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.
I mean, is that what happened?
All Rey did was block/defend himself in that scene. Palpatine was killed by his own hubris, not Rey.
She deflected the lightning back at him, while walking at him. She could have deflected the lightning in any direction. To say that Palpatine killed himself is in my opinion as if to say that someone who threw a grenade at you and died of the explosion of said grenade, because you threw it back, committed suicide.
I’ll admit the comparison is a tad bit more extreme, but that’s roughly how I feel about Palpatine’s death.
You’re right, that IS an extreme (and ridiculous) comparison, especially since we have no evidence that you CAN deflect Force Lightning in any direction but towards the caster with a lightsaber (iirc, at least), since it’s reflected back at the caster every time it happens.
Anyway, meant to respond to this part in the original post…
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.
Do you mean, like, ‘All you want is for me to hate, but I won’t. Not even you?’