But again, in regards to saving her friends, none of this has any relevance to the themes of the film. This is when those themes are supposed to come to their conclusion; but instead of talking about Rey’s anger, or her heritage, or anything like that, J.J. and Chris are just like, “Meh, you better kill him Rey, or else all of your friends are gonna die.”
I would say one of the themes of the film is confronting fear. In this moment, Rey is presented with two options: kill Palpatine to possibly save her friends, or deny him and risk losing her friends. I would say that thematically it does make sense. It’s about the fear of loss, and learning to let others have some control, because the civilian fleet does show up to save the day without Rey’s help.
In fact, the fear of loss leading you to do stupid things is thematically extremely relevant to the saga as a whole. It’s perfect the way it is. It’s why I’ll also always insist on keeping Leia sensing the death of her son.