Finn (John Boyega) has had a rough go of it. He starts out in Star Wars: The Force Awakens not wanting to be part of the First Order, and he escapes only to end up in a whole mess of new trouble, which ends up with him in a coma. While he’s able to heal up, EW reports that Finn just wants out of everything. He doesn’t want to go back to being a stormtrooper, but he also doesn’t want to be part of the Resistance.

“It got really real for him,” Boyega tells EW. “And he just wants to get away and not be involved. His intention in the first place was to go to the Outer Rim. He was always brought back [in The Force Awakens,], but this is his chance to get away and perhaps find Rey and go off together. He’s trying to do that at first.”

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Unfortunately, the thing about doing a big heroic act like helping to destroy Starkiller Base is that now everyone thinks you’re a hero. Enter mechanic Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), who looks up Finn.

“Everyone in the space, throughout the galaxy, would have heard about the young Jedi who discovered her powers and defeated Kylo Ren and the young former Stormtrooper who helped save the day,” Boyega says. “He’s a hero to people like Rose, who fight for the Resistance because their homes have been destroyed by the First Order.”

So when Rose first meets Finn, it’s a big deal for her, especially when she sees herself as kind of a nobody. Her sister Paige (Veronica Ngo) is the one who’s the big deal, “a Resistance gunner who fights on the front lines alongside Resistance luminaries like Poe Dameron,” while Rose is a grease monkey. However, when she meets Finn and sees him as a hero, he now feels like he has something to live up to even though he just wants to get away from the war.

Their journey will end up taking Rose and Finn to the world of Cantonica, where they’ll be on a mission at the casino on Canto Bight. “The whole city is kind of one sort of luxury resort that’s been built on this very otherwise abandoned, arid planet,” director Rian Johnson says. “It’s like Vegas with aliens. So maybe it is just like Vegas.”

I’m really interested to see where these new storylines go, and how Johnson is carving out a new direction in the Star Wars universe.

The film opens December 15th. John Boyega (Finn), Daisy Ridley (Rey), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata), Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma), Dohmnall Gleeson (General Hux), Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), the late Carrie Fisher (General Leia), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), and Andy Serkis (Snoke) all return for the latest Star Wars, joined by newcomer Kelly Marie Tran alongside Benicio Del Toro and Laura Dern.

For more on Star Wars: The Last Jedi, click on the links below:

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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Disney/Lucasfilm