I’m a hanleia enjoyer and a sequels hater but one of my favorite decisions the sequels made was to have leia and han epic divorce that feels so true to character I know deep in my heart that they have been married 7 times engaged 10 times and impossibly divorced 9 times but they still live together when they’re both planet side at the same time. Han exclusively refers to her as “the ole ball and chain” regardless of marital status and Leia calls him “the former mr. leia organa”
Here are some of my thoughts/musings on why some people (like myself) might be feeling that the ending of TROS leaves us with an imbalance:
So a big thing about the force, a big theme about how the force has worked in this universe in this saga, is LOVE.
Anakin was this over-midichlorianed chosen one who could have brought balance to the force in response to Darth Sidious’ huge overpowered evil. BUT in order for there to be balance, he needed to be able to adjust to always falling somewhere on a scale from powerful dark to powerful light since him being an overpowered purely light force user getting rid of the overpowered evil would then leave the force unbalanced in a way that would just bring forth a new form of powerful evil to balance out the overly pure good/light left behind after Sidious’ destruction.
SO, Anakin WAS the chosen one who could have brought balance to the force BUT the timeline he came to power in had that rule against Jedi falling in love. This is ultimately what corrupted his power since it allowed for Sidious to be able to manipulate him into thinking that going toward the dark ways of the force (which his purpose of bringing balance gave him full ability to do) was the only way to save his loved one in such a structured and strict force world. So LOVE, a power that makes sense as part of what can bring balance to the force - love being a healing power toward true light but also something that can be manipulated toward true darkness - is what led to Anakin’s downfall because of the latter, and because of the Jedi rule that set Anakin up to fail like that.
So what does the force do? It tries a new tactic to bring about balance: With pretty much every light side force user wiped out and two overpowered dark force users left behind, and at the same time that Anakin gets sealed into his dark fate, the Force burps out two powerful, mostly light-leaning force-sensitive beings, Luke and Leia (who also have the potential for darkness, but not as much as Anakin), and they are born of Anakin thus still going with the prophecy. They do bring balance to the force, even if it’s mostly just through Luke being able to return their father to the light and for long enough to kill, or at least weaken for a good deal of time, the overpowered dark force user that Anakin was originally meant to be the one to kill anyway.
Okay so if we’re going with Sidious being mostly defeated but not completely, then sure, it can make sense that there was, for a moment, balance brought to the force after ROTJ - with Vader no longer there on the darkness side of the scale, but with Sidious still out there on that side in a weaker form, while Luke and Leia were on the light side of the scale and maybe in line to then be the ones to take down Sidious once and for all and TOGETHER when Sidious would eventually make his return (especially since by the end of ROTJ both Luke and Leia seem like they’ve matured to the point of being able to be balanced in the force themselves, and therefore wouldn’t potentially tip the scales too far to the light, leaving that unwanted vacuum). BUT then LOVE steps in again - the love between Leia and Han which then brings about Ben, which leads to Leia choosing to stop her training (and here again this happens in time for a child soon to be born). When she stops her training, it means she is no longer going to be part of what balances out the force with Luke when Sidious comes back to power. SO the force needs to prepare for yet another variation of balance, and again, still starts with the Skywalker bloodline - with Ben.
Ben is basically set up to be another Anakin with potential for both powerful light and powerful dark - again, so that when Sidious is defeated, there isn’t this vacuum of darkness that needs to be filled. HOWEVER, this time, the force is like, “alright so you Skywalkers are really into love, that’s cool, I don’t punish it like the old Jedi used to, that was never my intention. I can totally adjust for that, and to prove it to you, I’ll make the adjustment for Leia falling in love AND this time I’ll have love be an integral part of the power I bring about to create a more lasting balance.”
And this is how we get both Ben and Rey as powerful Jedi, both with matching/mirroring potential for both great darkness and great light, bonded in the force. They’re meant to be able to defeat Sidious TOGETHER and then both survive TOGETHER in a way that FINALLY brings balance to the force - in their relationship with each other they are able to balance each other out and, in doing so, balance out the force. Once Sidious is finally truly gone, they can then live their lives in relative peace, always landing somewhere in the middle of their potentials for powerful light and powerful dark, but always balancing each other out - them having each other would be a huge part of what keeps them balanced and the force balanced.
Breaking that bond, by having one die while the other survives, seems like it would throw off the balance yet again when that’s not what we should get at the end of the story. Now it feels like the story still isn’t over - there isn’t a lasting healing that we get to close out on. Them surviving TOGETHER could have left the audience with the feeling that, with the two of them as a team and the two of them with love as part of their power and not a weakness for them, it’d be safe to think that yes, they really are capable of keeping the balance with each other and in the force - we can now leave this story/this saga feeling that balance. We’d also be left with a lasting feeling that the force is adept at correcting its own imbalances, adding to the sense of peace in concluding the story.
*** Disclaimer: I agree with the notion that the Ben/Kylo presented to us in these movies isn’t exactly livably redeemable. I do feel like the deeper information about him and his past that can be found in the comics, books, etc that have been released in the past few years *does* help to put him more in that redeemable place, but that stuff isn’t clearly spelled out in the movies so it’s kind of a moot point. All that being said though, I still feel like in order for there to be a balanced feeling at the end (which we definitely should have gotten for the end of the *entire main saga*), Ben should have survived, and maybe the reveal of Rey being a Palpatine could have been even more reason for the two of them to stick together with their checkered pasts/lineages/potential for great darkness/etc since no one would ever be able to fully accept/understand either of them except for the two of them - they would need each other as balancing forces.
(I’m not sure where the top two gifs are stolen from (the first one seemed to link to a now defunct Tumblr). The Rey and Ben one is from hot-chocolate-escapades but cropped to match the size of the others. As always, thanks for the gifs, gifmakers!)
