I noticed the ashes and what looked like rocks. My first thought was hot rocks, like to torture people with.

It turns out that the more sinister the explanations that people came up with, the closer to the actual truth they were. From Abrams lips:

“Sometimes bits and pieces of one scene end up being something that you use in another scene that you didn’t expect,” Abrams explained in a recent interview. “That’s always kind of fun, when you realize that something you’ve shot actually has a use you didn’t expect.”

Apparently the moment that Kylo Ren slammed his helmet into the ashes were from an earlier scene shot for the movie. It ended up not working exactly right in that instance and Abrams moved the shot another place in the movie.

“The backstory is, that that table has the ashes of the enemies he’s killed. That moment was actually shot for, and meant to be used in, the scene where he was talking to the Vader mask.”

So there you have it. Kylo Ren basically has more psychological problems than you ever really believed. Which is amazing in itself since he’s already pretty far gone down the path to the dark side. Now we know that, for some deep reason, feels the need to surround himself with the charred remains of people that have crossed him. It’s a little crazy on top of crazy, but, hey, that’s why we love the guy, right?!

Did you have your own theory about what the ashes were for? Did you it was just a large ash tray or were you more like me and not think about it at all? Let me know if the comments below!