You’re probably shocked to learn that Finn was originally written to be a white guy named Sam.
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1. The version of Rey in Michael Arndt's early scripts was called Kira, and she was described as a "loner, hothead, gear-head badass."
2. Unlike Rey, who is extremely reluctant to leave Jakku, Kira was eager to leave the planet, and a scene was written in which she fantasizes about leaving while watching spaceships arriving and departing from the planet.
3. The version of Finn in Arndt's version was named Sam, and all early art depicted him as a white man. Sam was described in Arndt's scripts as "pure charisma."
4. The earliest version of Poe Dameron was tentatively referred to as John Doe, and production art depicted him as a black man. The character's role in the film varied a lot — he was briefly considered as a Jedi, and then as a bounty hunter, before they landed on making him a pilot for the Resistance.
5. When Poe was written as a bounty hunter, he had his own Wookiee sidekick.
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6. Poe Dameron was originally going to die in the crash landing on Jakku, but J.J. Abrams decided to write the character into the second half of the movie.
7. BB-8, known simply as "Surly" in early production designs, was originally written to first appear in a droid repair area on a Star Destroyer. Droids that could not be repaired there would simply be tossed into a furnace.
8. Finn's defection from the First Order was originally written to come after witnessing the airlock ejection of a captured Resistance crew.
9. A version of the script had Finn being rescued by an indigenous tribe after crashing the TIE fighter on Jakku. The tribe would've performed a healing ritual on Finn, signaling his rebirth as a hero.
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