Rey watches Kylo Ren murder Han Solo, calls him a monster, and later decides she can bring him back to the light. That is a huge change, even with their strange Force connection bringing them together. A deleted scene from The Last Jedi helps explain it by showing Rey losing faith in Luke just when she needs someone to believe in. Kylo becomes easier to reach when the hero she came to find keeps pushing her away.
Rey Has Every Reason to Call Him a Monster
Rey’s first impression of Kylo comes from what he does to her and her friends. He captures her on Takodana, restrains her, and forces his way into her mind. She then watches him kill Han, who had offered her a place aboard the Millennium Falcon, and seriously wound Finn.
Their Force connection does not erase any of that. During their first encounter across the bond on Ahch-To, Rey fires her blaster at him. Later, when she calls him a monster, he accepts the description.
The audience knows there is more happening inside him. Killing Han leaves Kylo more conflicted rather than stronger, and he cannot bring himself to fire on Leia’s ship. But Rey does not witness those moments. She needs her own reasons to believe he is still reachable.
The bond creates that opportunity. Neither of them fully understands it, and neither can simply stop the other from appearing. Rey keeps encountering the person behind the mask, even when she would rather shut him out.
The Deleted Scene Shows Luke Letting Her Down
The missing piece is the Caretaker Village sequence, released among the film’s deleted scenes.
Rey sees boats approaching the village, and Luke tells her that raiders have come to attack the Caretakers. When she wants to help, he argues that intervening would only bring greater violence later. Would she still be there to protect them when the attackers returned?
Rey refuses to stand by. She runs toward the village with her lightsaber, only to discover that the supposed raid is a celebration. There is no attack to stop, and Chewbacca and R2-D2 are already enjoying the party.
Luke has misled her to make a point. He tells her that her willingness to act is what the Resistance needs, rather than an old representative of a failed Jedi Order. But Rey is hurt and angry: she came believing in Luke’s legend, and he has turned her desire to help into another argument against it.
In his interview with Entertainment Weekly, Rian Johnson described the scene as a breaking point. It originally helped push Rey toward Kylo through her disappointment with Luke. Removing it made Luke’s later discovery of their connection more painful, because his relationship with Rey seemed to be improving.
That deleted moment makes her emotional position clearer. She needs guidance, her friends need help, and Luke keeps giving her reasons to stop expecting either from him.
It does not make Kylo trustworthy. It helps explain why Rey becomes more willing to listen.
Ben’s Account Makes Luke Harder to Defend
At first, Rey firmly takes Luke’s side. When he describes the destruction of his Jedi school, she tells him that Kylo failed him.
Then Kylo gives her another version: he woke to find his uncle standing over him with an ignited lightsaber.
Rey initially calls him a liar, but the story complicates her view of both men. Luke is no longer simply the betrayed teacher, and Ben is no longer someone whose fall began without fear or betrayal of his own.
Luke eventually admits that he briefly considered killing Ben after sensing the darkness within him. The impulse passed, but Ben woke before he could understand that. What he saw was his uncle holding a weapon over him.
That confession comes after Rey and Kylo touch hands, so it does not start her sympathy. It confirms that Luke withheld something important.
Rey can feel sorry for the frightened person Ben was without excusing the violence Kylo chose afterward. Her mistake is beginning to believe that understanding his pain means she knows how to bring him back.
After the Cave, Kylo Offers What Rey Needs to Hear
Rey’s disappointment with Luke reaches a deeper wound: she wants to know where she belongs.
For years, she waited on Jakku for her family to return. Finding Luke gives her another possible source of direction, but he resists becoming the teacher she hoped for.
Then the cave fails to give her the answer she wants. Rey asks to see her parents, watches shapes approach behind the reflective wall, and finally sees only herself.
Afterward, she tells Kylo how alone she felt. He answers, “You’re not alone,” and she offers the same reassurance back, telling him it is not too late.
She says this before they touch hands. Her sympathy has already begun before the vision convinces her that he will turn.
A useful reading of this scene is that Rey recognizes her own loneliness in him. The person who once invaded her thoughts now listens while she willingly shares something painful. That change matters to someone who has spent much of her life waiting to be wanted.
The deleted village scene strengthens this progression: Luke disappoints her, the cave leaves her without answers, and Kylo offers understanding. She becomes emotionally open to him before she has much evidence that he will make better choices.
The Vision Makes Her Think She Can Repeat Luke’s Success
When their hands meet, Rey sees a future that convinces her Ben will stand beside her. Sympathy becomes certainty: she now believes that going to him will bring him back.
Luke’s own history gives her a powerful reason to trust that hope. He brought Darth Vader back to the light, and Rey reminds him of it when he warns her against leaving.
But she treats that history as something she can repeat. Seeing good in someone does not mean she can make that person choose it, and seeing a shared future does not tell her everything about what it means.
Kylo believes he has seen her future too. He expects Rey to join him, just as she expects him to join her.
They both believe they will stand together. Neither accepts that the other might mean something very different.
There is also a revealing pattern in Rey’s search. She comes to Ahch-To hoping Luke will return and help save the Resistance. When he refuses, she begins hoping Ben will fill that role. She is still looking for the person whose return will change everything.
Kylo Saves Her, but He Does Not Choose Her Side
For a moment in Snoke’s throne room, Rey seems to have been right. Kylo kills his master, frees her, and fights beside her against the Praetorian Guards.
Then she asks him to stop the attack on the Resistance fleet, and the difference between their hopes becomes clear.
Instead of returning with her, Kylo asks Rey to rule alongside him. He wants her to leave her loyalties behind and help create the future he wants.
His appeal also targets the loneliness she shared with him. He dismisses her place in the larger story, then presents himself as the person to whom she matters. He offers belonging, but accepting it would mean abandoning the friends still being hunted outside.
Rey refuses. They struggle over the lightsaber until it breaks, and she leaves to help the Resistance.
Her hope was not completely baseless: Kylo was conflicted, and he did choose to save her. But she mistook those things for a decision to reject the dark side.
The deleted scene makes that mistake easier to understand. Rey is disappointed in Luke, shaken by the cave, and drawn toward someone who seems to understand her. The vision gives her confidence that her compassion will be enough.
By the end of The Last Jedi, she has learned that his next choice still belongs to him. When their bond connects them again, she closes the Falcon’s door.