Star Wars Episode VII *SPOILERS*

HEY, HERE THERE BE STAR WARS SPOILERS. STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED.

Due diligence done, I'm going to write about my Star Wars experience tonight. To start, let's go back to the early 80s. I was a single digit aged child, with an older brother who was obsessed with the Millenium Falcon, Han Solo and the Force. In the future, a mini R2D2 would sit on his dashboard. He and his friends would run around the yard pretending sticks were light sabers and argue over who got to be Han and who got to be Luke. To settle your questioning minds, once it became clear that Han gets Leia, Chris was *always* Han. This is important later.

Beyond that I recall thinking that Leia was cool, but she always needed to be rescued. I mean, the first movie opens with her begging Obi-Wan for help and, yes, she can weild a blaster, but she never got a cool sword! To a six year old me, this seemed totally unfair. If I tried to be Vader or Luke, I was told "You're a girl. You can't be a Jedi! You can't be a Sith! You have to wait for one of us to rescue you." This is probably largely why I adored She-Ra as much as a I did. She had a sword and didn't have to wait, tied up in a jump rope, bored while the boys got to smack each other with sticks.

I yearned for a character that I wanted to be. I yearned for a girl who didn't end up in chains or stuck in some side room by the hero so that she wouldn't get hurt. I even recall Leia hanging on to Luke while they swing on his rope, and clearly thinking "Why doesn't she get her own rope? Why does she have to hang on to him like that?"

Fast forward to December 2015 and I'm now 35 years old. Chris never made it to see anything beyond the release of Episode II. Can you imagine that? For him the saga ends with Anakin riding a weird CGI beast through the fields of Naboo. Ugh. He never even got to see the half assed payoff of Anakin becoming Vader. Sure, he missed nothing, but he already stomached the lead up. I think that seems like the worst.

So I'm in this theater and I'm reliving watching the Star Wars movies (originals) with him. There's Leia and Han and Chewy and C3PO! There's the Millenium Falcon flying like a dream, and at the helm one seriously bad ass chick with full chest coverage! It was *everything* to me. There were women in the control room of the First Order. There was a woman villain (please fucking kick ass, Phasma, please please please), Leia is now a General, and there are even female X-Wing fighter pilots! I finally saw human beings with boobs acting like humans instead of foils to the men. No longer were they just prizes! I even had a moment of appreciation for POC having a leading man in one of the largest franchises in the world! That felt amazing!

The screen showed dogfights and light sabers and familiar faces and I felt warm, like I was sharing it with Chris even though he isn't here to see it. I felt like I could hear him freak out and cheer and get excited over the reunions.

And then it happened. The worst thing that could happen played out.

There's a bridge, a familial connection, and as Han shouted the name my skin turned to ice. I couldn't stop what was happening, I could only beg silently for my mind to be wrong. Not Han. Take Chewy, take Leia, bring Lando back to die. Anyone but him.

I'm sure there was a ton of context happening that will be revealed later. I wasn't fooled when Snape killed Dumbledore, I knew there was some other bigger twist coming, and I recognized it here. But the moment of the kill, the visual of him dying there on that bridge was hell. It wasn't just Han, it was him too. It was feeling the loss of a beloved character tied so strongly to someone I had *just* been feeling connected to in the movie. We had just been flying together in the Falcon. I could fucking hear him in his "King of the World" moment, and then, just like Han, he was gone.

I've very rarely had a movie cut that deeply, reach parts of me that I keep to myself, but J. J. Abrams reached in, pulled it out of me and threw it up on the screen. I will be drawn to the rest of this story. If anything it's now deeply ingrained and I need to finish it for him. For us. For me.

So dear Mr. Abrams,

Thank you for making a movie that expanded beyond the screen. But please don't take it personally when I say I hate you for making me live in a world where another piece of Chris is gone.

Sincerely,

Heartbroken 6-year-old Trapped In A Woman's Body