I remember having this same conversation a while back. The problem with making her parents bad people is that the Palpy/Rey scene at the end relies on the whole “she will take her revenge!” spiel. He’s trying to get her to hate him. But if Palpatine is responsible for the killing of her parents, and they were bad people, then really Rey should be thanking Palps for neutralizing those scum bags. Not exactly the greatest strategy. And don’t even get me started on the fact that it makes no sense that they wouldn’t reveal her location to Ochi if they were bad.
Don’t get me wrong, it would have been better for them to be bad, but unfortunately the movie we have been given relies on them being good. Doing the opposite would involve removing way too much content and make the Rey/Palpatine scene kinda confusing.
But I do think the revenge she could be taking would be because she was alone for all those years because of Palpatine.
Well then somebody could easily make the argument that she probably had a better quality of life being alone than being with drunken parents who don’t give two shits about her (abuse).
I ran into this issue when writing my novelization and ultimately decided I had to go with good parents (but improved) because otherwise you’d have to change a lot. For example, Ochi would have to never encounter her parents and die while on the hunt for them. This then makes Rey unfamiliar with the dagger and his ship. Then that leaves the dyad fight in Kylo’s quarters devoid of content since there are no visions and not a whole lot to say except that she’s a Palpatine, which is supposed to happen in the hangar scene. Plus there would need to be a good enough reason for Rey to want to kill Palps with the dark side so the essence transfer works.
Ah, what a mess.
Palpatine would be the reason Rey believes she’s worthless. Even after realizing that her actual heritage doesn’t define her value, if it weren’t for Palpatine then Rey wouldn’t believe she’s nothing.