Star Wars: John Boyega’s tweetstorm causes a clash with fans

John Boyega was embroiled in a social media conflict after posting about romances in the Star Wars sequel trilogy — and giving his unfiltered opinion.

All is not well with John Boyega and certain groups in the Star Wars fandom right now.

Some fans are calling it a complete “meltdown” on Twitter. Others are saying that John Boyega no longer has ties to Disney and is voicing his genuine opinion about his Star Wars loyalties. Whatever his motivation, it is making for some pretty exciting social media interaction.

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Things are not looking good for Boyega on social media. And to confirm just how much interest John Boyega has acquired lately, his hashtag was trending on Twitter, and that’s not just in the United States.

Filtering through as much of the previous twitter posts as possible, it looks like the John Boyega backlash occurred after an interaction with a specific Twitter user and seemed to go downhill from there.

Boyega made a tasteless joke about the fictional characters of Rey and Finn. He then tweeted images showing Kylo Ren and Rey fighting and various forms of abuse throughout the saga and dubbed it “Star Wars romance.”

Boyega has had a loyal social media following until now. But some of his comments on his Twitter account seem to be either misconstrued by fans or, quite possibly, the real John Boyega speaking openly for the first time. There is nothing wrong at all with someone, even a famous person, having their own opinion. But it does come with consequences, especially if you’re as well-known to the fandom and the world as Boyega.

Some fans looked up to Boyega as a role model. Now those same fans are extremely unhappy with his comments about Rey and her character’s relationship with Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren/Ben Solo.

The most fundamental issue with any fandom is that they are incredibly fickle and volatile, even at the best of times. Opinions can change daily. It can be an exhausting process being part of a fandom, let alone finding yourself in the position of a role model for these same fans. But it is what it is.

Looking at what has unfolded, it seems quite a large contingency of the Reylo fandom could be taking his comments a little too seriously. John Boyega even commented saying some fans don’t know the difference between fiction and reality. These comments were in direct response to fans discussing the love triangle between Rey, Finn and Kylo Ren.

These comments could very well have been in jest. It pays to take everything on social media with a pinch of salt, especially when they are as famous as Boyega.

But one can’t help but think some of his comments have hurt those members of the fandom that looked up to him and respected him, and may have harmed his generally positive public image as well.

Only time will tell, or perhaps today’s events will end up just like parts of The Rise of Skywalker during the editing process; on the cutting room floor.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is currently in theaters.