Rey’s revelation in ‘Rise of Skywalker’ changes Star Wars for the worse

This post discusses the end of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. You’ve been warned.

“I hope she’s just an ordinary person. Because then she’s me.”

These words, spoken by a friend in 2015 after she saw The Force Awakens for the first time and pondered the origin mystery of our new hero Rey,  crossed my mind many times in the last few years. I quoted them in Mashable’s first roundup of the leading Rey parentage theories. I recalled them fondly in 2017, when The Last Jedi seemed to lean into the Rey Nobody theory with all its heart. 

If she’s nobody, she’s all of us. That was a message plenty of despondent souls really needed to hear during these Dark Times. We the people have the ultimate power, The Force, not some aristocratic bloodline or other. Our myths represent our values, and the world’s most beloved space myth seemed to be standing firm for democracy, equal opportunity and respect for all.    

I recalled my friend’s quote again this week, during multiple screenings of Rise of Skywalker, which opened Thursday night. Because J.J. Abrams has permanently dashed the hopes of the Rey Nobody fans. At the stroke of a pen, Rey went from being all of us to being the granddaughter of the Emperor of the galaxy, whose return from the dead is never fully explained. And a long-running Star Wars battle, between its democratic and aristocratic tendencies, was finally won by the latter.  

A boatload of caveats: I thought Rise of Skywalker was a fun movie overall. My spoiler-free review advised enjoying the thrill-ride part, and warned that overthinking leads to suffering. A second viewing made its head-snapping twists and turns seem less jarring. It also gave me a certain measure of acceptance. If you’re going to make her Rey Palpatine, this wasn’t the most horrible way of doing it. 

Not even if Abrams fails to tell us who Palpatine bumped uglies with to create his son, Rey’s dad. Which leaves us to take that uncomfortably visual question home from the theater. Thanks for that, JJ.    

George Lucas wrestled with this question: is the Force in the blood, or all around us?

Abrams respects The Last Jedi, even as he subverts its democratic leanings. He’s careful to continue the concept that Rey’s parents were nobody; now we’re told they made themselves that way, turning themselves into what Kylo previously called “filthy junk traders” deliberately, to keep her safe from the Emperor. 

There’s also a somewhat confused subplot about Finn and his Force sensitivity, which could be a ham-fisted attempt to mollify Rey Nobody fans. See, one of your other favorite characters actually came from nothing and is strong with the Force! Except he isn’t all that clear about it, and just keeps getting “feelings.” 

And of course Rey ultimately rejects her Imperial name and all the usual Palpatine guff about “destiny;” she goes so far as to give herself a chosen family name, Skywalker, at the very end of the saga. 

But, well, even that decision still aligns her with the concept of a Force-based aristocracy. 

Personally, I find myself aligned with several Lucasfilm employees I spoke with at the Rise of Skywalker premiere, the ones who confessed that they’d been upset by Rey Palpatine for months.

 Why? Because the more you delve into the history, the more you see how Abrams’ plot twist changes the fundamental nature of Star Wars — and not for the better. 

A brief history of the Force

Throughout the process of writing the original Star Wars, George Lucas wrestled with this question: should Jedi powers be handed down from parent to child, or discovered by the common folk? Is the Force in the blood, or is it all around us?  

In Lucas’ second full draft of “The Star Wars,” Luke Starkiller, as he was then known, goes all in for aristocracy. He tells a story about an ancient holy man called The Skywalker, who discovered a power called “The Force of Others.” Ironically, the Skywalker didn’t want to share it with others. He wanted to hoard it, keep it in the family. 

The Skywalker taught the ways of the Force to his 12 children, who taught it only to theirs — creating an elite class of “Jedi-Bendu” that ruled for thousands of generations. Luke Starkiller was a member of the most powerful Skywalker family. This was all presented as a plus.

By the time we got to the Star Wars shooting script, though, all aristocratic traces had been purged. Luke was, so far as Lucas knew at the time, just a farm boy with a cool pilot-Jedi dad who was murdered by Darth Vader. Obi-Wan’s Jedi kept the “thousand generations” backstory while dropping the family business bit. 

Now the Force was universally accessible, at least in theory; it surrounds us, Obi-Wan said. It binds us. It was a short hop from this description to Yoda’s equally inclusive, timeless, heartwarming pronouncement, “luminous beings are we, not this crude matter,” in Empire Strikes Back. You had to train up hard, of course, but there was no stated reason why anyone couldn’t become a Jedi.

What tilted Star Wars back to the aristocratic was Lucas’ sudden decision, in the second draft, to make Darth Vader Luke’s father. It worked like crazy, of course; it’s the greatest twist of our times. But suddenly this was a family drama, at least it would inevitably be one once the son actually acknowledged the father. 

By the time he did in Return of the Jedi, Lucas had also changed his mind about who Princess Leia was: she and Luke were now unfortunately kissing siblings. That may not exactly make them Targaryens, but all the talk in Return about the Skywalker clan and its destiny did inject the space epic with what we would now think of a Game of Thrones vibe. 

A cautionary tale

The prequel trilogy showed that Lucas was still torn between a fascination for the aristocracy and the democracy of the Force. Anakin Skywalker came from nothing; he and his mother were slaves. Yet Lucas also saddled him with a virgin birth — no high expectations there! — a Queen for a girlfriend, and blood full of midichlorians. In tying the Force to a biological concept, he may as well have turned Skywalker blood blue.

But the prequels are a cautionary tale. They show Old Republic aristocrats distracted in the face of collapsing democracy. They reveal the Jedi as an elite, remote and dangerously blinkered order. Anakin’s support for Palpatine’s authoritarian  approach leads to his undoing. Liberty dies to thunderous applause. And Lucas cut a family tie too far: In an early draft of Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine hinted he’d manipulated the midichlorians to make Anakin. “You might say I’m your father,” he no longer says.

The post-Lucas sequel trilogy, then, held Star Wars in the balance. Was the Skywalker saga just about the Skywalker family, and its relations with the Solo and Palpatine and Kenobi clans? Or would the majority of the galaxy get a seat at the Force’s table? Would it bind us, surround us all, as luminous beings? 

The answer depended on Rey. 

The Force Awakens offered few clues to her Force sensitivity, beyond the fact that her parents had sold her to Unkar Plutt on Jakku and hit the road, never to return. That made it unlikely that she was related to any of our heroes, at least. “The belonging you seek is not behind you,” said Maz Kanata. If Abrams really had Rey Palpatine in mind at this time, he dropped not one breadcrumb of a clue.

The canvas was sufficiently blank that Rian Johnson was able to paint a new and positively democratic picture in Last Jedi. The Emperor-like Snoke, now in a gold bathrobe, was unceremoniously bisected: the lightsaber as revolutionary guillotine. Rey had great depths of darkness that scared Luke, but let’s be honest, don’t we all have our darkness? The important thing was that she mastered it, and tried her best to save Ben Solo from the darkness too. 

Luke ended his life conferring on Rey the title of last Jedi. She became the keeper of the sacred Jedi texts without having to have the right last name. As Kylo Ren said, Rey had “always known” her parents sold her off for drinking money. She was something from nothing, an inspiration to all. The emphasis was on chosen family: General Organa, the adopted aristocrat who now shunned her Princess title, taught Rey that was “all we need.” 

And to underline the democratic message in a coda, Johnson gave us “broom boy,” an unnamed Force-sensitive kid working as child labor in the stables of Canto Bight. Inspired by tales of Luke Skywalker and a Resistance ring from Rose, he hoists his broom like a lightsaber. Maybe, the movie hints, just maybe, the next Jedi will come from nothing too.   

Well, so much for that idea. Maybe broom boy will be inspired by the tale of how Rey Palpatine became Rey Skywalker, but it’s hard to see how her transit from one exclusive Force-wielding family to another gets the average Joe or Jane of the galaxy thinking they could be a Jedi too. 

Would Abrams’ plot have worked without it? Might it have seemed a little fresher without retreading the most cliched ground of Star Wars, the Dark Side family connection reveal? I’d argue it would. Rey could still have been a naturally talented nobody and the Emperor would still want to turn or kill her. 

She could still be the rallying point for all the hopes and ghosts of a thousand generations of Jedi, men and women from all over the galaxy. And her quest to save Ben Solo would have been more altruistic if it weren’t one grandkid of a famous Dark Side family looking after another.

But it matters not. The question is settled. The aristocrats won the Star Wars. Rey Palpatine she was, Rey Skywalker she will be, forever more. Rey Nobody, meanwhile, is a citizen of nowhere.