NeverarGreat

I’ve been thinking further about the weird bits of this film that are underbaked or that don’t make sense, and I think there’s a way to solve some of these issues, and it is this:

Perhaps the Sith dagger is the key.

Consider: When Luke searched the Pasanna desert years ago, he found nothing. If there was a powerful Sith artifact in the vicinity, one would assume that Luke would have sensed it. Therefore, it was not there when Luke was searching for it. By the way, it would be fairly simple to remove Lando’s lines about a clue that led to a Wayfinder (and 3PO’s later reference), and simply imply that they thought that Ochi would have the Wayfinder on his person.

Regardless, the dagger may have been planted later at the site. So who put it there? Palpatine. He placed the dagger on Pasanna though his secret agents: the Knights of Ren. They found the bones of Ochi before the story of the film, and in planting the dagger by the bones they had to fight their way past the giant snake, injuring it.

When Rey picks up the dagger, we just reinstate the dialogue about the dagger doing terrible things.

The reason this dagger is so important is that it is a powerful corrupting influence created by Palpatine himself. We’ve established that Rey could have two visions. Her first, during her training, shows only her abandonment and her potential death on Exegol. Her second vision happens when she is pushed in the desert by Kylo Ren, at the moment she unleashes a torrent of Force lightning on the transport. In this vision, she is on the Sith Throne. Notably, this happens only after she first comes in contact with the Sith dagger.

Right after Rey finds the dagger, the Knights of Ren converse with themselves:

“Alert our master…the artifact has been found.”

When they see Chewie running away, they remark:

“He has the dagger.”
“It was intended for the girl.”

When they are on Kijimi, they could say:

“Our master wants the girl alive. Kill the rest.”

Finally, when they confront Ben at the end, they proclaim:

“Our master always knew you would betray him.”

This acts as the reveal for the Knights of Ren subplot, showing that they have been working for Palpatine, not Kylo Ren, all along. Implying that they were the ones who planted the dagger also gives them something to do, which is far better than the exactly nothing they do in the film.

Finn’s dialogue could be changed to indicate that the dagger is an anomaly:

“This droid has a ton of information about Exegol.”
“Wait, coneface?”
“I am D-O”
“Sorry, D-O”
“D-O went everywhere with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“But Ochi never owned a dagger.”

The Goonies moment makes sense in this cut, since the dagger would have been a recent construction by Palpatine to lead Rey to him, and so it could have been specially constructed to work with the wreckage of the Death Star in its current state of decay. What was once a plot hole is now evidence for the theory.

If Palpatine is able to control people through artifacts like this, it makes sense why Rey finds herself in Ren’s quarters with the mask of Vader: Palpatine has been using it to control him for years. This could also be the origin of the vision where Kylo sees himself turning to darkness, just as Rey sees her first dark vision after she touches the dagger. When she destroys Vader’s mask, that point of control by Palpatine is broken, allowing him to begin to break free from Palpatine’s control.

Finally, the McGuffin heavy plot is now primarily driven by a dagger placed for Rey by Palpatine, which means that it was his intention to send her on this journey and give the artifact a chance to work its power on Rey. The most powerful visions of darkness come when Rey still has the dagger on her person, and notably they drop away when she drops the dagger (and her bag) in the Death Star throne room. At that point, she slowly emerges from the corrupting influence of Palpatine.

This also explains why Anakin’s saber was set up to be such a powerful artifact: it was to establish that this sort of connection is possible, though since Anakin used the saber mostly before he fell, Palpatine’s influence over the saber would be minimal, necessitating the planting of the dagger.

I don’t know if we should be outright denying the story at this point. After all, if we cast too much doubt on Palpatine’s story, we rob it of its power right when it should be paying dividends. Ideally, we would need more thematic reason for the existence of this ruse in the film, more than just a machination of Palpatine. So how about tying it into Leia’s journey?

“What are you most afraid of?”
“Myself.”
“Because you’re a Palpatine? Leia struggled with that same fear.”
“She didn’t tell me…she still trained me.”
“Because she saw your spirit…your heart.”

…

“She was quick to learn in our training. But she feared our family’s darkness within her. She surrendered her saber to me and said that someday it would be picked up again…by someone who would face that darkness, and overcome it.”

…

This way Luke isn’t denying the story, but rather recontextualizing it in a way that makes Leia’s story more impactful. After all, Leia says to Rey ‘Never be afraid of who you are.’ This fear of identity is a part of Leia’s character in the film, and if it’s not for Rey’s benefit, then it should reveal the sort of fear that Leia may still struggle with.

If we make this the reason Leia surrendered her saber, it also gives us a strong hint that Leia believed that her son would have been the one to take up her saber and overcome her family’s dark past. And indeed Ben eventually does triumph in the end, but she couldn’t have realized that Rey would be the one to take up the sword, a girl from nowhere that became the daughter she never had.

And so, Rey can now complete Leia’s incomplete Jedi path in a very literal way that wouldn’t be possible without Rey Palpatine, justifying its existence in the story.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I’d say this is a mischaracterization of things, at least at this point in the other thread. The other idea more or less amounts to Rey Chosen One.

I agree, that was inexact language on my part.

All that being said, the idea we have on the other thread can never be Rey Nobody in essence, because Rey, despite being made by nobody (the Force itself) and raised as a nobody by nobodies, is still somebody of extreme importance in the grand scheme of things. But I think removing the direct lineage to Palpatine makes things more palatable, and for those who preferred a direct link to him for whatever reason, they can still imagine that Palpatine did maybe have a hand in how the Force designed them, despite the conclusion of everything pointing to the contrary (ya know, the part where Palpatine finally admits she’s nothing but a scavenger girl).

This is why I think that your idea, despite how well it works in many ways, is ultimately incompatible with ‘Rey Nobody’, since in that version she is basically another Anakin, the most important person in the galaxy. The story would be a retread of the ‘Chosen One’ angle that we’ve already gotten.

The great thing about TLJ’s reveal about Rey was that we finally had the fate of the galaxy potentially being decided by someone who wasn’t the literal chosen one or the son of the chosen one. Rey may have been strong with the Force, may have even been a powerful Jedi if she were born in the Old Republic, but here she is one of maybe hundreds of thousands in the galaxy who have the Force but have never had the opportunity to develop their ability. Rey has become emblematic of the state of the galaxy in TLJ, and that’s a remarkable and refreshing development, which I think is why it’s worth saving.

Any further issues with her power level aren’t too concerning to me, since in Starlight it’s now established that her quick rise to power was fueled by the Dark Side, and she’s clearly pulling on both sides of the Force throughout the trilogy to allow her to achieve feats long before they would be able to happen if she were on only the Jedi path. And in the final confrontation, she’s only reflecting Palpatine’s power back onto himself, and even then she dies because of it, so she doesn’t need to match him in power to defeat him.

Darth Raditz said:

It’s just that I get hung up on this plot beat specifically, what’s supposed to come across. Is the idea that if D-O never went to Jakku, then Ochi never went to Jakku? Just feels like a slight stretch, imo, unless you have en earlier line of D-O saying “I went everywhere master went.”

Yeah, I’m not happy with this scene either.

StarkillerAG said:

I agree with what everyone else is saying about your latest idea, Nev. The whole “dark side or death” conflict is a stroke of genius, but the rewritten Ochi exposition is more confusing than anything (mainly because it feels like a complete non-sequitur to D-O having “a ton of information about Exegol”). Maybe we could just cut out the “D-O has the information they need” plot point entirely, and imply that the info about the nav tower came from Hux’s message at the beginning of the movie? It would remove one additional twist from this needlessly convoluted plot, at least.

Either way, I think if we’re gonna go with the whole “Rey Palpatine is a lie” idea, the revelation that it’s a lie should be delivered by Palpatine himself, in a classically villainous “I lied!” fashion. The final anime beam clash does seem like a pretty nice place to put it: it’s the resolution of the plot stakes, so it should ideally be the resolution of the emotional stakes as well.

I’d like to cut as little from the film as possible, but I agree that maybe it would be smoother if we cut the bit with Finn bringing up Ochi’s mission, since it’s not something that Poe even needs to hear. Presumably the point of the scene is that D-O has information about Exegol, and that’s why Finn is in a rush to tell Poe about it.

So maybe we can do a bit of scene shuffling to make it work. So after Ben’s redemption, we have the Pryde scene:

“The final order begins…she will come, her friends will follow.”

Then we cut to Rey on the island, since that scene is a good segue into Rey and her choice.

After the island scene, maybe we can cut to Poe and Lando. It may be a bit strange to cut right from the triumphant X-wing from the water right to Leia’s shrouded body, but we’ve already seen her and at least it’s going from one Leia-focused scene to another.

From there we go to Finn and D-O’s scene like we already have, then cut after Finn says ‘This droid has a ton of information about Exegol’.

Cut to C-3PO and R2-D2’s reunion, since it continues the droid focus, and then after ‘picking up a signal…from where?’, we get the D-O plugged in scene. Since we’re cutting Finn knowing about the Rey Palpatine lie, we can keep this scene as it was in the theatrical version.

The only change that we would need to make now is the added Palpatine dialogue to make it clear that his story was always a lie. Because now Ochi’s mission is unconfirmed, the audience is free to recognize that Rey’s vision of his ship in TFA was different than in TROS and confirm for themselves that the story was a lie.

…

And I think that’s…it? Like, it’s kind of crazy how little this idea needs to change the original film, apart from the Kylo quarters dialogue. In fact, the entire hangar scene could be the theatrical version if necessary, though I would prefer to avoid the Dyad reference because it would be a third named reveal in just a few minutes, which I think is too much. But yeah. Kind of crazy how feasible this may be for how much value it could provide.

Since there are discussions amounting to Rey Palpatine edits in other threads, I thought I’d post this idea here.

My favored version of TROS is Rey Nobody, but as we know removing the Rey Palpatine revelation pulls a lot of the drama from the already weakened story. So the ideal solution for me has always been to keep the Rey Palpatine revelation, but later reveal it to be a lie.

We can call this “Rey Nopatine”, perhaps. Or not, but it would be funnier if we did 😃

Previous versions of that idea have fallen short, however, because the hangar scene still needs a revelation that does not become undone by the end of the story.

So I started thinking about what sort of revelation would be most useful during the Kylo Quarters Duel, and this led me to realize that one of the big issues with the Rey Palpatine revelation in the first place was that this revelation has no bearing on the story after Rey joins up with Ben on Exegol. The issue of Rey’s parentage is essentially dropped because it doesn’t matter, and really never mattered except as a bit of external pressure on Rey to goad her into conflict with Palpatine, a conflict which would have happened anyway.

An ideal revelation in Kylo’s Quarters would be one that had ramifications extending throughout the entire climax of the film, not just ending in the middle of it. So here is the idea:

During Rey’s training, she would have an extra vision in with the visions of the Sith Throne. This would be an image of Rey lying dead on Exegol, contrasted against the image of Rey sitting on the throne, as if the two images were fighting for supremacy, balanced in opposition.

Then, in Kylo’s Quarters, he reveals the meaning of these two competing visions:

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.
“You are hard to get rid of.”
“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. Darkness is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“You’ve been having visions…I had those visions too. When I trained with Luke.”
“Don’t!”
“Rey, they were the same visions…the same terrible choice.”
“I don’t want this!”
“The Dark Side…or death.”
“No!”
“I chose darkness…and so will you.”
(Rey sees the two visions, one of herself on the throne, the other dead on Exegol.)
“You can see it, can’t you? That no matter your choice…”
“Stop talking.”
“…you condemn the Jedi to extinction.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Palpatine knows you will choose the dark, Rey. He knows the rest of your story. He sent his assassin to Jakku, looking for you…but your parents wouldn’t tell him where you were. So he killed them.”
(Rey hears the sound of her mother’s death)
“No!”
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”

“He didn’t want you dead…he wanted you with him. Rey…you have his power. You’re his granddaughter.”

“Palpatine wants the strongest of us to take the throne as his rightful heir. But he doesn’t know the destiny that binds us through the Force. You know it’s true…that we will rise…or fall…together.”

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I do.”

…

In the scene with Finn, Poe, and D-O, a brief bit of offscreen dialogue is changed to make it clear that Rey told Finn what she had heard from Kylo about her parents, but that Finn later learned from D-O that Kylo’s story didn’t hold up.

“This droid has a ton of information about Exegol.”
“Wait, coneface?”
“D-O”
“Sorry, D-O”
“Rey said he went to Jakku with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“Why was Ochi going there?”
“To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor.”
“But D-O never went there.”

…

In the theatrical version of the film, the scene of Luke’s island was actively destructive to the stakes of the film because the drama was about whether she would be corrupted by knowledge of her true family. Being bolstered by Luke’s pep talk removed any doubt that Rey would make the right decision.

Here, however, the stakes are not about whether she will turn to darkness, but whether she can accept the burden of completing her Jedi path, even if it leads to her death. Here, Luke’s words are far more on point. In fact, the theatrical line about Leia sensing the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path can be reinstated, since it matches Ben’s vision of his death and would confirm Luke’s suspicions that Ben’s vision was accurate. Neither Luke nor Leia could face the choice that they knew Ben must eventually make.

…

This is an optional change, but more dialogue can be inserted into the brief scene of Rey flying to Exegol, indicating that Poe and Finn have decided to trust Rey’s actions, whatever they may be.

“It’s Rey. She’s going to Exegol.”
“But she doesn’t know the truth.”
“She doesn’t need it. She’s showing us the way to get there.”
“Then we go together.”

…

In the final confrontation with Palpatine, there could be another line hammering home that Palpatine was lying to her about her past and that Rey truly is a nobody.

“Before you die, know the truth! You are no Palpatine. You are nothing. A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me. I am all the Sith!”
“And I…I’m a Jedi.”

…

So to recap:

In this edit, Kylo’s revelation to Rey is that he once had the same sort of visions as hers, visions where he saw his death and perhaps even the death of his entire family, and by extension the end of the Jedi religion. This explains why Luke went to an island to hide, and why Rey joined him on this island after she learned the truth as well. The conflict in the film is reframed from whether or not Rey will be corrupted by the Dark Side, to whether she will make the impossible choice between facing Palpatine and condemning herself and the Jedi religion to extinction or joining the Dark Side and surviving.

This also allows Ben to be faced with this same choice…join the Dark Side, or die. He chose to live those years ago, but now he is able to make the choice to give his life for Rey and die as a Jedi. The great thing about these visions is that they must come true. Now there is a reason for the death and resurrection shenanigans at the end of the film, and it resolves these threads at the end of the climax where they belong.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

This is the only way to make everything right. I’m convinced of it.

Only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Nah, it really isn’t that complex. I summarize it in a single sentence in my last draft: “The Emperor manipulated the Force itself into creating life.” The reason it works so well is because it relies on lore and storylines already established in the prequels.

I mean, it kinda still is complex?

I was going over these ideas with my girlfriend the other day, and told her the one about Palpatine creating Rey through the Force like he created Anakin, and she was just like, “Huh?” She genuinely didn’t know or remember that Palpatine was in any way involved in Anakin’s creation. And this is someone who has watched all of the movies and even read some prequel novels.

I don’t think we can just assume that the average person watching these movies would be knowledgeable about the contested lore surrounding a movie that came out almost twenty years ago. Maybe people on these forums or who watch fanedits of these movies would know, but for the average Joe, I very much doubt it.

All this is to say that all the ideas we like right now are a tougher sell to the average moviegoer than ‘Rey was Palpatine’s granddaughter’, and that’s just something we have to accept and work with.

StarkillerAG said:

NeverarGreat said:

Jar Jar Bricks said:

But if he was still clinging onto life through the offspring of the Skywalker’s, why would he even bother doing this with a random little girl, as well? She also cannot be called “a Palpatine” in this sequence of events.

Well we don’t know if he was just ‘clinging to life’ before TROS, just that he had returned at some point and was inhabiting a clone body.

My thought process on this is that Palpatine always wanted someone ‘far younger’ to inhabit, such as Anakin. He could have used the Force to create Anakin or not, but regardless, during ROTS he was probably looking to transfer his consciousness to him. Now, if life force transfer comes with visual changes in a person’s appearance, then we could easily see the moment when Palpatine went all-in with this plan - he used Windu’s attack as cover in order to mask the true cause of his transformation, while he transferred some of his power to Anakin. At this point, Anakin does almost a complete 180 and starts acting irredeemably evil. It was only Anakin’s fall on Mustafar that prevented Palpatine from going through with the full essence transfer, and it was probably Palpatine’s life force in Anakin that kept him alive.

Jumping forward to post-ROTJ, Palpatine probably reincarnated in a pristine clone body. Something after this transfer clearly happened to make this clone body deteriorate, and it may have been that he was transferring most of his life force into Rey in order that she could overcome her crises and be quickly drawn into the Dark Side. He probably planned to get her from Snoke during TFA or TLJ, but when Snoke failed he was forced to wait in a deteriorating clone body until Rey could find her way to him on her own.

The question still remains: Did Palpatine create Rey like he may have created Anakin? It could be that both Anakin and Rey had the Force from birth without Palpatine’s direct involvement, and he would only need to transfer some life force into them at the critical moments in order to corrupt them and their descendants. This seems to require the least effort on Palpatine’s part, and if Palpatine was able to survive his death due to his life force being bound within the Skywalkers, he would have been placed into a new clone body and so would have had the life force to begin this process again with Rey.

But why choose Rey? Perhaps among the Force sensitive candidates his cult could find at the time, she was the most powerful. Ben was doubtless heavily protected at this time, so Rey was the next best choice, a girl from nowhere whose parents wouldn’t be missed. He could have transferred his essence to her remotely, in which case her parents kept her from him, or in person, in which case he then sent her to Jakku to await her destiny.

In either case, the deterioration of Palpatine’s body seems to indicate that most of his power has been transferred to Rey by the time of TROS, and so she is essentially being devoured by Palpatine’s spirit. I’d argue that calling Rey a Palpatine here makes sense, and we could even keep it vague enough that she could have been created by Palpatine, it’s just another unknowable possibility.

And herein lies the main problem with the horcrux idea. It’s such a complex, hard-to-explain concept that it would take several minutes to properly explain it in a film format: minutes that we just don’t have. The hangar scene was only intended to convey a reveal as simple as “Palpatine is your granddad”, not lay out some deep saga lore.

If we want a reveal that we can seamlessly slot into a fanedit with almost no issues, then we need to keep it simple: most of the previous ideas in this thread did a pretty good job of this. But as it stands, I think the horcrux thing will be a dead end if we actually try to work it into the movie.

Well I think JJ’s ‘Rey and Anakin were created by Palpatine’ idea has a similar complexity, and we were already planning on changing some of Luke’s dialogue to further help explain it. This idea is really just an adjustment of that concept, and one that that explains Palpatine’s return and eventual defeat, which are not insubstantial problems with the theatrical film.

A lot of what I wrote about the lore doesn’t need to be said in the film, I was just writing it there in order to think through the events myself. Consider how much people have read into the Plagueis conversation. Those few sentences were all we needed to turn Palpatine’s designs into a tantalizing mystery rather than a black box, and doing the same thing here without overloading the exposition could yield similar results.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

That’s the point of my wording: he doesn’t create them directly. They are indirect creations of his. He simply pesters the Force itself with enough dark magic for it to do it for him. This is literally how him and his master created Anakin in canon. That being said, there is probably a cap on how much power the Force can bestow on somebody to counteract what it perceives as a threat.

Well if there is no direct creation of Rey or Anakin by Palpatine, then I don’t see why it couldn’t be left vague in the final wording such that the audience could interpret it several different ways. Something like ‘My grandfather was intended as a vessel for Palpatine’s spirit…and so were you’. That sort of thing. Nothing that directly states they were created by him, but something that could easily point in that direction if you so desired.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I think that runs counterintuitive to how the concept of the clone body is presented, though. The reason it’s crumbling away is because of how many Sith spirits are present within it. Artificial lifeforms clearly aren’t cutting it when it comes to Palpatine’s spirit, just take a look at Snoke, too. Whether he always had those other spirits within him as a part of the rule of two or if they were summoned along with his own spirit from Force hell is irrelevant. If he portioned a part of that off to Rey from across the galaxy (which seemingly should involve a ritual with both people present), he should actually deteriorate LESS. But then he would have less power, and a potential rival, neither of which is in his character to desire. The reason why the idea that he created Rey and Anakin as raw Force beings makes so much sense is because he’s trying to find a person that has enough potential with the Force, and specifically the dark side, to accept all of his Sith spirits without instantly withering away. For a more detailed description of this concept, read Burbin’s last post on here.

Yes, I think I understand that concept, and Burbin’s explanation. Palpatine and the Sith are looking for a host powerful enough to contain their collective spirits.

The bit that confuses me is how Palpatine would be able to create a life form that is more powerful than he himself, since his body is unable to house the Sith spirits but Anakin’s or Rey’s bodies would theoretically be able to do so.

It’s almost like a bootstrapping paradox, implying that if a person is powerful enough with the Force, that they can then create someone more powerful than them, and then that person could create someone more powerful than them, and so on. Just imagine creating a potion that enhances potionmaking abilities so you can create more powerful potions…

That’s why I’m not sold on the idea. It just feels like it’s exploiting the rules of the universe to do something that shouldn’t make sense, and not in a ‘the Dark Side is evil and unnatural’ kind of way, more in a ‘this exploit should really be patched in the next bugfix’ kind of way.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

But if he was still clinging onto life through the offspring of the Skywalker’s, why would he even bother doing this with a random little girl, as well? She also cannot be called “a Palpatine” in this sequence of events.

Well we don’t know if he was just ‘clinging to life’ before TROS, just that he had returned at some point and was inhabiting a clone body.

My thought process on this is that Palpatine always wanted someone ‘far younger’ to inhabit, such as Anakin. He could have used the Force to create Anakin or not, but regardless, during ROTS he was probably looking to transfer his consciousness to him. Now, if life force transfer comes with visual changes in a person’s appearance, then we could easily see the moment when Palpatine went all-in with this plan - he used Windu’s attack as cover in order to mask the true cause of his transformation, while he transferred some of his power to Anakin. At this point, Anakin does almost a complete 180 and starts acting irredeemably evil. It was only Anakin’s fall on Mustafar that prevented Palpatine from going through with the full essence transfer, and it was probably Palpatine’s life force in Anakin that kept him alive.

Jumping forward to post-ROTJ, Palpatine probably reincarnated in a pristine clone body. Something after this transfer clearly happened to make this clone body deteriorate, and it may have been that he was transferring most of his life force into Rey in order that she could overcome her crises and be quickly drawn into the Dark Side. He probably planned to get her from Snoke during TFA or TLJ, but when Snoke failed he was forced to wait in a deteriorating clone body until Rey could find her way to him on her own.

The question still remains: Did Palpatine create Rey like he may have created Anakin? It could be that both Anakin and Rey had the Force from birth without Palpatine’s direct involvement, and he would only need to transfer some life force into them at the critical moments in order to corrupt them and their descendants. This seems to require the least effort on Palpatine’s part, and if Palpatine was able to survive his death due to his life force being bound within the Skywalkers, he would have been placed into a new clone body and so would have had the life force to begin this process again with Rey.

But why choose Rey? Perhaps among the Force sensitive candidates his cult could find at the time, she was the most powerful. Ben was doubtless heavily protected at this time, so Rey was the next best choice, a girl from nowhere whose parents wouldn’t be missed. He could have transferred his essence to her remotely, in which case her parents kept her from him, or in person, in which case he then sent her to Jakku to await her destiny.

In either case, the deterioration of Palpatine’s body seems to indicate that most of his power has been transferred to Rey by the time of TROS, and so she is essentially being devoured by Palpatine’s spirit. I’d argue that calling Rey a Palpatine here makes sense, and we could even keep it vague enough that she could have been created by Palpatine, it’s just another unknowable possibility.

EddieDean said:

That’s also a clean idea. I agree with Hal about Nev’s recent script reading the cleanest so far- can that be built on with a light touch version of Rey Horcrux that doesn’t go too deep into exposition of the mechanics of this idea?

I can write up something.

Maybe a lot of the issues people have with the specifics of these ideas could be smoothed over with keeping things vague. I also think that if we keep the flashbacks to Rey’s parents, it would help matters if we put them back to back in the early part of the scene so that we could then move on to more important plot related matters.

…

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. The dark side is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“I’ve never lied to you. Your parents were no one. Junk traders from the outer rim.”
“Don’t!”
“But you were strong in the Force. And the Emperor took notice.”
“I don’t want this!”
“He was looking for you.”
“No!”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“Your parents paid for your protection…with their lives.”
(Rey sees her parents die.)
“And you had something that Palpatine would kill for…”
“Stop talking.”
“…something that belonged to him.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Do you know how Palpatine was able to conquer death? It’s because a part of himself survived…within my grandfather…and my mother…and me. Do you want to know what he gave you?”
(Rey sees the dark throne)
“No!”
(Vader’s mask is destroyed)
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”

“He didn’t want to kill you. In many ways…he is you. He gave you his life force, so that he could live on…within you.

“Like my family, you are bound to the Emperor through his spirit, a power like life itself. What he doesn’t know is that it connects us as well. We can destroy him, and bring a new order to the galaxy…together.”

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I do.”

…

It might be better to keep it unsaid here that Palpatine wanted Rey on Jakku, since if Rey knows that Palpatine wanted her there, she couldn’t later say that her parents protected her. It may just have to be implied that this was all part of Palpatine’s plan, or we could give Palps a line in response to Rey’s ‘My parents were strong…they protected me from you.’ with ‘I wanted you on Jakku, Rey. For it has brought you to me.’

Eh, this one already ‘borrows’ from Avengers Endgame enough that one more franchise can’t hurt 😉

You can’t deny that this has value for being able to explain how Palpatine was able to survive death and also why he is able to be finally destroyed at the end of the film. The movie even gives us a final reason why Palpatine is dead forever in the deaths of Rey and Ben. Once Rey dies, one could argue that that part of Palpatine died with her, just like in the Deathly Hallows. Then when Ben uses his life force to bring Rey back at the cost of his life, the circle is complete and the power of Palpatine is gone forever.

Okay, I think I’ve figured out a way to reconcile these ideas about Rey and Palpatine, particularly with regards to Rey being some sort of vessel for Palpatine’s Sith spirit.

Going back a page or two, I suggested that Palpatine could have poured some of his power into Rey when she was a child, but as was pointed out this isn’t very Palpatine behavior. However, this could make sense if it was purely for the purpose of attaining immortality, explaining how he was able to cheat death in the first place.

We already want there to be a connection between what Palpatine created with Anakin and what he was planning with Rey. So maybe it’s a Harry Potter Horcrux situation, with Palpatine investing some of his life force into Anakin (and by extension his family) so that if he were to die, a part of himself could live on. He does the same thing with Rey once he comes back from the dead, since he is determined to destroy the Skywalker family who betrayed him. Thus he chose Rey, depositing some life force with her as well. Just like with Anakin, he knows that someday she will be important and so he plants this bit of himself so that even if he were to die at her hand, he could live on through her.

This is why Palpatine is in a crumbling clone body: he has given most of his life force to Rey and the Skywalkers, so he must gain that life force back from them if he is to be fully restored to life. And of course, this is what we see happen at the end of the film - he takes back what he gave them, reducing them in power while restoring himself. However, since he is now restored in this way, his insurance policy has been negated and he is mortal once more, even at the height of his power. This is why Rey is able to use his own power to destroy him, and why this death is final for ol’ Palpy.

Interestingly, this could also why Rey has the ability to give some of her life force to others - this is an ability that Palpatine discovered, and that she now uses for good.

The upshot of all of this is that neither Rey nor Anakin need to be created by Palpatine for this to work - merely that he has given some of himself to each of them at some point, presumably early in their lives, and this makes them powerful in the Force as well as naturally drawn to darkness.

Finally, this keeps Rey as a nobody born of nobodies while also being enough like Palpatine to be considered one herself.

Hal 9000 said:

I took the new dialogue and edited it into the hangar scene and I’m confident that I can work whatever dialogue gets produced into these scenes without issue. (I didn’t literally just slot together components for Ascendant; there was a great deal of audio work involved.)

I have not fully read the past several pages of discussion, but are these changes something Nev plans to implement in a TROS edit?

If we come up with something that is amenable to everyone, then I can certainly try to do an edit, or at least help assemble a new version of the Hangar scene. But for the moment, I’m still happy to leave the ‘brainstorming’ part of the thread title in place as we spill sweat and tears over just what it means, philosophically, to be a Palpatine or a Skywalker 😉

I agree that the Rey as a Force creation by Palpatine is the closest we’ve gotten to solving this puzzle. It is tantalizingly close to working for me, and solves a lot of other mysteries as well.

But there still exists that fundamental incongruity with TLJ.

Stepping back a bit, I just had a thought about TROS that seems obvious now but hadn’t considered before: Why do we assume that Palpatine’s children and grandchildren would be strong in the Force?

Granted the Skywalker’s power in the Force seems to be preserved through lineage, but that doesn’t seem to be true for anyone else. Well, perhaps Yoda’s offspring, if that is indeed his offspring, but that just raises the question of why the Jedi wouldn’t raise families if it’s likely their children would inherit their power. I think it’s better than even odds that any spawn of Palpatine would have no power in the Force. In fact, why would Palpatine have offspring if they could potentially become rivals?

I realize that this is somewhat tangential to the current discussion since we’re working off of a different theory now, but it may stand examining if we are to figure out just what sort of Force user Rey can be. By the methods in use by the Jedi Order for over a thousand generations, a powerful Jedi coming from a random family would be the norm, not the exception.

The point here is that the theatrical version of TROS is somewhat incoherent because Rey being a Palpatine shouldn’t be a strong predictor of her abilities, or her affinity for darkness. This means that Rey being a Palpatine must be something other than genetic for it to be strongly meaningful.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

for something to awaken itself, it has to be dormant or resting to begin with. So Rey HAS to have the potential for those great and powerful things within herself all along. Not everybody can have that, or else everybody would be walking around being OP in the Force. There’s a reason Ben calls Luke their “last hope”. They can’t pluck some random dude off the streets of Tatooine to become a Jedi. There HAS to be a genetic factor here.

Sure, something about Rey is special…but it’s not her genetics, at least according to TLJ.

As Maz says, the Skywalker blade called to Rey. It didn’t call to anyone else in that pirate den, over all the years it had been there. So yes, Rey may have had worthless nobody parents and the latent potential to be a Jedi, just like thousands of other people from across the galaxy who were discovered by the Jedi Order as children, children who presumably had normal parents.

There really doesn’t have to be a genetic factor here.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

MTFBWY is a phrase used by non-Force users only because the Force can use those people to accomplish things even without their direct attunement to it or realization of what’s actually happening. But saying that to the average person is never gonna result in them shooting lightning out of their fingertips.

Quite frankly, I don’t care if this is one interpretation of how using the Force works coming out of the theater in '77. It’s 2024. We know how the Force works in people according to the prequels, books, and shows we have. And you didn’t really give a good argument to explain it “always being there” in Rey according to TFA and TLJ.

EDIT: Heck, according to your own edit of Starlight what you’re describing is NOT what happens. The dark side awakens in her, the Force never “chooses” her. It’s what retroactively makes the title of that movie kinda badass. It’s never specified which aspect of the Force it is that awakens.

The reason I chose to emphasize Rey’s choosing the Dark Side at the end of the film was to explain why she was able to grow so quickly in power through the film. The Dark Side is the quick, easy, seductive way to power, as opposed to training as a Jedi, which takes years and historically required training from a very young age.

When Rey is first drawn to the Skywalker blade, it could be that she has power similar to Finn’s power in TROS, or Luke’s power when he blows up the Death Star. The difference between Rey and Luke is that Rey quickly and subconsciously turns to the Dark Side to meet the crises she faces in the film, unlike Luke or Finn. This leads to her already having so much power by the time she meets Luke that he is terrified of her, and tells her that she’s gone straight to the Dark. When Rey shoots lightning out of her hands, she’s been on her path of power for over a year, bolstered by the Dark Side and Leia’s training.

So yes, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for the Force to awaken in Rey for the first time in TFA. TLJ even gives an explanation for this power: “Darkness rises…and light to meet it. I warned my young apprentice that as he grew stronger, his equal in the light would rise. Skywalker, I assumed…wrongly.” Snoke basically says that Rey’s power is the result of her opposing Kylo Ren. Granted, Snoke is working under the assumption that Rey is using the light side of the Force, but he also doesn’t know that Kylo is so drawn to the light that he is about to betray Snoke and join with Rey, and that their relationship is much more a ying-yang situation than a binary.

I don’t think that Rey being suddenly chosen by the Force is antithetical to canon, and in fact it goes back to how the Force might usually work in the galaxy according to the '77 film. Anyone can learn to use the Force, and anyone can be suddenly chosen by it to do great deeds, hence the ‘may the Force be with you’ benediction. In fact, it seems unusual for the Force to be passed down through bloodlines, with the Skywalker family being one of the few examples of this. For most people, most Jedi, the reason they have the Force is a mystery, even if it’s usually identified early in their lives. But remember, Midichlorians are only a symbiote with the Force, not the reason for it. A person could suddenly be chosen by the Force later in life and then accumulate Midichlorians that communicate with it. And Midichlorians aside, the Force choosing a person for greatness is a very Aurthurian legend way of the Force working, with Rey being called to the Skywalker’s sword.

Maz tells Rey that the Force has ‘always been there’, but Maz isn’t a Jedi, she’s just very old. There’s no indication that she has the desire or aptitude to be a Jedi, so I think it’s a fair expectation that Maz is just telling Rey that the Force is available to everyone in some capacity, at all times. She could just as easily tell this to Chewie and it would be true. When Rey later says that ‘something inside me has always been there…now it’s awake’, she could just be referring back to Maz’s statement about the Force and not that Rey was always special. In fact, the important part is that awakening, the Force choosing Rey to accomplish some destiny.

I think that’s the point of TLJ, in my opinion. Rey comes from nothing, no special creation or lineage, and it’s only a chance awakening in TFA that brings her into the story. I don’t think that Broom Boy was intended to have some special parentage, he just chose the Force or the Force chose him at the end of the film, just as it can choose anyone no matter how small. In fact, TROS itself continues this thesis when Finn discovers that the Force has awakened in him as well. No special parents with him either, and that’s what makes Rey’s special status so detrimental to all of this.

TROS’s revelation about Rey destroys TLJ’s thesis by saying that Rey always had powerful blood. Neither my Clone Rey idea or JJ’s virgin birth Palpatine creation idea is able to negate the destruction of TLJ’s thesis because both ideas state that Rey was singularly important from the moment of her conception, and always would be. The only way I can see to preserve TLJ is by establishing that Rey’s first moment of importance is her awakening in TFA, and the only way to do that while also talking about her past is if Palpatine foresaw this awakening and sowed the seeds of darkness in Rey before that happened.

And yes, in a perfect world Rey’s parents wouldn’t matter, but if we delete the flashbacks and that motivation for destroying Palpatine, well, that would just further diminish Rey’s motivation. We have to consider the practical impact of deleting more of this already eviscerated film.

I think the issue with Rey’s parents being good is less about their goodness and more about the way they are handled in TROS. It doesn’t make sense for her parents to sell her to Plutt to keep her safe, since no good parent would willingly do that. They almost surely could have chosen a better person than Plutt to keep her safe, so it just doesn’t fly that they would really have Rey’s wellbeing in mind.

However, there’s actually an issue with TLJ’s version of Rey’s past that ties in here. If Rey’s parents were trash who sold her the first chance they got, then they wouldn’t have sold her when she was six. They would have sold her as a newborn, as most people who aren’t able to raise a child would do. Even if they kept her until she was six, she probably would have been malnourished and sickly, not like she looked in the flashback. So this is a problem with TLJ, and this is actually evidence that her parents did care for her, at least a little. That is why I think there’s value in keeping the flashbacks, but just making it so that her parents were forced to give up their child. It is the best fit for the facts at hand.

I agree that Palpatine ‘pouring his power into Rey’ isn’t in Palpatine’s character, and is weird for the reasons you’ve enumerated here. So I’ve given it some more thought, and maybe we can use the whole ‘awakening’ angle from TFA to explain Rey’s power.

There is no hint of Rey’s power in the Force from an early age, so it could be assumed that she was chosen by the Force only when she truly needed it. Before this, she was just like any other person. Except that someone like Palpatine may have known that the Force was going to choose her and bestow in her great power, so if he knew this he would want to get to her first, and plant the seed of darkness in her. For this concept, she would need to stay on Jakku because that’s the only way she would be involved in the story and that’s how the Force eventually chooses her, so that means that Palpatine would want to keep her there on the planet until her awakening.

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. The dark side is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“I’ve never lied to you. Your parents were no one. Junk traders from the outer rim.”
“Don’t!”
“They abandoned you for a reason. Don’t you know why?”
“I don’t want this!”
“It was Palpatine’s doing.”
“No!”
“He kept you on that planet.”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They were under duress. Forced to do the Emperor’s will.”
“Stop talking.”
“Rey…I know what happened to them.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Palpatine saw your future, Rey. So did I. A girl from nowhere, awakening to power. But you were there on Jakku because Palpatine wanted you there. And your parents played their part.”
(Rey sees her parents die.)
“She’s on Jakku; she’s gone.”
“No!”
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want (to kill) a child? Tell me.”

“He saw what you would become. But before the Force chose you, you were chosen by Palpatine…to be his rightful heir.”

“You’re a Palpatine. Like my family, you are bound to him by a power greater than blood, a power like life itself. You can feel it…for it connects us as well. But we can destroy him, and bring a new order to the galaxy…together.”

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I do.”

…

If we focus on the connection between Rey and Kylo being like life itself, perhaps we can show that this connection, if it exists between Rey and Palpatine, supersedes any genetic connection or even manipulating midichlorians. The connection, the Force, is what’s important, far more than blood relationship.

This also recontextualizes Luke’s later statement about some things being stronger than blood, because here he’s taking it in a different direction and saying that found family or Rey’s commitment to the Jedi are stronger than her connection with Palpatine.

One thing that would need to be figured out with this direction is Finn’s dialogue later:

“He was going to Exegol with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“Why was Ochi going there?”
“To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor.”

Changing it to:

“He went to Jakku with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“Why was Ochi going there?”
“To leave a little girl he was supposed to take from her parents, in the desert."

I like the way this is going, so don’t take this rewrite as a critique, but just playing around in the sandbox of ideas.

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. The dark side is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying."
“I’ve never lied to you. Your parents were no one. Junk traders who abandoned their child.”
“Don’t!”
“They abandoned you for a reason. Don’t you know why?”
“I don’t want this!”
“They saw your darkness.”
“No!”
“They feared you, and your visions.”
(Rey sees the vision of the throne)
“They left you on Jakku…where they were found by the Emperor’s assassin.”
“Stop talking.”
“He killed them…but he wanted you.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“You know that the power of the Dark Side has always been there, Rey, as long as you can remember. The night we first fought, in the forest, that power was awakened…the power of the Emperor.”
(Rey sees visions of the forest, her power)
“No!”
“So that’s where you are. You know why the Emperor always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”
“He didn’t want you dead. He saw what you could become. So he poured his dark power into you…changed you…to be his rightful heir.”

“You’ve become a Palpatine, like my grandfather before me. But he doesn’t yet realize what he has created. Our connection…it’s a power like life itself. We can destroy him, Rey, and bring a new order to the galaxy…together.”

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I do.”

…

This takes the previous idea that Rey is a creation of Palpatine and adjusts it so that she was changed after she was born by Palpatine’s influence, as Palpatine could see the role Rey would play in the galaxy. This comports even more with TLJ’s ‘Rey Nobody’ concept, where the only thing that is special about Rey is that she is in the right place at the right time during TFA. Palpatine had her parents killed so that they wouldn’t have any second thoughts about retrieving their child, and this allows Rey to still believe that her parents may have some redeeming quality.

Explaining that Rey was changed into a Palpatine after her birth also leaves open Anakin’s origin. He could have been a Skywalker like his mother, created in opposition to the Dark Side, until Palpatine took notice of him at the age of nine and turned him into Hayden Christensen, which would explain why he was so unequivocally good before that point. Similarly, Rey could have been a nobody with struggling parents until they landed on Jakku and Palpatine foresaw a future where she would be an ideal candidate for his spirit, at which point he gave her visions which drove her parents away and kept her there until the time was right for her dark power to awaken.

This idea also allows for Rey to keep the personal revenge plot, even if her parents weren’t intentionally protecting her from Palpatine. Rather, her parents got rid of her because she was already being influenced by Palpatine’s power, and that scared them enough to get rid of her. This also gives Rey a much more personal reason to hate Palpatine, since Palpatine is the reason that Rey’s parents left her on Jakku in the first place.

Of course, that dialogue in the confrontation would still need to be trimmed to
“Weak…like your parents. Luke Skywalker was saved by his father…the only family you have here…is me.”

I don’t mind the flipped shot, the biggest issue for me is the absence of a line. Maybe if Finn said something in the background like “Still busted. Dammit, I told him not to Lightspeed slip the Falcon.” Then we’d get a confirmed reason why the Falcon’s broken and not just because of plot convenience.

Or maybe he continues the thought about Exegol.

“All that matters is the Wayfinder. Finding Exegol.”
“That’s what we’re doing. And once we get there? Then what?”
“I’m going to find Palpatine…and destroy him.”

It’s an Abrams staple that we have something going on at all times, if we don’t it feels weird 😉

Ah I see. That makes sense.

There’s that as well, but I’ve always found it a strange and horrifying implication that a clone’s death is more justifiable than the death of a more ‘normal’ person. I’ve even seen people online specifically saying that clones aren’t really people, so it’s okay that they are dying by the thousands.

I honestly would have just preferred it if George had given us a Republic army vs Clones, because at least then there would be no denying that this war was waged at horrible human cost, no matter how a person viewed the clones. As it is, the ‘family friendly’ marketing of droids vs clones implies that clones are less than a true person, and for me is far more ethically insidious than just admitting that war is inseparable from atrocity.

Sounds good, but I’m still a bit confused. Are we keeping the next scene of Rey where she says that Palps killed her parents and therefore she will destroy him?

Sideburns of BoShek said:

Sorry for the thread bump, but thought I’d post here rather than start a new thread.
 

I remember thinking the Clone Wars were fought over the ethical and practical applications of clones. That greedy and slave profiteers like the Clone Masters recruited Mandalorians to fight for them and lead their clone fighters, due to their historical fights and dislike of the Jedi. The Mandalorians were basically mercenaries, and were willing to be cloned by the clone masters in return for money, better weapon technology, and a chance to fight with the Clone Armies at their side vs the Jedi and the smaller force of the Republic military.

Jedi were wandering ronins, going around and righting wrongs and injustice. Like in a Kurosawa film, or like King Arthur’s Knights. Far from what we saw in the PT films with the Jedi hierarchy and being close to the Senate but not with the people in The Republic. No ban on attachments, having families and children and so on.

Anakin never knew or met Yoda, just that Yoda once taught Obi-Wan. I remember guessing that The Emperor could be a fallen Jedi, and maybe that is how he turned Anakin, knowing what heartstrings to pull, the Jedi’s strengths, weaknesses, what to prey on to get him see things from his point of view, and turn him to the dark side.

The whole thing would be more mystical feel than we got later in the PT films. More of a “we can’t solve our differences with a lightsaber, but with our knowledge of the force” with characters like Dooku vs Yoda, and not the other way around like we actually saw in the PT.

That Padme suspected Anakin of beginning to turn to the dark side. Maybe even luring and killing Jedi? Betraying them? She already had Luke and Leia. I think that was based on those mid 90’s paintings for the Topps cards.

The Clone masters, or Mandalorians had secretly managed to somehow learn how reprogram droids in The Republic to rebel and kill their Republic masters. Resulting in millions of deaths before these errant droids on the rampage were somehow stopped. And that is why some people are seen not to trust droids, that droids have restraining bolts, or limits placed on them and what they can do.

Some of this was hinted at in the Thrawn novels if I remember correctly and books like Children of the Jedi. It would have been a far more interesting and coherent version of the conflict IMO, and it almost seemed like Lucas made the clones warriors of the Republic just to subvert expectations.

Continuing the ‘good parents’ vs ‘bad parents’ discussion, it seems to me like the two concepts are irreconcilable. I would say just to have the ‘good parents’ angle be a lie by Palpatine in this movie to give Rey some motivation to hate him, but as Hal said it conflicts with the vision that Rey has, and this has to be the truth, at least in terms of what the audience feels. But if this is the truth, then it conflicts with the spirit of TLJ. So maybe the first part of this scene is all about the battle between these ideas, between Rey’s belief that her parents were good and her knowledge that they were really terrible.

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.

“You are hard to get rid of.”

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. I see a war within you. Rey…”

“You’re lying.”

“A part of you believes that you were abandoned. You were unplanned, unwanted.”

“Don’t!”

“But a part of you refuses to believe it. It’s too painful, even now.”

“I don’t want this!”

“So you made a new memory.”

“No!”

“Your parents didn’t abandon you. They protected you.”

(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”

“Such a powerful, desperate desire…if only it were true.”

“Stop talking.”

“Rey…I know what happened to them.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“You were right, Rey. Your parents did love you. They were looking for Luke’s friends on Jakku, a hidden sanctuary where you would be safe. But the Emperor’s assassin found them first.”

(Rey sees her parents get killed.)

“No!”

“So that’s where you are.”

“You know why the Emperor was searching for you. I’ll come tell you.”