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.
And that brings us to the third point: balance. Life and death; light and darkness; these are two sides of the same coin, and two sides of the Force. “Darkness rises, and light to meet it,” says Snoke, and, for things to truly balance out, well, you put one young Skywalker on one side in Kylo, and one possible young Skywalker on the other with Rey. Does that mean that Ben Solo can’t be saved?
Well, no. It just means that at some point, there will probably be darkness in the Force again.
Fourth comes the idea that this is the Skywalker saga. Buckie Wells and I have already gone back and forth about this entire theory, and I’ll quote her here:
"I think the strongest argument is that it’s the Skywalker saga, so unless we’re counting Luke (who will basically only be physically present in one film of three), there should be another… unless it’s about kylo [sic], which i don’t think it is."
She’s already argued that Rey is the true hero of this trilogy as well.
“There should be another” almost brings to mind “there is another,” the line that was a second, smaller earthquake in Return of the Jedi after Vader and Luke in The Empire Strikes Back. For a significant portion of the films, we’ve had multiple Skywalkers. Shmi and Anakin in The Phantom Menace, Padmé marries into the family in Attack of the Clones and is thus a Skywalker in Revenge of the Sith (who gives birth to the next generation), we find out Vader is a Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, Leia’s confirmed as Luke’s sister in Return of the Jedi, and both appear in the sequel trilogy films.
In fact, every film has multiple Skywalkers, whether known or unknown at that point, and while Episode IX would satisfy this without making Rey a Skywalker, assuming Leia somehow appears, it wouldn’t echo the original trilogy quite as much. Sure, Kylo or Rey probably won’t get a Return of the Jedi-style speech about how they’re cousins, but J.J. Abrams is still working on the script.
Next: The evolution of Rey in The Last Jedi
So, while you might have lost hope, in the words of Darth Vader, “search your feelings.” We do not know everything to be true just yet. Hold out hope, Rey Skywalker fans.