“This is kind of my reaction to— bear with me now— the Star Wars films,” Russel T Davies said in a recent commentary track on the finale of the newest season of Doctor Who. “I can’t remember their titles, but in the last trilogy, the second film said that Daisy Ridley was nothing special, there was nothing special about her parentage. […] She was just ordinary. An ordinary person with the Force— and then in the next one, they changed it all so she was the child of the Emperor, and they made her… She was, like, cosmic and had godlike powers— and I really loved the version where she wasn’t special.”
Here’s1 more2 articles3 saying4 the5 same6 thing7 and there’s more beyond that, and posts beyond that, and also I know the thoughts running in your head, so as we proceed, do not, do not pretend like this isn’t the consensus view; it is, it has been, it will be. We can all agree that The Last Jedi established that Rey was just an ordinary person, with no special ancestry, and The Rise of Skywalker changed this completely, a full 180 shift, so that now she is the special daughter who received her Force powers from her auspicious bloodline. This is as received and uncontroversial a truth as that vikings wore hats with little horns on them.
And, like those fact, it’s wrong8. Its wrong in substance, theme, and meaning. It’s wrong in text and subtext. I’m sorry but you, Russell T Davies, the fine cultural critics of our eras, all the podcasts, all of you have been incorrect and it was time somebody vainly tried to correct them with a post on a minor social networking site through a silly alias.
Yes, Rey is the daughter of a clone of the Emperor. What does that mean?
Star Wars is not Dune; she’s not the Kwisatz Haderach, selectively bred for a thousand generations to be the most important person in the universe. She’s not Superman, last son of Krypton, embued by his birth like a demigod with powers beyond the ken of normal men and a charge by her father to do great deeds upon the Earth. She’s not even President Josiah Bartlett, the most American man who ever lived, essentially American royalty and a direct descendent of Mayflower pilgrims, a man perfectly bred to be President of the United States9. We love bloodlines in our fiction, don’t we?
But Rey? She’s the child of the clone of a one-time Senator of Naboo. Is that a powerful bloodline? Is that enough to make someone unattainably special?
Because I think it’s truly important, in the understanding of Star Wars, to remember that good and evil both do not arrive from special places. The greatest goods and the worst evils come from common beginnings; there is no incredible outside influence to struggle against. The Emperor is horrible because he was elected to do horrible things by his peers. When explaining the evil of the Emperor to Lawrence Kasdan and Richard Maquand during preproduction on Return of the Jedi, George Lucas compared him to “Richard Nixon”10. He’s not an ancient God or powerful alien, he’s just… some guy, who learned the right things to accumulate power in politics and mysticism. Rey is just some guy’s granddaughter. The horror is that sometimes, Just Some Guy is enough to ruin a galaxy.
Don’t believe me? Fine! Let’s take it back to the original and prequel trilogies. The whole thing, you may capably argue, hinges around Luke discovering he’s not just a farmboy, that actually— and here you wag your clever finger at me— that actually he comes from a special family, he’s actually the son of Darth Vader and the brother of a princess, and actually he gets his power from his special blood. Oh you stupid little beach ball, you say , don’t you see how the thoughtless miscreants that made the sequels were just copying this?
Except that’s not the case! Yes, Luke learns that he is not just the farmboy child of a space trucker, but the offspring of Anakin Skywalker, noble Jedi Knight. What does that mean? To be a Jedi Knight isn’t the same thing as a Greek hero; you don’t need to be a demigod or charged with divine purpose; a Jedi is, even in A New Hope, simply a person who attains spiritual connection and inner peace. That his father was a Jedi is proof that there’s more destiny available to Luke than he imagines, but not because it imbues him with power; but because it expands his imagination of the possible11
And what does it mean that he discovers Darth Vader is his father? Let’s even take the full Sequel view, that Luke and Leia are the children of Anakin Skywalker, “Chosen One of the Force”, and who, you hiss, specifically has more midichlorians12 in his blood than anybody else. He literally has better blood, how can you say that’s not how the Force works, you say.
It’s a good argument! It took me a long time to make my peace with the Prequels over this bit! But here is the truth:
Even with “the good blood”, Anakin is not a special child. He’s the son of a slave, sold as property, overlooked and forgotten until discovered by Qui-Gon Jinn. Even if he was created by the Force, even if he was destined for greatness, his life as lived was still one of utter unspecialness. Again, he’s not Paul Atreides or Perseus or Arya Stark, noble of blood and born with a lineage and a clear destiny; he was just Annie from Mos Espa, the kid that talks to the spacers in the bars. He’s so unspecial the Jedi never noticed him in their regular screens— we know they go from planet to planet finding the special kids and taking them to be trained. Anakin was overlooked, the most humble of humble origins. You can argue the Skywalker lineage becomes a great line from the actions of the family, but you cannot, cannot say its because of their birth. Anakin was a slave in a junk shop. Luke is a farmboy, raised as a farm boy. The best claim any of them has is Leia, adopted princess of Alderaan, and even she loses that station and devotes herself ultimately as a senator and general in the New Republic.
In fact, one of the clearest themes in the Sequels is that the view of bloodline as destiny is a fallacy and the core of Ben Solo’s fall. As a character, Kylo Ren— like us, I think, like us!— is obsessed with his lineage as a Skywalker. He seeks to walk in his grandfather’s footsteps. He views his parentage as a yolk around his neck holding him from his true potential.
In the scene where Kylo Ren tells Rey about her parentage in The Last Jedi— the famous “Let the past die” scene— the entire reason Kylo tells her is— here, let’s go line by line. You have to interrogate this text to find its meaning, because the surface is different than the core.
KYLO REN:
It’s time to let the old things die. Snoke13. Skywalker. The Sith. The Jedi. The Rebels. Let it all die. Rey, I want you to join me. We can rule together and bring a new order to the galaxy.
“Kill the past” is the most misunderstood line in Star Wars, and it’s because you hear the hype but don’t process the immediate backslide. Kylo Ren talks a big game, but look at this. This is just what Vader says to Luke in Empire:
VADER:
Luke. You can destroy the Emperor. He has foreseen this. It is your destiny. Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son. Come with me. It is the only way.”
Even as he’s talking about killing the past he’s literally echoing it. There’s no progression here, and critically, Rey calls him on it.
REY
Don’t do this, Ben. Please don’t go this way.
Don’t go this way. The path is so well worn and clear.
KYLO REN:
No, no, you’re still holding on! Let go! Do you want to know the truth about your parents? Or have you always known? You’ve just hidden it away. You know the truth. Say it. Say it.
Stop holding on to your parents? See what’s going on here? Kylo conflates the idea of lineage and destiny. He’s going to keep doing that. But look:
REY:
They were nobody.
KYLO REN:
They were filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money. They’re dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert. You have no place in this story.
You have no place in this story. Sit with that line a bit. It’s the key to this whole thing.
KYLO REN:
You come from nothing— you’re nothing. But not to me. Join me.
Because that’s the whole point— not that Rey comes from nothing, but that Kylo Ren, Ben Solo, child of Leia and Han, grandson of Anakin Skywalker, has THE legitimate place in this story, and if Rey comes with him, he can share it. He’s the gatekeeper of that Skywalker legacy. The specialness has gone to him, through his blood, and definitely NOT Rey, and if she wants to have a place in the universe, its only going to be through him.
That is why he is the villain!
That’s why Luke Skywalker looks him dead in the face and says “Every word of what you just said was wrong.” And that’s why, in Rise of Skywalker, when Kylo says:
That’s why Luke Skywalker looks him dead in the face and says “Every word of what you just said was wrong.” And that’s why, in Rise of Skywalker, when Kylo says:
KYLO REN:
You don’t just have power: you have his power. You’re his granddaughter. You’re a Palpatine. My mother was the daughter of Vader. Your father was the son of the Emperor. What Palpatine doesn’t know is we’re a dyad in the Force, Rey. Two that are one. We’ll kill him together and take the throne.
He’s still on his shit from The Last Jedi. He’s still on his shit from The Force Awakens. He’s still on his shit because he can’t see that bloodline doesn’t mean anything. Its always been his trap, the cage his mind needs to be freed from. He tells Rey her bloodline is destiny because he still wants her to bend to his will and join what he thinks is his story14
But Star Wars isn’t about bloodlines, it’s about family. And family is so very, very different than blood. I think it’s incredible in The Rise of Skywalker when Han Solo’s ghost15 appears before Ben.
HAN SOLO:
Hey kid. I miss you, son.BEN SOLO:
Your son is dead.HAN SOLO:
No. Kylo Ren is dead. My son is alive.
I love that its Han Solo that brings Ben back. Earlier in the film he was using his claim to Vader’s legacy as the source of his power. So what? He’s also the son of a two-bit smuggler from the backstreets of Corellia. His family isn’t just this mighty dynasty in the Force— and even a mighty dynasty in the Force is just people. Its the moment he finally reckons with the mundanity of his existance— that he’s not the Prince of Galaxy, just a man whose real specialness was in the love of his parents, not his destiny in the universe— its the moment he finally becomes a Solo, not a “Skywalker”, that he returns to the light.
Rey’s grandfather was Emperor Palpatine. So what? She still lived her entire life on Jakku, lonely but for the small acts of kindness she could show others, keeping the flame of hope in her heart kindled as she waited for her family’s love to return. She was nothing, overlooked in a galaxy of heroes, as empires fell and republics rose without her. The greatest Jedi in the galaxy, just like Anakin, went unnoticed as Luke assembled his new Jedi order. The broom boy at the end of The Last Jedi could be the lost prince of Dantooine; it doesn’t change the fact he’s also a broom boy.16
If you think blood tells the story, then all that should do is make her a villain.
By Kylo’s calculations, it makes her destiny as dark as his connection to Vader.
And if her blood connection to Palpatine makes her special, then it’s only her power that could save the galaxy.
But, critically, it doesn’t. The end of The Rise of Skywalker isn’t about Rey having incredible supernatural ability; it’s about her having a place among friends and a legacy, not by blood, but by choice. She faces Palpatine through the encouragement of the Jedi before her, defeats him not with her power but his own; the Sith fleet is destroyed not by singular heroics by special warriors but by a hundred thousand regular people showing up with nothing but their junk ships and their bravery17; and it ends with...
I mean, that’s the thing of it all, isn’t it? It drives me crazy whenever anybody says “Rey Palpatine”, because that’s not her name. That’s not her claim. That’s not her family. Other people-- the villains-- tell her she is a Palpatine because of her blood. She looked you straight in the goddamn face at the end of the movie and made it clear how unimportant bloodlines are in Star Wars.
She’s Rey Skywalker. Of course she is. A junk trader’s in good company with the slaves and farmboys that bore that name before her.
You don’t get to be a Skywalker unless you come from nowhere.
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https://nerdist.com/article/star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-rey-reveal/
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http://fangirlblog.com/2020/01/rey-deserved-better-the-failures-of-the-rise-of-skywalker-part-1/
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Horns? Never historically. Nose guards? All the time.
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He’s so American by bloodline that in one episode he gifts young aide Charlie with his family set of silverware, cast by Paul Revere himself. Star Wars has nothing approaching this kind of fiction.
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In the same conversation, he explicitly states the Force is available to everyone through meditation and that Yoda, though a wise guru, was never a Jedi Knight. ““It’s true, absolutely true, not that it makes any difference to the story,” he says, which is an incredible statement the week people went to war over Ki-Adi-Mundi’s fake birthday.
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My dad, a quiet, gentle man who loved gardening and Wallace and Gromit, would regularly shock me in my teen years by off hand references to his adventurous years— what, didn’t you know I broke my back flying my ultralight? There was the man I thought I knew and the man who actually was. Discovering the difference— and then the synthesis— has been critical to my understanding of my own adult life.
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Inconsequential to this argument, but I also love that The Bad Batch has, in its final season, made it clear that while a high midichlorian count might preclude a person to a connection to the Force, it doesn’t guarantee it.
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Its so deeply interesting that the first thing he cites in the full “Kill the past” speech is, in fact, a character original to the Sequels, but we can’t get into that here.
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That’s why this is in the movie, btw— to knock Rey off course, and introduce the idea that her growing power (she shoots lightning out of her fingers!) is not just a possible danger, but an unescapable destiny.
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You’ll never convince me this isn’t an actual ghost. The notion that Star Wars can sustain a mystical energy field and witches but somehow ghosts cross the line is preposterous.
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Remember: she's "Rey from Nowhere" because she's from Jakku, not because her parents weren't special. She's already Rey from Nowhere in The Force Awakens.
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When the witches in The Acolyte chanted “The power of one, the power of two, the power of many”, my ocular sensor popped out— that’s the Skywalker saga in micro. Prequels are about the power of One, Anakin; the original trilogy is about the power of two, Luke and Leia, and the sequels are about the ultimate power of many…
