Star Wars: The Last Jedi: Who is Rey, really?

Still from Star Wars: The Last Jedi official trailer (2017). Image via Lucasfilm/Disney

What did Star Wars: The Last Jedi reveal about Rey’s identity, and are we reading too much into what we’ve been told so far?

Warning: There are major — and I do mean major — spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi below. Read at your own risk!

Well, that didn’t go as expected, did it, Star Wars fans? The Last Jedi has seen your theories when it comes to who Rey is, and it laughs at them. More accurately, it almost dismisses them, apparently just sliding it in as part of a greater confrontation. And while Rey cries as Kylo Ren tells her what he thinks he knows to be true, it’s time to make a defense of the perhaps most popular theory out there.

Yes, readers, yours truly is about to make a case that the Rey Skywalker theory is still plausible.

There are a few motifs and lines that reoccur throughout the film that we’ll focus on here. First is Rey and Ben/Kylo’s misconceptions about things they seem to know to be true. It is not for nothing that Luke Skywalker says to them both that what they’ve just told him is “wrong,” in a strange reversal of Han Solo’s iconic “It’s true. All of it,” line from The Force Awakens. Second is the idea of Rey needing that father figure, something Kylo needles her on repeatedly. Third is the idea of balance. And fourth is the concept of the Skywalker saga itself.

So, let’s begin with the idea of misconception. Rey believes that she knows exactly what the Force is about. On the level of “lifting rocks,” she does — and she puts those powers to good use to bring hope back to the Resistance. But the nature of the Force is something she does not understand at the beginning of the film, although she develops into a character who is more in tune with it throughout the film. Meanwhile, Kylo believes he knows exactly how to “let the past die” — convince Rey to join him, in an eerie echo of Darth Vader’s offer to his son in The Empire Strikes Back, and destroy that same son, who rejected what he believes to be Vader’s legacy. And yet Luke tells him that he’s “wrong” too. Those are some pretty fundamental issues on both sides of the equation. How is it impossible that Kylo and Rey are thus both wrong about her parents?

It’s also possible that Kylo’s flat-out lying, as is Snoke. Half-truth and falsehoods are effective tools to bring someone closer to the dark side. We’ve seen that before with Revenge of the Sith.

Second comes the idea of Rey and the father figure. We know, from what was said right after Carrie Fisher passed away last year, that Episode IX was to be a film that focused on her, and, in The Last Jedi, which per Rian Johnson was not changed, we see her forging a relationship with Rey, particularly at the end. Perhaps Rey’s version of “let the past die” would have been to seek not a father figure, but a mother figure in Leia Organa, which would neatly reflect how Leia once entrusted her son to her brother. If Rey is truly Rey Skywalker, then Leia would have been able to do what Luke could not: protect her sibling’s child and keep them on the side of light.