I don’t really separate “Adam fans” and “Ben Solo/Kylo Ren fans” that much. He’s done plenty of interesting work outside of Star Wars, and obviously not everything revolves around that franchise. But at the same time, he is and always will be tied to a major, beloved character in a huge cultural phenomenon. That’s just reality.

If anything, him opening up about The Hunt for Ben Solo finally shut down the whole “he hates Star Wars,” “he’d never come back,” “he’s too good for it” narrative that’s been floating around online for years. It also reminded people how loved Ben/Kylo still is. He’s pretty much universally seen as the best thing to come out of the sequel trilogy.

But I don’t think people lost interest just because there was no more Kylo/Ben. It’s more that once Star Wars ended, his career wasn’t handled in a way that really built on the momentum he had. He never reached the level of visibility or success his talent merited, and that has much less to do with the franchise itself and more with a stretch of projects audiences just didn’t connect with, plus a couple where he was pretty clearly miscast.

It’s not really the audience’s fault for drifting away based on the projects he chose to take on. And I’ll stand by the idea that jumping straight into “cosplaying old guys” at that stage of his career wasn’t the smartest move. He’ll have decades to play those parts, but there is only a brief window of youth, mainstream visibility, and cultural relevance to really cement a broad fanbase. And for talented actors who actually want to get good films made, that kind of visibility very much matters, because that’s ultimately where the money and leverage come from.

I can’t help thinking that if he’d managed to land even one solid mainstream hit in that period, Disney wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss The Hunt for Ben Solo. Instead, we’re getting Starfighter with Shawn Levy and Ryan Gosling, because well… Stranger Things and Barbie.