the idea for the character, whose name during early pre-production was sam, came from screenwriter lawrence kasdan. colleague michael arndt, who prepared an early draft of "the force awakens", said: and then we were struggling to figure out who the male lead was going to be. i remember we talked about pirates and merchant marines and all this stuff, and finally larry [kasdan] got pissed at all of us and he's just like, "you guys, you're not thinking big. what if he's a stormtrooper that ran away?"