For a certain segment of the Star Wars fandom, the juiciest nugget from Vanity Fair’s exclusive new cover story on The Rise of Skywalker has to be this: “a source close to the movie says that [Kylo Ren and Rey’s] Force-connection will turn out to run even deeper than we thought.” For lack of any more obvious Anakin and Padmé or Han and Leia-type romances in the trilogy, fans have latched on to Kylo and Rey as potential star-crossed lovers ripped apart by opposite sides of the Force. But do actors Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver see them that way? Vanity Fair contributor Lev Grossman attempted to find out.

Unlike some potential romances that have preoccupied fans, the Kylo and Rey relationship has gotten plenty of support from inside the Star Wars production team. When speaking about The Force Awakens, director J.J. Abrams referred to Star Wars as “a fairy tale” calling out both Kylo as a “prince” and the duo’s “interesting relationship moving forward.” Mark Hamill referred to the pair’s “romantic tension” in The Last Jedi. But things looked decisively done between the two at the end of Episode VIII. And, at any rate, Rey has a lot more on her mind—like saving the galaxy. So where do they go from here?

When speaking about their characters with Grossman, both Ridley and Driver wound up describing similarly lonely and isolated childhoods for these Force-sensitive figures. Rey was literally abandoned by her parents—whoever they may be—and so has trouble comprehending how Kylo could shun his. But Ridley herself is much more understanding of the stress that might come from being raised by Han Solo and Leia Organa: “Having the two coolest parents and sometimes I’m sure it works amazingly, and sometimes it just might not.”

For Driver, this concept is the key to understanding Kylo Ren. “If you were the product of those two people, two very strong personalities who seemed to be almost more committed to a cause than anything else, what’s that like?” he says. Ben Solo is born to privilege, yes, but also tremendous pressure. Driver likens the Skywalker–Solos to a royal family, and notes the isolating power of being born with those spectacular gifts: “How do you form friendships out of that? How do you understand the weight of that? . . . It can easily go awry.” Burdened by her own talents, Rey also feels that solitude. “It’s a bit lonely having that much on one’s shoulders,” Ridley says.

Though their shared childhood isolation set them on two very different paths, the Rian Johnson-directed Last Jedi showed Kylo and Rey finding kinship in each other. Ridley describes them as “two quite powerful people who feel.” Driver adds that his character “had been forging this maybe-bond with Rey. The Last Jedi ends with the question in the air: is he going to pursue that relationship more or, when the door of her ship goes up, does that also close that camaraderie? This idea of being alone.”

If Kylo is still questioning, Rey is, at least initially, more resolute. Ridley says that as The Rise of Skywalker begins, “Rey is less inclined to believe that Kylo potentially could redeem himself.”

Looking back over the long arc of nine films, it’s easy to see the Skywalker saga as not only a story about repairing fractured bonds and escaping repeated patterns of a specific bloodline, but also the families we create for ourselves. John Boyega’s Finn and Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron are both options of support for Rey as she tries to build something new out of the ashes of her first attempt to reach Kylo Ren. “It’s not about just one person,” Isaac says of how his character deals with the strain of leadership and heroism in The Rise of Skywalker. “[It’s about] reaching out to his family, and particularly Finn is his family.”

Ridley says Rey is also part of that relationship, but kept apart a bit due to her Force sensitivity. Will Kylo Ren and Rey reforge their own connection? And, if they do, will it be love or simply friendship that unites them? The answer, Driver says, is incredibly complicated: “I don’t think it’s any one thing. The strength in what Rian [Johnson] wrote and what J.J. [Abrams] wrote is it’s never all one thing.”

For more, read Lev Grossman’s cover story about the latest adventure in the galaxy far, far away, and keep coming back to VF.com for even more details from behind the scenes. The summer issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and Los Angeles on May 30, and nationally on June 4.

— Read our exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

— Plus, all the images! Meet the characters, and go on set

— Video: the author of our cover story opens his notebook

— Faces, places, and empires: everything new revealed in the cover story

— How J.J. Abrams included Carrie Fisher in on-screen moments

— From the archive (2002): The forbidden romance between Anakin Skywalker and Queen Amidala