But just because Rey and Kylo have sexual tension, that doesn’t make this a good or a healthy romance. If she hadn’t shut him down so quickly and thoroughly when he begged for her to join him (“please”), we could have written several think pieces about what Twilight-esque bad messages The Last Jedi is sending young women. But when Kylo negs Rey, desperately telling her she’s nothing and nobody “but not to me,” our heroine doesn’t fall for it. (Hey, who hasn’t had a long-distance texting courtship, only to find the postcoital relationship a letdown? Someone should write a New Yorker story about it.)

Grabbing back her weapon with everything she has, Rey leaves Kylo—and only briefly, at the very end of the film, looks back before firmly shutting the door on this chapter. Kylo spends the rest of the film acting like a sulking, spurned lover, shrieking for the First Order to shoot Rey out of the sky after she dares to reject him. By giving Rey agency at all times with Kylo, The Last Jedi escapes some of the problematic messaging from The Force Awakens, where Kylo physically restrains her in one scene and whispers commands. In The Last Jedi, Rey casually and immediately deflects Kylo’s attempts to dominate her (“you will bring Skywalker to me”). He takes the loss there on the chin and doesn’t try it with her again. In fact, when he sees Snoke attempting a similar domination of Rey, Kylo is driven to kill his master.

At this point in the franchise, to root for a Kylo and Rey romance means rooting for her to save Ben Solo. Hoping for the redemption of a fallen member of the Skywalker family is a very familiar feeling to Star Wars fans. But Rey has an entire damn galaxy to save, and can’t expend all her energy trying to coddle the feelings of one injured man-child with daddy issues. She tried; she failed. I don’t think she should compromise herself to try again. “I’m looking forward to your space kiss,” Carrie Fisher told Ridley in 2015. “You’re going to have to have one. Every girl does.” But I’m not sure a space kiss is in the cards for our Rey.

That said, the sexual energy Ridley and Driver bring to this dynamic makes their inevitable showdown in the final chapter the most potentially thrilling one this franchise has to offer. The father-son stuff between Luke and Anakin was good, but a will they, won’t they (they won’t) with lightsabers is even better. It’s certainly more compelling than anything else the franchise has to offer, romance-wise. Rey’s relationship with Finn is sweet, but largely spark-less. Ditto Finn’s burgeoning relationship with Rose, which culminates in perhaps the most tepid smooch in Star Wars history. As we all know, the most chemistry Finn has is with his war buddy, Poe Dameron—but Oscar Isaac’s Last Jedi line about “Finn? Naked? Leaking?” is probably the closest thing Disney will ever give us to a gay romance in this Star Wars trilogy.

In the meantime, if it’s kicks you’re looking for in this kid-friendly film, you’ll have to find them in innuendo-laced lightsaber fights—and the best bad romance Star Wars has ever had.