prokopetz:

I just saw The Force Awakens again, and in light of all that “is Rey too good?” nonsense, it struck me on a second viewing that Rey actually has a better justification for being decent with a lightsabre than Kylo Ren does.

Oh, sure, Kylo Ren has formal training, but up until that final duel, we never actually see him make practical use of his sabre. Mostly, he seems to use it as an executioner’s instrument; he has thugs with guns to handle the fighting.

Rey, conversely, demonstrates practical combat skills with her staff on several occasions prior to the film’s climax, and is explicitly established to come from a violent formative environment where knowing your way around a hand-to-hand scuffle is a basic survival trait.

For all we know based on the text of the film, all of Kylo Ren’s prior experience in sabre combat boils down to training katas, and his duel with Finn and Rey is the first time he’s ever actually used the thing in a real fight. Heck, his training is called out by Snoke as incomplete, so it’s not only possible, it’s likely.

(Granted, his betrayal of Luke and participation in the subsequent massacre might be a strike against this theory, but judging from the muddled flashbacks we’ve seen, that largely boiled down to stabbing unarmed folks in the back from ambush, and he had backup - totally different context from a duel to the death.)

Basically, what I’m saying is that Rey is badass and Kylo Ren is a huge poser.