Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's John Boyega has released a new video addressing Reylo shippers and their tweets to him over the last few months. Almost no popular franchise or piece of pop culture is free of shipping, and one of the most popular (and controversial) ones in recent Star Wars movies is that of main characters Kylo Ren and Rey, or Reylo. In fact, like most fan ships, Reylo pulled in a fairly vocal section of the fanbase, one filled with fans who were not afraid to voice their opinions on social media.
Boyega, who portrays Finn in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker and its two predecessors, has previously thrown shade at Reylo shippers on social media, especially in the last few weeks. This resulted in a lot of Reylo advocates responding negatively to the actor's posts, ranging from accusing Boyega of causing yet more division among Star Wars fans to personal attacks. Boyega has never been afraid to defend himself (or defend other Star Wars actors) in the past, and a recently released video seems to indicate he won't be stopping this trend anytime soon.
Boyega released a new video on his Instagram page featuring a montage of negative tweets he'd received in response to his recent Reylo posts. In the video, the actor kicks and slashes the negative tweets using footage from his past interviews and television appearances. Toward the end of the video, Boyega declares, "Glad I got that out of my system." To see the video in question, look below:
Not long after the video was posted by Boyega, the actor started to trend on Twitter. Strangely enough, a good portion of the tweets were in support of Boyega, with more than a few of the top posts calling out the more toxic tweets shown in the video. Still, this isn't the first time that Boyega has been at the center of attention over his Star Wars antics, though not all of them have been so positively received. In December, Boyega made some seemingly negative comments about his co-star Kelly Marie Tran, but unlike his other controversies, Boyega offered an apology for how he worded his comments.
Either way, fans are obviously entitled, and more than likely encouraged, to ship who they want and defend that as fervently as they wish, but there's a difference in being passionate and being toxic, and Boyega's video reply to the more toxic element of the Reylo fanbase really highlights the difference between the two. Still, it's probably only a matter of time before the next big controversy surrounding the divisive Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker rears its head.
Source: Instagram