Dying isn't the hardest thing: Hunting for Ben Solo’s road to redemption in Adam Driver’s filmography and Steven Soderbergh’s narratives
Photo from https://screenrant.com/adam-driver-hunt-for-ben-solo-star-wars-movie-still-happen-deadpool/
Dying isn't the hardest thing: Hunting for Ben Solo’s road to redemption in Adam Driver’s filmography
and Steven Soderbergh’s narratives
by Jen Davies, nerd
Oct 27, 2025
I'm a devoted Star Wars fan IRL, and I have been since my dad started showing me taped-from-TV versions of the original movies, maybe when I was a bit young (Ep6 was only a few years old when I was 5 or 6). Coincidentally I watched Ep7-8-9 together for the first time this past August, and raged as I did in 2019 at the sheer waste of the amazing villain Kylo Ren when he is turned into a plot device at the end - and wept again at the joy of the 4 minutes of Ben Solo that we got, the most alive plot device I've ever seen. He was brought to life only through body language and a single word of dialogue, and then he was ended without any opportunity to redeem his rediscovered self (more waste). I felt robbed twice by Ep9 - hence the rage.
I discovered the term Bendemption in the Star Wars fan community just recently, and I had not been alone among friends either in feeling like we were cheated out of a movie or three when Ben was murdered by Ep9’s makers. I've read a fair bit of commentary arguing about whether Ben had to die for Kylo Ren’s sins or not - I still think it would have been a smarter narrative move and a smarter business move to let Ben live. More on that follows.
Since I felt cheated again in August, I decided to see if I could hunt down any more of the Ben Solo joy in Adam Driver’s catalogue of TV shows and films. I hadn't been a fan (I hadn't not been a fan either) so most of it was new to me. Between mid-August and mid-October I watched everything he has done to date, and became a fan. I watched Girls last because, as a bitter Oregon Trail Gen X, I knew I would hate every character - and I did - but I ended up watching every episode anyway because it was so well written and so well acted. I saw why he was not made to audition for Star Wars, he was already flipping between distinct characters in a flash, and able to deliver his famous yelling and also much quieter lines with sensitivity.
I even watched and read media interviews with Adam to look for Ben Solo. I didn't find any more Ben, but as an amateur creative and a real-world counsellor I found a lot that I really appreciated in Adam’s career (paraphrased from some interview I read/heard but cannot find now) ‘made up of playing problematic people.’ In storytelling (and in life) those are the characters that provide the necessary tension to move everyone else, for better or worse. Most real people have something problematic in their histories, I know from my work as a counsellor, and that's probably why they're so interesting for him to play - and for us to watch.
And now we know that Adam put together a group of people he trusted to pull together a good movie about a character he loved playing. He should be proud of the work they did, though we may never see it.
I got to know Adam’s public/professional self very well over the last few months. By describing 3 values that I believe I have in common with Adam Driver who played Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, I will also propose explanations for why Adam decided to share publicly how Bob Iger pulled the plug on a Ben Solo movie already in pre-production by Lucasfilm. And while I don't believe Adam meant to create a shitstorm*, it was very convenient for AP to drop their article just after he left to film in Eastern Europe (so he is hard to reach for more). I wonder but I cannot show if he and I share a 4th value: when a business partner acts with less integrity than you expect, then the only choice is to say something to prevent others from being fucked*. But I wasn't (sing it with me) in the room where it happened… so I can't say for sure.
*More on Adam’s and my preferred vocabulary later.
1. Dying isn't the hardest thing - living to atone for your sins is the worst punishment
When Ep9 came out, those people who couldn't understand my rage about Ben’s death thought it was because I was into the (apparently) romantic subplot. I'm not a #Reylo, because I wasn't into it - I saw mutual curiosity and hope in the dyad thing. Still do. No, I was angry because it didn't make either narrative or business sense to introduce the world to Ben Solo, a character we have all been dying to meet since Han and Leia’s big kiss at the end of Ep6 in the 1980s, just to nerf him right away.
There was no narrative sense, first because Adam had made him so likeable in those few minutes. Movie makers could still have stunned us to tears, and let him live at the very end to go on in future works to seek Bendemption. And even if there had been no plans for more movies there would have been books and stuff (I don't read those but I hear they have a following and make Disney money). Secondly, and this is where I think Adam and I may share a value… Living to right your wrongs is way harder than dying. I remember thinking in 2019, in the short few seconds between Rey’s revival and Ben’s collapse, that there was another sequel ready to go, of cleaning up the rest of the First Order. It would be like the original movies again, with sneaking and sabotage, with some potential for comedy because Ben is a Solo and charm probably runs just as strong as the midichlorians in his bloodstream. The way Kylo commanded a room came from Leia. The shrug when he lucks into a lightsaber was from Han. But then Ben died, and his body vanished just to make sure we knew his body was dead. (We never saw a ghost, though - convenient backdoor to have open, Bob Iger.)
Lots of people said Kylo Ren deserved to be punished, and he sure did. Dying instead of staying alive and earning your redemption is to let him off the hook too easily, though. Dying is easy. Apologizing is hard. Earning trust is even harder after it's broken. Repairing is harder than building new - and “repairing” was even foreshadowed with bringing back the helmet in Ep9 after it was smashed in Ep8! Storytelling 101: when you plant a promise like that in a story you need to fulfill it (or tell us there is another story coming where it will be fulfilled). Or maybe the Ep9 movie makers were not clear on what they were doing and why.
Ben would want to try to redeem himself - his mother's adopted home planet was gone, but when he was a boy Leia would have tried to counter some of Han’s relaxed parenting with lessons on ethics appropriate for a prince of Alderaan. Did Kylo Ren “deserve to die”? Yes, and he had already died, when Rey stabbed him in the rain. It was Ben Solo who stood up and accepted the memory of his father’s unconditional love. So if you really believe he needed to be punished, I would argue you should join me on the Bendemption side, because he already died once, and now he can begin the real punishment of finding a way to earn a place in society again. That will take forever, given what he did.
And since Adam signed on to a follow-up movie I like to think that he and I both believe that the harder thing, the nearly impossible thing, is to seek redemption and atone for Ben’s wrongs. It would also make for great cinema. How many Oscars did Unforgiven win? Four, three of which were in storytelling categories (best picture, best director, best editor).
Oh, and Bob Iger? If I could sit down with him over a beer it would not surprise me to find him among the folks who believe death is the worst thing that can happen to you. And if it is Iger’s habit to mess with movie plots then I understand what went wrong with the plot of Tron: Ares, which everyone is complaining about right now. It's boring, and it lacks depth. If he has to personally understand every major plot point, every movie made by Disney under him will have been hamstrung by his personal vision. I watch a lot of films and sometimes don't understand everything - that's what makes them intriguing.
2. Empire is the best Star Wars movie, and one of its themes is trust
In the AP interview Adam Driver agreed with my long-held assertion, that Ep5 (The Empire Strikes Back) is the best Star Wars film. He articulated it well, that it's the best Star Wars film because it's focused on character. I would add, character development and their relationships with themselves and each other.
It could be the most awkward movie because like the first movie, Empire broke so many rules. It started us in the middle of the action with little explanation. Then it broke a new rule and a climactic battle worthy of a finale happened in the first few minutes! Then the rest of the movie is overall close shots because, as Adam noted, it became about the people.
Adam didn't say what part of the character development in Empire he appreciates the most, but what I think what the film does best is to demonstrate the different aspects of “trust”, exemplified when Lando is introduced. Trust is something Adam has talked about often. As an actor and former marine, Adam has talked extensively in interviews about what he appreciates in an effective stage or film-making environment, and the concept of trust seems key. As a counsellor I ask people to trust me with their stories so I can help them to re-story the parts that are hurting. Trust is important and feels scary at times, and it makes great story content.
A Ben Solo movie (or movies) would have to be mostly character because he would have to be rediscovering who he was, and why he was still alive (or alive-ish as a Force ghost), and how he could possibly earn enough trust to take a place near Rey that wasn't a prison cell. A stage actor like Adam is who you want to convey all that internal turmoil visibly. A writer and a director can trust him to do it.
Bob Iger didn't trust Lucasfilm, or Adam, or even Steven Soderbergh. If you look at the boring Disney stuff the last few years, I'm surprised Iger didn't leap at the chance to have an exciting director around the studio lots for a few months who their current slate of go-to’s who are OK could learn from. Tron: Ares could have been saved, I think, by a director who could have added some surprise to that story. The only surprise in that movie was the lack of romantic subplot (skipping an obvious trope was an exciting moment).
3. Small town upbringing where we learned to swear like pirates and really value people
Adam and I grew up in towns with populations of about 50,000 where people mostly do skilled labour. In Mishawaka it's manufacturing, and in my town it's mining. Workers (mostly men) tend to be a little rough around the edges in industry towns so there are lots of 4-letter words in the air anywhere you go, regardless of the presence of children. Kids are also more likely to be allowed to run “free range” in small towns, which Adam has talked about doing in interviews in the context of kids making their own fun (including beating each other up for the heck of it). I ran free as well and learned whatever language I was exposed to, nothing my parents could do about it. The Late Show skit where Adam and Stephen Colbert present the Mishawaka Community Calendar could easily have been about my hometown, which becomes Hoth in winter and toboggan rules are few. I have learned because of my big city work environments to manage my 4-letter words during the day, but at home I'm a pirate. The air can be blue, and nobody is angry, it's just how I talk. It's rare to see a media interview that doesn't have to bleep Adam.
More importantly such small towns are accustomed to generations of booms and busts that leave nobody untouched, and I've noticed such a cycle tends to create a “we’re in this together” kind of undercurrent in those communities. It also means neighbours and coworkers are up in each other's business, which private people like Adam is known to be (and I too) don't love, even if it's coming from a place of care. And if a large segment of people (say, the equivalent size of Lucasfilm in Disney Corp) was doing something community leaders didn't like, those leaders would say something to stop events early on, to prevent some disappointment and maintain positive relations with those people who you can't avoid seeing often, going forward in a small town, because “we’re in this together.” And when people in a small town who are known to do good work produce a reasonable and cost-effective plan to do more good work, they usually get approval to do it. And when they bring in someone new to town but who has a great reputation in the town down the road, we usually trust that guy because the local good guys do. (In other words, if Disney trusted Lucasfilm and Lucasfilm trusted Soderbergh, he would have been ok’ed.)
Bob Iger grew up around NYC, according to Wikipedia. I'm sure he learned lots of important things there too, but it is my experience having spent my first 20 years in a small town, then 20 years in big cities, and back to my small town recently, that small town lessons are different. I don't think Iger learned the kind of relationship-oriented way of working, or he would have got the message down to Kathy Kennedy early that he didn't like a Ben Solo movie, or bringing in Soderbergh (conjecture on my part, nobody has said that but that is also different here - Adam apparently brought him in, not the Corporation), long before hearts got seriously broken and Kathy got embarrassed in her “neighbourhood.”
There it is: 3 values that Adam Driver and I may share, and those values explain why I firmly believe there's a place for a Ben Solo movie. I'm sure he is terribly hurt by the cancellation although he is trying not to be.
As a fan both of Star Wars and now his other work I'm also extremely disappointed that we won't get to see this movie (unless Iger’s upcoming successor can see, like fans are trying to show by putting their own money up now, how a cost-effective Ben Solo movie could make a ton of money). Knowing Steven Soderbergh movies, though, I have taken a shot at a plot outline with musical inspiration for you as well. You can find that below.
I would love to take Adam Driver out for a drink and tell him how good his work is. As a Canadian I won't be travelling to the US anytime soon to see him in anything onstage, but if for some reason he is ever in Hallmark Country (many of those movies are filmed around here), there's a drink here on me!)
What a Ben Solo movie would sound like (knowing its code name was Quiet Leaves)
It has emerged that the project had been codenamed Quiet Leaves. I like that because it is both an Adjective+Noun and a Noun+Verb. The Ben Solo movie could have included elements of “movement that goes unnoticed in the air above our heads, like leaves in the breeze” (Soderbergh’s signature heist plots) as well as the more dramatic and tension-filled “the end of the brief period of peace Ben had when he let Kylo Ren die inside, and now Ben has to earn peace.”
Like Steven Soderbergh we are also going to have to make this film in our own heads now. Thinking about his films Erin Brockovich, Ocean’s 11 and Logan Lucky, here are some scenes I guessed would be likely in The Hunt for Ben Solo with some musical inspiration. Adam Driver has avoided telling us much about what he likes listening to, but in a Logan Lucky interview when asked to choose he said he prefers rock over country, so I let that influence my choices. I figure I should use recent music overall, otherwise it could sound too much like a Han Solo movie!
Ben becomes aware again (whether he's a Force ghost who, like Luke, can interact with the living world, or given a physical form again through some scheme of his meddling uncle’s - doesn't affect the scene). And it sucks, because the last things he remembers are murder (the Knights of Ren), pain (at the hands of the Emperor), and Rey’s death and recovery (and whether you think there was a romantic plot there or not, it's clear that he felt like she was the only person left alive who gave a shit about him, her death hurt). Imagine a cold open with shock, confusion, and lots of tears. Self-coaching and frustration when meditation doesn't help. Regret over what Ben did when he was trying to be Kylo Ren. Try listening to Tool - Parabol/Parabola. (I do not repeat artists but since Maynard James Keenan was a marine like Adam, and he has had several bands, I include an APC later.)
Maybe some family show up as ghosts to offer some comfort or guidance. Whatever they tell him, in the end it's his journey of atonement and he has to do it on his own terms, so they won't show up again. If this is a comedy, then Luke would haunt him throughout.
Ben finds access to whatever data sphere exists in the Star Wars universe, and naturally looks for anything he can find about Rey. This is our title screen, establishing that the irony of The Hunt for Ben Solo is that he spends a lot of it looking for other people who can show him who he is now. That'll be the plot contrivance for the first half of the movie, Ben looking for himself in other people who become part of whatever project he chooses to begin atoning for Kylo Ren’s sins. Of course, by the end of the movie he realizes he has to decide for himself who he is. Try listening to Audioslave - Show Me How to Live.
We don't know when the movie was going to be set, but let's say it's not too long after Ep9, so there still seem to be some stubborn pockets of First Order that haven't been wiped out, so he's going to take them on. He'll need to steal weapons and a ship. Try listening to The Black Keys - Gold on the Ceiling.
We will need a dress-up scene because Ben doesn’t know what Ben wears anymore. Bonus points if there is an homage to Han in Ep4 by having him stress up as a stormtrooper to blend into a First Order facility during the theft above. Don't know where he would look for things to wear, use your imagination - probably around the Cantina area (see next scene). He would end up in something that's somewhat Jedi-like because he doesn't want to look like Han, but not so much that he looks like Luke either. Try listening to The White Stripes - Slowly Turning Into You (where “you” is himself). There are studio album versions of this on YouTube but not posted by the band, that I can find.
He is going to need help, so I assume he is going to convince someone to join him. Probably there was a droid already on the ship he stole. He might also find a person or two in the obligatory Cantina scene (every movie has one) who is open to working on the anti-First Order project he has chosen. I'm not sure what he would say to convince them but he certainly doesn't tell them he was Kylo Ren (at least not at first). He would probably be grateful to have someone around to reflect who he is becoming now. Try listening to The Kings of Leon - Use Somebody.
If I was correct that the dyad thing with Rey was more about kinship (a new family), not romance, then we could have a romantic side plot. Why not two romantic plots? Star Wars downplays romance and sex (and I like it that way). I imagine Ben would fall for someone like his mother: smart, confident, capable, who doesn't really need a romantic partner but could use a favour right now. Try listening to what I think is one of the sexiest rock songs ever written, Big Wreck - Caught My Eye. If that's too metal try Queens of the Stone Age - Make it Wit Chu. They’re too sexy for Disney, but great for a movie we are making in our heads.
Something is going to go wrong, or look like it's going to go wrong, and Ben is going to struggle with the choice to use Dark Side powers because they're easy, or choose the Light again and again. First try listening to City and Colour - The Grand Optimist for a thoughtful “who am I?” kind of scene, and if you would like angstier try A Perfect Circle - Weak and Powerless for a “who the fuck am I?” kind of scene.
If we assume Ben is successful at accomplishing the project he chose, there should be something satisfying at the end. Maybe someone who helped him stayed on with him. Maybe he showed a clear sense of who he was in how he handled the major crisis, by staying in the Light even when it was hard. Gaining a place with Rey (his new family) would be way too much for so little atonement so the satisfaction will be tinged with longing. He has to keep trying. Try listening to The Tragically Hip - Courage.
And Ben will disappear into the sunset, planning more projects to do better and work toward earning a place in the world that isn't a prison cell. Try listening to The Dixie Hummingbirds - Nobody's Fault but if blues isn't rock enough for you go with Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. We want the slow version, not the blistering Led Zeppelin version. I can't find official band videos for these due to age or format.
#adamdriver #bensolo #kyloren #bendemption #savebensolo #thehuntforbensolo #thbs #hfbs #starwars
#bensolodeservedbetter #disney #lucasfilm #bensololives #soderbergh
Sources for recent news:
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I apologize that I don't have references for other things - I had not expected to feel compelled to write this!
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