Kylo Ren’s return to the light was actually more of a slow progression than a sudden turn.

In The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren kills his father, an act meant to solidify his commitment to the
dark side. Instead, however, it revealed the conflict that still existed inside of him. In The Last
Jedi, Kylo Ren proclaims his devotion to the dark side to Snoke by reflecting on his willingness
to kill Han Solo, but Snoke tells him that it’s obvious that “the deed split [his] spirit to the
bone.” He’s haunted by his actions, and Snoke can see the conflict in him.

The Last Jedi also demonstrated Kylo’s conflict when he has the chance to destroy the
Resistance ship where his mother is located, but instead of pulling the trigger, he hesitates
while other tie fighters rush in to do what he cannot.

In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey believes that there is still good in Kylo Ren, reminiscent of Luke’s
unflinching belief in Return of the Jedi that there was still good in Darth Vader. She will fight
him if she must, and when Leia is able to reach out to Kylo through the Force, the opportunity
to stab him with his own lightsaber presents itself, and Rey inflicts a killing blow. But Rey still
believes in the conflict that lives inside of Kylo Ren, and she uses the Force to heal him,
offering him the chance at redemption.

It’s only minutes after this moment that Kylo returns to the light, prompted by a vision or
memory of his dead father. But this wasn’t a sudden turn. For all the inconsistency of plot in
the sequel trilogy, Kylo Ren’s character arc is one of the strengths of the story, a slow
progression from the darkness to the light.

His redemption is enriched through the story of Kylo Ren’s origin told by Charles Soule in the
Marvel Comics series The Rise of Kylo Ren, which reveals that the conflict between the light and
the dark has always been there. Kylo Ren has always struggled with his place in the Force, and
his turn to the dark side, much like Anakin’s, was precipitated by a long string of deception by
someone he looked up to.
Kylo Ren/Ben Solo was emotionally neglected, abused, but most importantly for the plot:
groomed.

Snoke’s patterns are textbook typical of that of a predator and abuser. He groomed Ben from
infancy. He isolated Ben from his support group emotionally and later physically. He kept Kylo
Ren and General Hux always at odds with each other to keep them in line and
hungry specifically  for Snoke’s approval, switching off who the golden child and scapegoat are
on a regular basis. The golden child is lauded in front of the other whereas the scapegoat is
punished physically. They are never both doing okay, they are never both in trouble (that they
know of).

(Note that General Hux also has a not-great backstory that made him too a prime candidate
for this kind of manipulation, but that’s not the topic of discussion here.)

However, Snoke isn’t the only person to blame. Luke and Leia also made critical errors raising
Ben. Leia says outright that she knew that something dark was in Ben’s mind from infancy, but
at no point does she do anything to directly address it. Sure, she sends him to Luke, but based
on what Luke says in The Last Jedi, she never told Luke “by the way, there’s something dark in
him. I don’t know the Force as well as you do, so can you keep talking to him so we can find
out what’s going on?” because Luke only noticed a problem when Kylo was well into his
twenties. For a modern real-life parallel, imagine if Leia’s neighbor was grooming Ben, she
learned about it, and the only thing she did was send Ben to live with his uncle and never
talked to Ben or Luke about the fact there had been an abuse problem.

It is very telling that though Leia, Luke, and Han existed in the world, at no point did Ben ever
confide in them about this other presence in his head or even talk about it, even in young
childhood when the thought-to-speech filter is nonexistent. This indicates that literally no
one listened to Ben when he was a child. No nanny reported it, and if they did, nothing was
done about it. That’s neglect.
Kylo Ren was never truly a whole hearted villian. When you consider “Forgive me. I feel it again.
The pull to the light.” How many truly evil people do you think go around asking for
forgiveness? I don’t think very many. He also asked to be shown AGAIN, the power of the dark
side. This also seems to show his ambivalence. Again, “I didn’t hate him (Han)”. This is a man
who idolizes a famous ancestor that he never met, mostly, it would seem, because he was
different. He was KNOWN. He was feared, and he was powerful. Kylo Ren was not—look at
how Hux sneers at him and even argues with him “Careful, Ren, that your personal interests
not interfere with orders from Supreme Leader Snoke”, without any repercussion at all, until
following the throne room death of Snoke, in the next movie!
I don’t think anyone with regular interaction with Kylo really respected him. And I think that to
be respected, which he seemed to feel was brought more by being evil than being good, was
what he wanted. Even after Rey’s escape from the SKB interrogation room, when Kylo
screamed for the guards, they realized the situation and didn’t even answer the call. He had
the force powers, he had the abilities, but he didn’t really have the dedication—notice how he
delegates most of his violent orders. He doesn’t carry them out himself.