Star Wars: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Finn
2. Why He Was Sent To Jakku In The First Place
As already noted, Finn had shown some hesitancy to gun down those the First Order wanted him to kill throughout his time as a cadet. And that reluctance to pull the trigger ultimately reared its head once again as FN-2187 and his trooper pals Zeroes, Nines, and Slip were sent to a mining colony at Pressly's Tumble in the Pressylla system.
The group were told by Captain Phasma that their mission was to "restore order" after some Republic agents had stirred up some dissent in the workers and disrupted the mining operations. But these miners were actually striking due to the poor working conditions.
Instead of negotiating with the workers, though, it soon became clear that Phasma simply wanted Finn's team to execute the negotiators. In the end, Finn just couldn't find it in him to kill an innocent person in the moment, so Slip did the killing for him. How kind.
Even though he couldn't go through with the execution, Finn was still officially made a stormtrooper after this particular mission, along with the rest of the squad. And in a bid to make a conflicted Finn understand precisely what it meant to be a stormtrooper and provoke him into fighting back when faced with enemies that weren't afraid to kill him in the heat of battle, Phasma soon opted to deploy FN-2187 in the fight that would eventually go down on Jakku at the start of Episode VII.
Oh, and that bloodied trooper who wipes their plasma on a spooked Finn during that same battle? That was the same Slip who did the aforementioned miner firing for his mate.