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When Poe Dameron gets captured by The First Order in The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren manages to extract the information about BB-8 from him, which begins a manhunt (droidhunt?) in order to acquire the map.

However, considering Poe's rank within the Resistance, surely he would have a great deal of information pertaining to their efforts in resisting The First Order.

After the interrogation, he is very quickly released from incarceration by Finn, and the opportunity to interrogate him further is gone.

However, considering that Kylo Ren is particularly skilled with mind reading, why did he not try to get any more initial information from Poe? Even just getting the location of where the Resistance were hiding would have benefited The First Order greatly, considering they

destroy a number of innocent planets in the Hosnian system on the off-chance they are where the Resistance is hiding.

Was retrieving the map a particularly time-sensitive task that Kylo had to interrupt his interrogation part-way through in order to begin the search?

BB-8 was unlikely to get particularly far on a mostly desert planet like Jakku in the few minutes that would have been spent continuing the interrogation.

Or is there evidence that Poe had enough willpower/ force sensitivity to resist the mind-reading to an extent, meaning that retrieving any more information from him would have taken a significant enough amount of time that BB-8 could have made enough a full escape?

They obviously didn't know that he would be broken out of confinement by Finn, but considering that Kylo Ren would definitely be aware that Leia was saved from the Death Star he must have at least considered the possibility that someone would eventually attempt a rescue.

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  • The Hosnian system was targeted because that was where the Republic capital was located - it also looks like the Resistance base on D'Qar was already known to the First Order, and was already going to be target number 2.
    – HorusKol
    Commented Jun 14, 2016 at 5:27

1 Answer 1

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Ren clearly knows who Poe is by the time he gets him in custody; I believe he even calls him "the Resistance's best pilot". The reason the interrogation was so non-productive is because Kylo Ren was obsessively focused on getting the map leading to Luke Skywalker.

When he walks out of the room after mind-reading Poe, he's already determined everything Poe knows about that map: that he gave it to BB-8 and the droid's still on the planet. Presumably, Ren was so laser-focused on that bit of information that he wanted to act on it ASAP, leaving any further interrogation for later. He didn't even consider the idea that Poe wouldn't be around later to keep going.

In addition, we can see that Poe was in really bad shape when Finn finds him. The implication is that Kylo's mind reading techniques left Poe drained, possibly even rendered him unconscious for a while. Kylo was so intent on getting that one bit of information, he wasn't worrying at all about leaving the prisoner in any condition to keep going.

The intent, I think, was that Kylo was leaving Poe to "recover" from the first round of questioning, while he went off and tracked down the map. He likely did plan to come back and question him more later, but Finn didn't give him that chance.

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  • ren knew by the moment he started interrogating him as he came into the cell already having the information who poe really is
    – Thomas
    Commented Feb 2, 2016 at 16:32
  • This is the same movie where Kylo Ren doesn't bother to capture BB-8 and just brings Rey because "she has the map in her mind." Honestly, Kylo being imprecise and not covering all of his bases is wildly in-character for him. Commented Mar 15, 2021 at 17:48

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