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Post #1432027

Author
yotsuya
Parent topic
In defense of Rey Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, and why I do not think it undermines her arc in The Last Jedi.
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1432027/action/topic#1432027
Date created
25-May-2021, 11:58 AM

TestingOutTheTest said:

As I stated multiple times in this thread, Rey’s “They were nobody” meant they didn’t have an actual reason to abandon her - they thought she was WORTHLESS. Even if you ignore Kylo Ren’s following dialogue, it retains that meaning.

“Oh, but that’s what Rey believes!” As I stated, it’s the storytelling truth or else that arc of moving past her awful, shitty parents who hated her would be pointless. She moves past them in TLJ by the time we meet her on Crait. (Again, link to STC, don’t really recommend checking it out if you hate STC.)

I do agree with you that she accepts they’re GONE, but it was ONE of the points of her TLJ arc, not the ONLY one - the other one was that she doesn’t care about her parents anymore, from a personal and validation sense, BECAUSE they threw her away like garbage.

My point is that TFA and TLJ deal with how Rey feels about her parents, not the facts. The facts are unknown. We don’t know why they left her there or where they went. We don’t know if they are alive or dead. But they abandoned her without her understanding why. That is the trauma she must overcome. When you experience such a trauma, the truth of the events don’t matter, what matters is how you feel. Kids who are adopted have a wide range of feelings. Two people who had the exact same thing happen at the same age can have widely different reactions. All we are given in TLJ is what Kylo says. Kylo has no real knowledge, just guesses. I believe that he saw her history and what she imagined and used that when he was talking to her to try and turn her to the dark side, so the the nature of what he said has no connection to factual history. When we get to TROS, that part of the story is done. Rey has come to terms with being abandoned. She had found a place. She has been training with Leia for a year.

TROS brings in new information and a new chapter in Rey’s journey. She’d come to terms with being abandoned and now she is faced with the actual facts. Her parents were on the run and left her on Jakku to save her from Palpatine and now she is going to face him. Not only that, but she has powers similar to Palpatine’s and truly fears she might become him. It does cause her to revisit being abandoned, but she had come to terms with the abandonment and that piece really doesn’t impact the story. The revelation that her parents left her to save her comes to light and then is overshadowed by one of them being a Palpatine and what that means for Rey. So she doesn’t go revisit being abandoned. She had already found her place and that is solidified by finding out Leia and Luke knew and when the Jedi spirits support her in the final conflict.