'Star Wars' novel writer says he was told to cut Rey and Finn romance from 'Force Awakens' book

There's no more obvious scope for romance in The Force Awakens than that seen simmering in the background between Daisy Ridley's Rey and John Boyega's Finn.

The orphan and the reformed stormtrooper thrown together in adversity were surely star-crossed lovers, but come The Last Jedi, it had all fizzled out.

Well, not according to Alan Dean Foster, the veteran writer who was tasked with penning the novel version of The Force Awakens.

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Foster was behind the cult Star Wars book Splinter of the Mind's Eye, penned as a sequel to Star Wars, and the starting point of the Star Wars 'expanded universe'.

But in an interview with Midnight's Edge, broadcast on YouTube, he's said that hints of romance between Rey and Finn in his Force Awakens book were binned.

“There were a couple of things in there, and a couple of things that happened subsequently that bothered me,” he said. “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. I expected to see that developed further in Episode VIII [The Last Jedi], and zero happened with it.”

Notwithstanding the fact that Boyega's Finn is incessantly shouting the word Rey or asking as to her whereabouts, the quicksand scene from the movie is among the evidence often cited to support the Finn-Rey romance hypothesis.

On the desert planet of Pasaana, Finn and Rey, along with BB-8, C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca and Poe are all about to perish when Finn admits 'Rey, I never told you....' before disappearing under the black goo.

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Come The Last Jedi, however, Finn is running off to casino planets with Rose Tico, before moving on to rebel fighter Jannah in The Rise of Skywalker.

Foster's work in Splinter was sidelined after Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm in 2012 meant that the novel was no longer deemed Star Wars 'canon'.

He also penned the Star Wars novel The Approaching Storm in 2002, as well as novelisations in the Alien and Star Trek series.

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