The Force Awakens and its follow-ups had so few memorable characters, it’s a wonder Disney – and Oscar Isaac – are still talking about potential spin-offs
The Force Awakens and its follow-ups had so few memorable characters, it’s a wonder Disney – and Oscar Isaac – are still talking about potential spin-offs
Finn’s arc for me is irredeemable. By killing Phasma in the middle part of the trilogy they were left with no place to go in the 3rd one for Finn.
I really wanted Phasma back with one burned eye to give Finns story a proper send off and we didn’t even get that.
“Nope! Snoke’s dead! Phasma’s dead! Luke’s dead! Resistance is mostly dead! Good luck with Episode 3 suckers!”
There was a way they COULD have fixed it in post because Fisher died before the film came out. If the whole idea was to kill one original cast member per film, and Fisher died IRL, here’s what you do:
Kill off Leia in space. Don’t give her the Jedi floating angel bit. Do her scenes in the cave at the end as a force ghost.
Play out the rest of the film as normal.
At the start of 3 (or post credit in 2), run Luke’s death scene backwards. Force Ghost Yoda and Leia appear. “Your time, it is not.” Then give the 3rd film over to Luke. There’s your OG cast member for 3.
Killing Phasma was fine. Finn’s arc was never about revenge. It was about finding his path outside of the empire. The obvious conclusions are (a) he fully integrates into the new rebellion, perhaps taking on a leadership role, or (b) he finds that he doesn’t gel there either and chooses a third path. Neither required a showy throw-down with Phasma.
It’s fully on RoS that they chose neither and did nothing with him.
The third movie had all the opportunities in the world to give Finn an arc. Instead they just had him yell “Rey!” a lot.