Star Wars Star Is Finally At Peace With Their Role In The Franchise
Star Wars star John Boyega says he is at peace with his experience with the franchise.
Many Star Wars fans were angry about the sequel trilogy because they thought that it didn’t live up to the promise of everything that came before as well as its amazing cast, which included major talents like Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac. However, one member of the sequel cast, John Boyega, joined those fans in their criticism when he openly criticized how Disney treated his character after his introduction in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Now, Deadline reports that Boyega has made peace with his time in a galaxy far, far away, with the actor saying that “the experiences, the fun times, good times, ugly times, bad times, it makes you who you are as you navigate through the industry, and that has definitely been interesting.”
This is a rather dramatic departure from the statements that John Boyega made back in 2020. Back then, he openly criticized Disney for introducing a prominent black character, marketing that he would be majorly important, and then basically pushing him aside. He was completely right in this regard, and it was refreshing seeing a Star Wars actor calling Disney out on the carpet, though we’re happy that Boyega is in an emotional place now where he feels like he can move on.
In looking back at how the sequel trilogy treated John Boyega’s character, it’s very difficult to pinpoint exactly where things went wrong. For example, The Force Awakens prominently hinted that Boyega’s Finn character would be a Jedi, but that was obviously a misdirect so fewer people would guess this was actually Rey’s story. Given this information, one might argue that Disney was planning to push Finn aside all along.
However, Disney famously didn’t have an overall plan in place for these movies, and they were content to let each new director take the story in new directions…or at least they were, until backlash to The Last Jedi caused Disney to bring J.J. Abrams back for The Rise of Skywalker. Originally, the third film was going to be written and directed by Jurassic World director Colin Trevorrow, and thanks to an infamous leak of his script, we know that the original plan for that movie involved Finn leading a Stormtrooper uprising on Coruscant. That would have been a fitting end for his arc as a bad guy turned good, and we can’t help but wonder if a Trevorrow-directed final movie might have given Finn a send-off that John Boyega would be proud of.
While Finn never did get a proper send-off, John Boyega has said that he was pleased to see Disney handling the racist backlash to Moses Ingram after she appeared in Obi-Wan Kenobi, noting that she received the kind of protection from the House of Mouse that he never did and that (fittingly enough for a franchise featuring The Force) this brought him a sense of balance. And now, he is able to enjoy Star Wars as a fan again, and he’s been digging newer shows such as The Mandalorian. Despite this newfound sense of peace and a renewed love of the franchise, though, we think the odds of Boyega returning for a Disney+ show are about as low as the odds of Rise of Skywalker’s story making any damned sense when you rewatch it.
