What we got in the next two films more or less treated Finn as an inconvenience with no real purpose after the fake-out is done. The Last Jedi at least pairs him with Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran), sending him off on an adventure on the casino planet Canto Bight, a storyline that represents either everything right or everything wrong with that movie, depending on who you ask. But The Rise of Skywalker mostly reduces Finn further, making him intermittently a comic relief punchline or a feckless love interest.
Boyega’s idea would not only have given Finn something substantial to do in the next two movies but it also would’ve paid off that Force Awakens twist in a way that gives his character dignity. To this day, it’s still impossible to underestimate how important Finn seemed when he appeared in the first trailer for The Force Awakens. Boyega’s face was the first we as the audience saw. Not only did he represent the first unmasked Stormtrooper in any of the movies (unless you count Django clones or Luke and Han in disguise), but he also represented a Black character at the center of a major sci-fi franchise. And yet, he was quickly relegated to leading attacks against other child soldier Stormtroopers or a bystander next to the Rey/Kylo dyad.
It’s that last point that’s particularly galling in light of Boyega’s proposal. Allowing Finn to become a Jedi in contrast to Rey would keep the Dyad in place and would further complicate the central themes suggested by The Last Jedi and discarded in Rise of Skywalker. The Last Jedi introduced the idea that Rey had no lineage and Kylo was overburdened by his lineage. By showing a child soldier who gains an identity and becomes a Jedi, they could show a different approach to the lineage theme.
As annoying as it is that Finn was never fully utilized, Boyega continues to do interesting work, perhaps even more so since being freed from the confines of Star Wars. Boyega appeared in a standout episode of the anthology series Small Axe from filmmaker Steve McQueen, he was magnetic as a conflicted ruler in Gina Prince-Bythewood’s historical epic The Woman King, and he puts in a nuanced performance in the 2023 sci-fi comedy They Cloned Tyrone. And all of this stems from his incredible debut in Attack the Block.
Just looking at those entries, it’s clear that Star Wars missed out by failing to take full advantage of Finn as a character and Boyega as an actor.