Despite being enemies, Rey and Kylo Ren share a connection called a 'Force dyad' and eventually become romantically involved with one another. Following Palpatine's final defeat and her own resurrection, Rey adopts the name Rey Skywalker to honor her mentors and their family legacy and renounce her lineage.
Throughout the sequel trilogy, Kylo Ren serves as the master of the Knights of Ren, a warlord of the First Order, and both an adversary of and romantic interest for Rey.
He was incredibly important, both to the galaxy as a whole and to Rey personally. While they may not have had romantic love for each other, they became close enough that Rey would miss him after his death. The kiss at the end of The Rise of Skywalker was a goodbye to a friend who would be dearly missed.
Kylo develops a close relationship with Rey and starts feeling genuine affection towards her, so when Snoke reveals that he had manipulated their bond and tortures her in front of Ren, he looks furious at his master. Thus, when Snoke orders Ren to kill Rey, he chooses to save her and kill his master instead.
What is the connection between Kylo Ren and Rey? As Kylo Ren himself says in The Rise of Skywalker, he and Rey are bonded not just by their familial legacies (Ren as the grandson of Darth Vader and Rey as the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine) but by their unique connection in the Force.
How Ben Solo Became Kylo Ren And Turned To The Darkside - LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga
Were Rey and Ben in love?
Ben Solo is the love of Rey's life. Initially unknown to Rey, she forms a dyad in the Force with Ben. The dyad is an unbreakable Force-bond that makes them one in the Force, despite being born as two physically separated individuals.
He saw her as a useful tool for his rise to power. He was intrigued by the mystery surrounding her. He wanted closure for his defeat at her hands. He had a genuine emotional connection to her.
Affiliation(s) Zayne Skywalker, a Human male Force-sensitive, was the son of Ben Solo and Rey Palpatine, a dyad in the force as the great grandson of the Chosen One and the son of powerful force wielders, who later becomes a legendary warrior and hero for the galaxy in the decades after the Battle of Exegol.
Kylo Ren and Rey. A mysterious and unprecedented connection spanned across the galaxy to unite Kylo Ren and Rey. A prophesied dyad in the Force was realized through the pairing of Kylo Ren and Rey, Darth Vader's grandson and Darth Sidious' granddaughter, respectively.
Finn was in love with Rey, or at least fascinated by her as one of the first people he met after breaking his lifelong conditioning. It is unclear whether Rey ever reciprocated his feelings. She never overtly rejected him because he never overtly made a move.
Their battle was interrupted when Leia used the last of her strength to reach her son in the Force. While Kylo was distracted, Rey ran him through with his own lightsaber, leaving him mortally wounded.
Finally, Rey is Kylo Ren's aunt through Anakin Skywalker. This means that Kylo and Rey's romance is just as genetically awkward as Luke and Leia's kiss on Hoth was. Granted, neither pair knew they were related at the time, but that's no excuse.
The Rise of Skywalker novelization insisted the kiss was not romantic, explaining that it was “a kiss of gratitude, acknowledgment of their connection, celebration that they'd found each other at last”, but when looking at the context and what their connection was like since The Last Jedi, the kiss between Rey and Ben ...
This fully manifests itself in Ben returning to the light side, giving up everything he has to save Rey, whom Ben had developed feelings for. Rey had just died fighting the reborn Emperor Palpatine, and Ben gave all of his life force to save her.
That Finn was going to confess his love for Rey based on a longstanding crush he's had on her pretty much since the first moment they met in The Force Awakens.
This mystery was especially prevalent in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but The Last Jedi overcorrected it by claiming Rey is not related to any established original trilogy Star Wars characters. Then The Rise of Skywalker revealed, in an out-of-left-field retcon, that Rey is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine.
She is one of the three protagonists (alongside Anakin and Luke Skywalker) of the Skywalker Saga, serving as the protagonist of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. She is the love interest of Ben Solo / Kylo Ren, who is the central antagonist later turned into the deuteragonist of the sequel trilogy.
Kylo lost to Rey in TFA because he was heavily wounded and was holding back against her due to Snoke's request that he bring her back to him alive. He is also stated by Palpatine in the Secrets of the Sith book to be “equally as powerful as a real Sith despite not being one”.
But Kylo has other plans. Still hoping to convince Rey to rule by his side, he takes advantage of their Force connection to make her come to terms with the truth about her parents: They did abandon her, but only to protect her.
