Posted by on December 22, 2019 5:22 am
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Lucasfilm Ltd.

Note: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Midway through Rise of Skywalker, a bolt of lightning cracks the sky in two. It’s a moment of illumination—or at least, it’s supposed to be—revealing a new, unexpected answer to a mystery the Star Wars saga had previously put to rest. Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi resolved the intrigue surrounding the heroine of this new sequel-trilogy, Rey, and her parentage with a gracefully simple, bold assertion: Rey is…just Rey. A scavenger from Jakku, descended from ordinary junk traders who left her behind on the planet, sold her off, and never looked back. Not the daughter of some space aristocracy or legacy lineage, but a hero of her own making. And that was enough, until that lightning strike.

Pushed to the limits of her abilities and desperate to save a friend, Rey shoots bolts of electricity from her fingertips—just the way Emperor Palpatine could before Darth Vader killed him at the end of Return of the Jedi. We soon learn that Rey from Nowhere is in fact Rey Palpatine, granddaughter of the sinister puppetmaster behind the Sith’s plots to take control of the Force in the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies. It’s a baffling twist, not least because the movie never touches on just when, exactly, or with whom Palpatine procreated. (Try purging that image from your head once it’s in.) To those invested in The Last Jedi’s ideas about the Force and heroism, it’s also a crassly cynical letdown.

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