Luke kneels in the Falcon as he holds Han’s dice and looks on the past with pain, guilt, and regret. He vows that he’s “never coming back.”
He was wrong. He sees Leia and he knows.
Leia kneels at the abandoned Rebel Base as she holds the dice Luke gives her from Han, and thinks on the past with pain, guilt, and regret. She says her son is never coming back.
She was wrong. Luke tells her and she knows.
Ben kneels in the Rebel Base after all he’s done, holding his father’s dice as he thinks on his deeds with pain, guilt, and regret – hanging his head in shame.
He must feel that all is lost. He may have thought he was never coming back.
He sees Rey and looks up – and he knows. He knows he’s fucked up. But Rey shows him….
And in that moment perhaps he knows. Perhaps there is still a way to come back.
The dice disappear as a reminder that even if the things that physically manifest and remind us of our pain are destroyed…. the past can never leave us.
No matter how much you try to push away the past, it can never truly disappear. It is always with us in our memory. It has shaped us, even if we hate it, even if people failed us, even if we are traumatized by it.
And perhaps he realizes his statement, that he would destroy it all, that he can’t come back to the light (as Rey’s vision suggested and so he protested) is also wrong.
Just because you don’t see the sun after it sets, doesn’t mean it isn’t there through the night, coming back around again to rise…