John Boyega on ‘The Last Jedi’ Changing Finn’s Force-Sensitive Trajectory; His Episode IX Meeting With Trevorrow, and More
John Boyega was a guest on the most recent episode of the Happy Sad Confused podcast, where among many topics (and a cameo by the one and only Daisy Ridley), he discussed his Star Wars experience with host Josh Horowitz. He openly addressed how Finn was being set up to be a Force user in The Force Awakens, and how his meeting with Colin Trevorrow was his favorite Star Wars meeting.
Boyega was first asked if he’s been keeping up with the most recent batch of Star Wars content on Disney Plus, to which he said:
“I’ve been watching it all. Obi-Wan is the last thing I watched. I don’t know, they just announced… What’s the one with Amandla… [Amandla Stenberg]. Yeah, I’m excited about that. The Mandalorian, I rewatched twice, you know? […] Yeah, The Mandalorian is cool right, though. Yeah, I’ve been staying with it. My Battlefront II character is very, very strong…”
When asked what he would really like to see from Star Wars, he said:
“It’s tricky, I understand why they’re taking their time [with the movies]. In my head, if you try to continue IX, what do you do? There’s a big Star Wars universe, man. You go back to the Old Republic and see what’s going on down there? Oh yeah, I would love to go back to the Old Republic. And who are those twins that were slightly trained by Vader? Or was it one guy? But there were these twins that were trained, I think it was some Old Republic gameplay footage when I played a few years ago… The story on that was dope. Just need that. Star Wars is fun, but I always loved that heartbreak between Obi-Wan and Anakin. I always loved that, the decision between the light and the dark. If they were to explore some stuff like that I’d definitely go and watch it.”
About Colin Trevorrow’s Episode IX script, Boyega said:
“Of Episode IX? I can’t read that one, because I would be heartbroken. I had a sitdown with Colin. And that was one of the best Star Wars meetings I’ve ever had. Because it felt like two nerds that were like ‘Yes! That’s what we wanna see!’ And I saw the art, you know? The Stormtrooper rebellion and… That stuff was dope, hopefully Lucasfilm will give him an opportunity down the line to go work on something else, I’m sure they’d love to collaborate with him again.”
Josh Horowitz then asked John Boyega to clarify what exactly happened with Finn being able to use the Force in the sequel trilogy. The actor gave us the following behind-the-scenes look at how the sequel trilogy was put together, and how that affected the fate of his character:
“It was a discussion from VII that was kind of bruit, because you didn’t know which way it was gonna go. And then VIII went in another direction, so I think that with VIII going in another direction, when you’re bringing someone for the third, they have to kind of like reshape what’s happened in VIII and still kind of make a narrative of it. J. J. really went… The Force Awakens, the movie that J.J. directed, he was kind of plotting a trajectory, but obviously with the different creatives, [when he came back for the third] he still wanted to force in there… And that’s when you get the moment between Finn and Jannah where Jannah asks him ‘How do you know?’ and he says ‘It’s a feeling’. He just had to get something in there that told you how why there was a Stormtrooper who held his own long enough against a Sith. Or a Sith wannabe, to a certain extent. So it was interesting when those talks were coming in the first stage. And I thought, you’re getting the lightsaber, you start swinging and defending… Last time I checked you can’t even just swing that a certain type of way. When Han was holding it briefly, what did he do? He held it to like get the locks off or something. Like, manual labour. You are using it to defend your friend, you must have something in you. But you know, who knows if maybe down the line they have a young actor or whatever and they have a chance to expand on Finn. Who knows if we get that, what is it about this dude that made him so special?”
While never explicitly addressed in the movie, The Rise of Skywalker did tease Finn’s Force-sensitivity quite clearly multiple times, with the character trying to bring himself to reveal this to Rey multiple times throughout the film. Abrams, who co-wrote and directed the movie, would later confirm this was the case. This is not an arc that was explored in Colin Trevorrow’s Duel of the Fates script. From everything we’ve gathered over the years, it seems John Boyega, much like Mark Hamill, was burnt out by the way his character was treated in The Last Jedi.
While John Boyega has left the door open over the past couple of years for an eventual return to the Star Wars galaxy — saying at one point that he’d be up for it if Kathleen Kennedy and J.J. were on board as well — his tune has changed most recently, probably after working on a few low-budget and more actor-focused movies, like Breaking or The Woman King, two of the three movies he’ll be appearing in over the next four months. In those last few sentences, he hinted that if anyone is exploring the character of Finn again, it will be someone else, which solidifies his previous statements. That being said, who knows what will happen in a few years, after he’s worked with most of the people on his bucket list and maybe even earned a couple of Oscar nominations. After all, the “one for them, one for me” philosophy has been long established in Hollywood for a reason. Even Oscar Isaac, who seemed to be the most burnt out by his Star Wars experience, didn’t shut the door on a possible return down the line last time he was asked.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as movies from Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
