NeverarGreat said:
A potential direction would be to lean on the idea that Rey is a feral Force user who can’t distinguish what her power actually comes from. In that case when she confronts Sheev it is the first time her power is being put to the test, so it isn’t if she can defeat him but whether she can do it using only the light side that counts.

This was where I thought her character was going. After her snarl in TFA, “you went straight to the dark” in TLJ, and especially after her lightning in this movie, I felt it was clear she was using the dark side most of the time, even though she was using it to do good. After all, it is quicker, easier, and more seductive, and Rey always tended to be motivated by strong emotions. I was really hoping for an “I am a Jedi, like my father before me” moment where she finds a light side way to defeat Palpatine. Instead we got a hilarious inversion of Luke throwing his saber away and refusing to fight: she force pulls a SECOND saber into her other hand, allowing her to more effectively EXPLODE Palpatine’s FACE.