Okay, so not exclusively a Rey Nobody idea, but I think this idea would be helpful for any edit that wants to replace the Rey Palpatine stuff with Rey’s potential desire for power in order to save her friends.

Even in the theatrical version of the film, there’s this idea that Rey could potentially fall to the dark side. But we are never given a solid reason why she would beyond her bloodline, as well as Palpatine basically holding her friends hostage at the climax of the film. This idea may have been strengthened if we could have had a scene of Rey tapping into the dark side and seeing how it could help her accomplish her goals. Instead, the one time she really taps into the dark side in this film is when she thinks she has killed Chewie, which probably would make her more afraid of the dark side, rather than her being drawn to it.

Basically, I’m wondering how feasible it would be to change Chewie’s fakeout death and just have Rey lose the force tug-of-war. There would be a few benefits to this change.

We get one less fake-out death in this film.
Kylo can use this moment to tempt Rey. “I needed you to see it. The power of the dark side. You need power to keep them safe.” These lines can be used during the Force bond duel.
This feeds into Rey’s self-doubt and the potential what-if of her giving in.

Obviously this would require a few lines changes in later scenes regarding the heroes thinking Chewie’s dead, but there’s really just three moments, I think they can be trimmed after playing around with them a little.

The main thing would be to cut Rey blowing up the transport in a way that doesn’t feel obviously edited. I’ve kind of done a rough edit of this idea with some shot rearrangement, cropping and shot reversal. I think a new VFX shot of the transport flying away could help sell it, or at the very least some solid sound mixing.

Curious what people think.