User blog comment:DylanTBest/(SPOILERS) Defending The Force Awakens Part 1/@comment-4935956-20160116001616

Completely agree with this. All the people who say "The Force Awakens is too similar to A New Hope" need to go watch A New Hope again - because there is never a duel between Vader and Luke in A New Hope, and Luke never uses his force powers, and there's a bunch of other stuff that is way different.

Also, the reason as to why Rey let Kylo Ren live was answered in the novelization of the film. She heard a voice in her head telling her to kill Kylo, but then she stopped herself and the ground split. Its presumed that the voice is Snoke's but we don't know for sure, all it says about the voice is "It was amorphous, unidentifiable, raw. Pure vengeful emotion."

So yeah, she chose to not to kill Kylo because she realized it was the path to the dark side. We don't know who the voice was, but it could've been Snoke, or it could've just been Rey's dark side. I doubt it was Leia though - she wants to redeem her son, and I doubt she'd just get mad and tell Rey to kill him even if he did kill Han.

Also you were talking about there's a few times where Kylo seems to recognize Rey - there's one big one in the novel. After Rey force pulls the Skywalker lightsaber to her, Kylo mutters "It is you."