Yoda does say, “Lost Ben Solo, you did. Lose Rey, we cannot.”
He also says something along the lines of, “Wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess.”
Which, we find out he means literally, but I also think there is a figurative meaning he was trying convey to Luke about Rey’s own abilities and disposition. Basically that she has the right mindset to be a good Jedi.
And I’ve mentioned this before, and I know people disagree with me, but I kind of think a lot of us have just assumed how the Force works without considering that it might be a little more mysterious than we’ve thought.
The Force, through the lightsaber, called out to Rey, even Maz described it as such. The Force called Rey to the Tree on Ach-To. The lightsaber flew into Rey’s hands not because she’s more powerful than Kylo Ren, but because the Force chose her. When Rey lets go of her own desires, the Force is acting through her. The Force has literally awakened, and I feel it plays a more active and obvious role in this story than it may have had in the past.
So the way I see it, it isn’t that Rey just has all these amazing skills. Yeah, she has some piloting, mechanic and survival skills, but that’s from her growing up on Jakku. Her “Jedi” skills are, in my opinion, are based in faith. She starts believing in the Force, especially after Han tells her and Finn about the Force and the Jedi.
I’m not trying to say your guys’ own interpretations are wrong or anything like that, but if you think of it this way it might be easier to rationalize. When I try to picture myself in her position, learning that stories of Jedi I grew up on were real, that the Force is real and that it is calling to me too, it helps me sympathize with how she is afraid of this newfound awakening within her and her desperation to understand it, like she is in The Last Jedi.
And who knows, maybe IX will reveal more to us about Rey, the Force, etc.
Also wanted to say despite my disagreements with OP and some others, I’m glad you guys feel like this is a pretty positive environment to discuss stuff. I might argue with people on here every once in a while, but it is all in good faith and I enjoy talking about it with you all!
Cool post as always Rogue, and I doff mine helm to your last paragraph!
My personal issue with the ‘faith’ aspect is that my reading of the whole ‘I don’t believe it/that is why you fail’ lesson (which is what tends to be brought up when comparing Luke to Rey) is more in line with what someone like Schwarzenegger might profess than say a faith healer. For example Arnold always bangs on about self-belief/positivity and visualisation as the conduit to achieving his various goals, but that doesn’t mean ‘belief’ alone conjures the outcome. You still have to get off your backside and strive, learn, grow, fail, get back up etc etc. When Luke says “I don’t believe it”, I think Yoda’s response is essentially “well, you’ll never get there with that attitude”. Training has such a specific relevance in TESB - we see Luke running and climbing vines and doing flips (all which Mark ‘buffed up’ for) and the comicbook/deleted scenes had him trying to slice a metal bar into 7 pieces after running for miles on end. It just feels cheap (to me) to dismiss the levitation thing as a pure matter of ‘faith’ rather than an integral part of the whole ‘honing of the body and mind’ that TESB implies. By that measure anyone could simply see Yoda raise the X-Wing and then do it themselves because they’ve witnessed it and now believe it.
I like the concept of Rey in theory. Rey has tapped into Jedi territory on the back of being forced (snicker) to survive under severe circumstances. But it would be nice (for us, not Rey!) if there was a downside. If being a Jedi is indeed, as I believe the original films imply, about discipline and patience and true honing of the mind/body/spirit, wouldn’t it follow that Rey might have certain barriers to achieving this state? Perhaps she’s impatient, or distrustful, or so bogged down in her survivalist attitude that she lacks the worldview and/or empathy to resist the Dark Side (which is implied in TLJ but again, has no downside for Rey). I just think that making Rey so automatically brilliant at everything diminishes Luke’s journey in the OT (not to mention Anakin’s fall) and makes the implied training path in the original films appear kind of redundant.
Of course everything I’ve said here is through the lens of my personal fan-view that the Force should be a ‘thing’ and not a ‘who’. I get that many folks don’t mind the idea of a sentient Force that intervenes and bequeaths powers and has its own particular ideas concerning ‘balance’, but for me that creates more questions than it answers. Why didn’t the Force simply choose Luke and spare him all of that pain and heartache? Intervening gods really need to account for their fickle choices. The Force as originally depicted has no such issues.