Star Wars: Is Finn In Love With Rey?

Most people who have seen the 2015 blockbuster "Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens" likely picked up that two of the film's heroes — Rey (Daisy Ridley) and Finn (John Boyega) — develop instant chemistry with one another.

Also evident is that the feelings the two have for each other seem to extend beyond the bonds of friendship, which is something "The Force Awakens" novelization author Alan Dean Foster sensed. In a 2020 interview with Midnight's Edge, Foster said he tried to set the stage for the romantic feelings Finn had for Rey in the book, but Lucasfilm requested he remove this thread from the book (which implies a love story between the two was never intended). That decision bothered the writer.

"I'm going to tell you one thing they made me take out because enough time has passed, I don't think it matters. There's obviously the beginnings of a relationship between John Boyega's character and Daisy Ridley's character ... I expected to see that developed further in 'Episode VIII' ['The Last Jedi']," he said. "And zero happened with it. And we all know why zero happened with it — and there's no need to go into it in-depth — but that's, sadly, just the way things are."

Instead, "The Last Jedi" explored a potential romance between Finn and Kelly Marie Tran's Rose Tico, but nothing materialized in "Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker."

Alan Dean Foster is no stranger to crafting Star Wars novelizations, penning 1976's "Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker" and the 1978 sequel, "Star Wars: Splinter of the Mind's Eye." As for the decision to write the "Force Awakens" novelization, Foster told Midnight's Edge he knew the script director J.J. Abrams co-authored would be good since he wrote the novelizations for the filmmaker's Star Trek reboot movies.

Foster said he can fix certain things he reads in the script, like the science behind the technology. The author noted his improvement of the description of the First Order's Starkiller weapon — which he anticipated being removed — was left in. On the flip side, he doesn't have as much leeway with the characters.

"The characters are fairly well-established in a screenplay," Foster said. "Some things they said to take out, and some things they left alone. Some of the things they said to take out I thought were silly and would really have improved the book."

As such, Foster not only had to remove any hints of a Finn-Rey romance but also a callback to "A New Hope." The author included a line where Han Solo (Harrison Ford) tells Rey, "Don't get cocky, kid," when she fixes a problem he can't solve aboard the Millennium Falcon. The production made him cut it.