost, Alias, Felicity, Super 8, Mission: Impossible III, Star Trek, and both The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker. Abrams even acted in Six Degrees of Separation in 1993, and managed to work Grunberg’s name into a line of his dialogue. It’s a love story for the ages, and you will definitely see it come to fruition in Rise of Skywalker.
