Star Wars author says he was told to remove Finn-Rey romance from The Force Awakens story

Writer behind novelisations of the films says he believed there was ‘obviously’ the beginnings of a relationship between two characters in The Force Awakens script

Star Wars author Alan Dean Foster has claimed that Disney told him to remove any traces of a romance he was setting up for Rey and Finn in The Force Awakens.

The writer behind the 1976 novelisation of George Lucas’s original film returned in 2015 after JJ Abrams asked him to write the official novelisation for Episode VII.

Foster said that there was a scene in his novel that featured an explicit hint about a future relationship between Finn and Rey (played by John Boyega and Daisy Ridley, respectively), which he expected to be realised in The Last Jedi.

“There were a couple of things in there, and a couple of things that happened subsequently that bothered me,” he revealed in a recent interview with Midnight’s Edge.

“I'm going to tell you one thing they made me take out because enough time has passed, I don't think it matters. There was obviously the beginnings of a relationship between John Boyega's character and Daisy Ridley's character [in Abram’s screenplay for The Force Awakens]. I expected to see that developed further in Episode VIII [The Last Jedi], and zero happened with it.”

The films later attempted to develop a romance between Finn and Rose Tico, a storyline that was abandoned in The Rise of Skywalker.

The Independent has contacted LucasFilm for comment.

Boyega has been vocal in his criticism of how his character was developed in Star Wars, which he recently said led to an “honest and transparent” discussion with Disney.

In September, the British actor criticised the Star Wars franchise and claimed that white characters were given more nuance and attention than his or Asian-American actor Kelly Marie Tran’s character.

“You get yourself involved in projects and you’re not necessarily going to like everything,” he said. “What I would say to Disney is: do not bring out a black character, market them to be much more important in the franchise than they are and then have them pushed to the side. It’s not good. I’ll say it straight up.”

Continuing to address Disney, Boyega said: “Like, you guys knew what to do with Daisy Ridley, you knew what to do with Adam Driver. You knew what to do with these other people, but when it came to Kelly Marie Tran, when it came to John Boyega, you know f*** all.”

He added: “They gave all the nuance to Adam Driver, all the nuance to Daisy Ridley. Let’s be honest. Daisy knows this. Adam knows this. Everybody knows. I’m not exposing anything.”