While it’s almost certainly a comparison that would induce an equipment-slashing tantrum from him, there are many reasons to view Kylo Ren and his uncle as parallels to each other. In particular, it’s constructive to view Kylo as the shadow version of Luke – a character who represents an inversion of the qualities that so famously defined his uncle. Where Luke was compassionate and forgiving, Kylo consciously strains to purge himself of such soft emotions. Where Luke chose the light side, Kylo chose the dark. Where Luke saved his father, Kylo murdered his. For every good choice Luke made, Kylo made a bad one.

This contrast extends to the physicality of both characters as well. Mark Hamill is (relatively) short, blond and non-threatening. Adam Driver, by contrast, is tall, raven-haired and perpetually boiling over with barely contained aggression.

In line with his benign and ‘boy next door’ appearance, Luke is generally characterised by his passivity – his most iconic hero moments have him refusing to do things (when he lets himself fall rather than join his father in The Empire Strikes Back, and when he refuses to fight Vader in Return of the Jedi). And while Kylo has no hero moments (because all of his decisions are decidedly negative), he is characterised by action and assertiveness – he chooses to prioritise capturing Rey over capturing the droid; he chooses to stick his lightsaber in his father’s gut; and he chooses to chase Rey and Finn into the forest even as Starkiller Base is falling apart around him. Kylo is guided by impulse, rather than the Force, with disastrous consequences.

From a strictly moral perspective, the picture we have at the moment indicates that Luke’s way – the way of compassion, peace, and passive acceptance of the will of the Force – would appear to be the right one. Kylo’s way – the way of self-indulgence, violence and rejection of his own inner light – is presented as the path to ruin and self-destruction.

But to end the comparison there would be a mistake, since Luke – despite his blond-hair, blue eyes, and boundless, saintly compassion for his father – is not perfect. Luke makes mistakes and errors of judgement, the most important of which is in The Empire Strikes Back. Sensing that his friends are in danger, Luke abandons his Jedi training with Yoda and rushes to save them, despite being warned that he must prioritise his training over and above his personal interests. In particular, Yoda warns him:

Stopped they [Vader and the Emperor] must be. On this all depends. Only a fully trained Jedi Knight with the Force as his ally will conquer Vader and his Emperor. If you end your training now, if you choose the quick and easy path as Vader did, you will become an agent of evil.

This is a warning that we never see come to fulfilment in the original trilogy, though we know that Yoda’s fears were realised because Luke never finished his training. This, then, raises questions with serious ramifications for the sequel trilogy – did Luke’s decision to abandon his training have knock-on effects many decades later? Did his lack of preparation and knowledge cause him to make mistakes? If he had become a fully trained Jedi Knight as Yoda had wanted, would he perhaps have been able to prevent his nephew’s fall to the dark side and the ensuing catastrophe?

We do not have answers to these questions now, though we can probably expect them to be picked up – on some level – in Episode VIII. We know very little about Luke and what his activities were between the trilogies, but the one theme that comes up again and again when Luke is mentioned is that he was searching for Jedi lore and learning as he aimed to re-establish the Jedi Order and, doing as Yoda instructed with his dying breaths, “pass on what he had learned”. The impression one gets, then, is of an isolated man – the lone Jedi in a big galaxy – who is aiming to compensate for the gaps in his knowledge left on account of his youthful recklessness and failure to listen to his master.

But what of Kylo Ren, when it comes to this? We know that Kylo has had two forms of training in the Force – one under Luke in the light side, and the other under Snoke in the dark side. Kylo, still an “apprentice” when he turned, abandoned his light side training before it was complete. Crucially, however, he did not abandon his training in the Force altogether – he merely went to a different teacher. But Kylo is still very much a student, with the topic of his training being one of the central question marks left hanging at the end of The Force Awakens. Snoke tells Hux:

Bring me Kylo Ren. It’s time to complete his training.

This, logically, would suggest that Kylo – having proved his dark-side credentials by committing patricide, the act that once filled Luke with horror – will go on to complete his dark side training under Snoke. But precedent might suggest a different, and potentially much more intriguing, direction – Luke abandoned his training for the sake of his personal interests in The Empire Strikes Back, and we have reason to believe that Kylo Ren might abandon his training in Episode VIII for much the same reason.

Hux, early on in The Force Awakens, warns Kylo:

Careful, Ren, that your personal interest does not interfere with orders from Supreme Leader Snoke.

And throughout The Force Awakens, we repeatedly see Kylo be the opposite of careful when it comes to his “personal interests”. Instead of demonstrating obedience to his master’s will, Kylo is more likely to be petulant and defiant – throughout the film, his choices convey that he is indomitable and will always choose to follow his whims and impulses rather than his orders.

My feeling is that Hux’s words, while relevant to Kylo’s actions in The Force Awakens, will prove to be positively prophetic in relation to Episode VIII. My reasons for thinking this are influenced by spoilers based on set reports, so read no further if you wish to remain in blissful ignorance.

According to a set report from Making Star Wars, Kylo and a group of followers (who seem to be the Knights of Ren) track Rey and Luke to Ahch-To, engaging them in combat. There is no suggestion of a First Order presence on the planet in any of the leaks or set reports from the Episode VIII filming in Ireland, and all of the evidence we have suggests that Kylo and the Knights of Ren travelled there alone. And since Kylo is known to be the “master” of the Knights of Ren, they are his men to command, rather than Snoke’s or the First Order’s – they follow his orders, which is further reason to believe that Kylo is acting according to his own will rather than Snoke’s.

This is a surprising scenario when you remember that Kylo is meant to have been taken to Snoke for his training, but it is not necessarily shocking when you realise that this may be yet another parallel between nephew and his uncle. It would be something of an inversion, with Kylo chasing after Luke and Rey to take his revenge, rather than tracking them to save them – but it would nonetheless show Kylo repeating Luke’s mistake by abandoning his training in the Force to pursue his personal agenda. The strength of Luke’s compassion for Luke and Han is, I feel, matched by the strength of Kylo’s fixation with finding and overpowering Rey and his uncle.

And this, of course, raises fascinating questions for what could follow. Luke’s decision to go to Cloud City represented a pivotal moment for him – the moment where he learned that Vader was his father, and had his world turned upside down. Kylo is not the hero of the sequel trilogy, but he is one of its main characters, and he is clearly following a trajectory – if he does abandon his training to chase after Rey and his uncle, his twin obsessions, that will represent a pivotal moment in his arc. We have yet to see if that trajectory will take him further down the dark path or guide him back towards the light, but I would bet on him abandoning his training and his master in Episode VIII, with far-reaching consequences for the story as a whole.