Gadzooks, I’ve just had a crazy revelation about Maz’s Castle, and I don’t know why I never had it before.
When Rey has her Force vision with the lightsaber, Maz tells her that her parents are never coming back, but that someone still could. What is Maz talking about? Maybe the guy that she just admonished for wanting to run away, the person that just left Rey while still obviously caring about her, the one that will immediately return and try to rescue her?
No, the first name that pops into her head is Luke. Obviously. Then she runs away from everything because she’s scared, and after that things are done to her by other characters.
How’s this for a radical edit:
Rey has the Force vision. After the part where she’s on the desert and everything goes dark, she finds herself in the Rathtar hallways, alone, searching for Finn who’s been captured by the beasts. She runs after him, shouting his name, and runs into Kylo in the forest.
When Maz confronts her and says that ‘someone still could’ return, she says nothing, and when Maz tells her to take the saber, she says she’s never touching it again, but not that she doesn’t want any part of it. She leaves the castle, shouting Finn’s name as she runs into the forest.
Meanwhile, Finn turns from the ship as if he hears something on the wind…but it’s the First Order. He races back to the castle asking about Rey.
Rey looks up and sees the First Order ships in the sky, presumably as she’s still running in the wrong direction looking for Finn. That’s the problem with the castle, it doesn’t have any sort of paved parking lot. She runs back toward the castle. BB-8 is erased from the shot.
Finn is taken to Maz in the basement, Maz being the last person who saw Rey. She gives Finn the lightsaber.
Thing is, I don’t see any reason why this wouldn’t work, and it would make so much more sense than what we have. With Rey intending to find Finn but getting captured, we instantly know how both characters feel about each other and what their motivations are, and when they are finally reunited the audience can more acutely feel the reunion.
Of course, this is a big change for Luke’s place in the story as the McGuffin, but that was never really Finn’s or Rey’s interest anyway. That was for Leia and the Resistance. So really, with this change Rey goes from wanting to find Luke to wanting to find Finn, and makes a strong argument for ending the movie with Rey leaving the Resistance base.