The Starlight Project Addendum: The Rise of Skywalker (Freeform Brainstorming Session) — Page 6

Yeah, it isn’t strictly necessary. You’re right. But I figured that while we’re implementing one abandoned plot thread from ROTS we might as well put in another. I think it was meant to be revealed that Count Dooku, at his order, had the Tuskens capture his mother. And people think he planted Anakin’s visions and/or drained Padme’s life essence.

My goal was just to literally make Palpatine the reason for every bad thing happening to the Skywalkers, as well as their existence in the first place. But that might be a bit overkill, so agreed.

I actually wrote up a post sort of touching on this idea but I didn’t share because y’all were on a role with the clone stuff, but I share it now since it is sort of on-topic. Some of this will be redundant I’m sure.

Since TROS heavily references Palpatine’s Darth Plagueis story, and how Palpatine continued his work on “cheating death”, I could see the benefit of Rey being the final product of his work to “create life”.

“Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith so powerful and so wise, he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life. He had such a knowledge of the dark side, he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.”

“To cheat death is a power only one has achieved, but if we work together, I know we can discover the secret.”

Just to reference, here is the wiki article that discusses the Legends book Darth Plagueis, specifically his experiments to create life:

The Grand Experiment was conceived by the Sith Lord Darth Plagueis’s desire to create a life form by gaining control of the midi-chlorians, the sentient microscopic organisms that enabled certain beings to wield the power of the Force. Not only did the Dark Lord deem the project a failure, his efforts ultimately backfired and caused the midi-chlorians to create Anakin Skywalker, the prophesied Chosen One of Jedi legend who was destined to restore balance to the Force by destroying the Sith.

During the final years of the Galactic Republic, the Sith Lords Darth Plagueis and his apprentice, Darth Sidious, conducted the Grand Experiment on the moon Sojourn in 42 BBY. Utilizing Sith alchemy and the dark side of the Force, Plagueis intended to create the living embodiment of the Force. In order to do so, he tried to influence the midi-chlorians in his attempt to create life. But when his efforts bore no success, and instead wiped out his other experiments, Plagueis deemed the project a failure. Years later, during the Crisis on Naboo in 32 BBY, Plagueis was surprised to discover the existence of Anakin Skywalker, a young Human boy born without a father. Plagueis concluded that not only had the midi-chlorians resisted his will, but they had also retaliated by engineering the conception of the Jedi Order’s long-awaited Chosen One, a Jedi destined to restore balance to the Force by destroying the Sith.

Unlike his master, however, Darth Sidious saw the discovery of Skywalker as an opportunity; the chance to use the Jedi’s own legend to the Sith’s advantage. After he assassinated Plagueis, Sidious—under the guise of his public persona as Supreme Chancellor Palpatine—befriended the young padawan, and intended to slowly corrupt him over the years until Skywalker submitted to the dark side—a goal in which he ultimately succeeded.However, Anakin was eventually redeemed and, turning his back on his Master and the dark side, slew the Emperor before he himself perished.

So if you were going off this version of the lore, if Anakin/the Chosen One was a reaction by the Force itself to Plagueis’ failed experiment, what if Palpatine succeeded at his experiment, and that experiment was Rey? There’s been a lot of fan theories that Anakin was made by Palpatine, even an earlier draft of ROTS said as much, but according to canon he isn’t. So what if Rey was instead?
If you wanted to say the Force reacted to this second experiment, perhaps that’s what the Dyad was.

My problem with a lot of these rewrites is that they’re still overly complicated in my opinion. And I wonder if instead of trying to make a complicated backstory as for why she ends up on Jakku if her parents were good or bad, what if Palpatine intentionally wanted her to be raised on this harsh, violent environment with no family? If she couldn’t survive this harsh environment, she wouldn’t be worthy or strong enough to be a Sith, or his vessel. It would explain why she was left with a crappy guy like Unkar Plutt, which doesn’t make sense in any version of the story where her parents are trying to protect her.

She would sort of be like Darth Bane. Bane lived in a harsh environment and had a terrible father, but that shaped him into who he became. Palpatine was trying to replicate those factors so both nature and nurture would push her toward the Dark Side. And this would give her all the more reason for her to hate Palpatine, which he wants so he can possess her.

This would still give you similar parallels to what Abrams and Terrio tried to do. Anakin was the literal Force messiah, a kind boy, but he was twisted by greed into a terrible person. Rey could be his opposite, the Force Anti-Christ, growing up in a rough environment with terrible parents, but despite all of that she became a kind-hearted person. And maybe the bond between Rey and Kylo Ren formed because they are both connected to the Force in a unique way. Yes, Kylo is the grandson of Anakin, but through him he is still a product of the Force, just like Rey is.

“Why did the Emperor come from me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”

“He didn’t. He learned how to create life, but knew that what didn’t kill it would make it stronger.
You, were made by Palpatine, to take the throne.
My family came from the light, and you, the dark side. But what Palpatine doesn’t know is that we’re a dyad in the Force, Rey. Two that are one. Together, we’ll bring true balance to the Force.”

What I like about something like this is that the implication here is that it is sort of vague enough that the theatrical Rey Palpatine still sort of fits. The main difference being that Palpatine/Ochi leaving her on Jakku was intentional, and her parents were truly nobodies. So all of that bullshit makes more sense. Rey was made by Palpatine, but she isn’t his grandchild in the biological sense (she could be, or even a clone, but it’s left vague) The one question would be if Palpatine picked out Rey’s parents in particular, or Palpatine performed some ritual or whatever but didn’t know where his experiment ended up. I’m leaning towards the former, since Jakku kind of is a great environment to raise a survivor. Seems like Palpatine may have chosen the location. But I also think it is boring if you try to bog the movie down in lingo and exposition.

It’s nice because the audience isn’t left with the question, “Palpatine fucks?!”, but it’s also different than what Luke or Anakin faced. If it is just a question of her having Palpatine’s blood, well it’s not really compelling in a new way because Luke faced the dilemma of blood and overcame it. It’s not really interesting to see Rey answer the same question.

You also don’t have to directly reference the Chosen One prophecy, if you prefer prequel edits that don’t refer to it, but the parallel is still there. Kylo Ren is just explaining it and referring to it in a general way.

Later on Ahch-To, Luke could say, “Because you’re from Palpatine?”

And Luke’s line “some things are stronger than blood” can reference Leia and Rey having a strong bond despite not being blood-related, rather than referring to her being blood-related to Palpatine. But that suggestion can still sort of be there, or relate to being a product of the Dark Side.

I like that RogueLeader.

I like the core of this approach. But I’m still going to insist on keeping Rey’s parents good and her being hidden away on Jakku so Palpatine can’t retrieve his prize. I don’t think it’s a good idea to start changing more lines that were spoken on-screen with visible lips. The only problem with this new idea is that it’s hard to convey in simple terms. First, we’d have to explain how the Skywalkers were a reaction of the Force to Palpatine’s experiments because this is never stated in the main films (in fact the opposite is implied). And then we’d have to explain that Rey is the product of those experiments coming to fruition. The benefit of what we currently have is that both families would have the same origin (this being the latter), so we don’t have to explain ourselves twice. If that all did work out, though, we’d do the same thing as we’ve been talking about: “You’re his heir. You are a Palpatine” so we don’t have to absolutely demolish other scenes in the movie which refer to her as such.

NeverarGreat said:

Granted this is the first story where the protagonist doesn’t have a family of any kind to raise her, but that seems like a good reason to focus the story away from the location aspect and onto the lack of parents aspect.

Yup, and the fact that Palpy’s the one that killed them serves 2 purposes:

1. It lines up with what he does to groom his followers - he isolates them and those closest to them always seem to die (Dooku - Qui-Gon, Anakin - Shmi, etc.) He is then able to swoop in to fill the void.
2. Most importantly, it gives Rey a tangible reason to hate the Emperor, which is essential for his ritual at the end.

I think something that feels like a contradiction or requires an explanation that is narratively bending over backwards for is her good parents leaving her with a scumbag like Unkar Plutt to “protect her”. It doesn’t really make sense. And trying to explain it feels like a complicated fan theory.

I think if you make Anakin and Rey both Palpatine’s creations, then it sort of makes her and Kylo related in a weird way? So the romance aspect would be a little awkward. I don’t think you would have to explain it. I actually an issue with a lot of these write ups is feels like too much exposition and not enough character stuff, imo.

With our new chain of events, they are merely paying Plutt to watch over her while they search the Jakku desert for Lor San Tekka’s village. As for why they don’t take her with them, I probably wouldn’t want to take my child for a dangerous search through the scorching desert, either, especially with assassins hot on my tail.

My initial drafts of this idea placed a hard emphasis on the fact that, genetically, they are two individual bloodlines that Palpatine merely kickstarted. True, they’d be related through the Force, but that just ties in with the dyad side of things.

Regardless, I do see the potential of changing our narrative to only Rey being a successful manipulation of the Force by Palpatine. It’s easier to write in a semi-condensed way than I’d imagined - “Palpatine’s dark experiments led the Force to create my grandfather as a counter. But ultimately, his influence over it triumphed. You’re his heir. You… are a Palpatine.”

If you look at some of the drafts we’ve already cooked up, you’ll see we’re more than capable of cleverly weaving around whenever she shouts something like that by placing something truly negative beforehand.

To remove her parents being good, we’d have to remove more content from the Palpatine and Rey conversation, which has already been stripped down a bit in Ascendant. We won’t end up with much left, and it will be felt, I guarantee it. Plus, unless somebody radically changes the VFX of Rey’s parents ship in TFA, and comes up with a compelling reason why Rey would harbor such intense hatred for Palpatine going into their confrontation, then it’s what we’re stuck with.

I think removing Rey’s parents actually being good is more than worth cutting the whatever shots/lines necessary to do so. I just think it totally disrespects the audience to go back on that story decision. Guess that could be an endless subjective argument though. But I think you could keep more than one would initially think if you can get creative.

Well, if you wanted Rey to hate Palpatine there are plenty of reasons besides making her parents good people. If Palpatine intentionally left Rey there, she could hate him for the life he made for her. She could hate him for just making her in the first place. For trying to be the master of her fate. Or, if you kept it simple and just focused on future visions, she could hate him for being a threat to her new family. Or just projecting her fears of herself onto him. He’s what she could become. She fears he is right. Sure, if you want to keep it simple you could just make it because he killed her actually good parents. I just don’t think that is the most compelling reason, and felt that was one of the reasons for fan editing this film in the first place.

Also don’t mean to throw off y’all’s flow. Just popping to give some food for thought. I just did like you coming to the angle of Rey as a dark creation, and maybe not blatantly a clone. Could be a clone still though. I still think the clone idea is better than Rey as Palpatine’s granddaughter. But I will say I do think the angle of her parents maybe being bad, having second thoughts and then getting killed for it does make sense.

Even if we decided to remove her parents being good, we’d need some visuals for Rey to be seeing in place of her previous visions. She clearly is making a face like she is seeing something throughout. Without access to our own film studio, this will likely have to be footage from elsewhere in the Skywalker saga. Which is why it was convenient to have both Rey’s origin and the Skywalker’s be the same - created by Palpatine.

We could repurpose footage of Anakin holding Shmi’s dead body, Anakin as a child slave, Luke attacking Ben, and other dark moments of the Skywalkers. And this is what would be used to represent what Rey’s lot in life is with her nature and Palpatine manipulating everything from behind the scenes. It’s an idea I have but in practice it might not be good enough.

I think I agree that Rey’s parents shouldn’t be good, and I think there’s plenty of better reasons why she’d hate Palpatine. It’s a blatant contradiction to what was said in the last film, and since these 2 sides are both coming from Kylo, it takes away from what he’s saying now. Besides, Rey doesn’t even seem to remember her parents at all throughout the trilogy, and we spent two movies dwelling on them. I think that removing them from this one is worth it to push her character along.

That being said, I love the force creation angle. Personally, I would say that Rey was a creation of Palpatine, while the Skywalker’s are a creation of the force. That makes the premise of the dyad stronger as Rey and Kylo are inverses, and adds more weight to Rey taking the skywalker name at the end.

RogueLeader said:

The one question would be if Palpatine picked out Rey’s parents in particular, or Palpatine performed some ritual or whatever but didn’t know where his experiment ended up. I’m leaning towards the former, since Jakku kind of is a great environment to raise a survivor.

I think the latter would work well too. Then you could say that ochi was sent to get Rey, but never found her, only removing the dagger connection. It also explains why palpatine goes for Ben and leaves Rey alone on Jakku: he just doesn’t know where she is.

I like this draft of the dialogue. Provides some ambiguity to keep the audience guessing, but hits the same beats.

In some of my versions of the first Rey and Kylo Force bond scene that I’ve written, I have Kylo say this.

Kylo: Palpatine wants you dead.

Rey: Serving another master?

Kylo: He lies. I have other plans.

Something like that could potentially benefit this type of plot. Kind of hammering in Palpatine as a deceiver, one who lies to manipulate.

I like the recontextualization of Reys memories as lies she tells herself. This goes very well with TLJ. The one below turned out to be a Rey Noone edit.

“Rey….wherever you are…You are hard to find.

“You are hard to get rid of.”

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you have always been. The dark side incarnate…”

“You’re lying.”

“Your parents did not realize what you were…”

“Don’t!”

“If they did, they would have tried to sell you to the Sith…”

“I don’t want this!”

“Do you see the Throne?”

(Maybe insert flashing Throne vision here)

“No!”

“How did you resist this draw for so long?”

(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”

“So these are the lies you told yourself.”

“Stop talking.”

"Made up memories will not protect you forever.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“Your parents did not even remember who they sold you to… So when Palpatines hunters found them, they could not tell them where to find you.”

(Rey sees her parents get killed.)

“So that’s where you are.”

“I know how this story ends…why Palpatine wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.”

“Just as my grandfather was born to bring balance, you were born to bring chaos… Another chosen one…”

“This is why he fears you… You are powerful… And we share a bond… Together, we can defeat him. The power of the Skywalkers combined with the power of the dark side…"

“You know what you need to do. You know.”

“I do.”

…

Yeah, I totally hadn’t considered those visions as lies she’s telling herself, either. That’s some strong character stuff, in theory. She’d be seeing these “visions” as Kylo alludes to her darker nature; this has been her soothing method her whole life more than likely. But I agree with Eddie that we don’t necessarily HAVE to take this approach for both of our edits. Plus, I could see people retroactively saying that it feels like a fan edit because people usually prefer to believe what they’re seeing over what they’re being told.

One important thing worth considering about whether Palpatine creates the Skywalker bloodline or not: it massively benefits Kylo’s character, Luke’s in the sequels, and even Leia’s if we modify her flashback a bit.

If Kylo admits to Rey that the Force created his grandfather as a counter to Palpatine’s darkness, then he’d be admitting that his whole persona as Kylo Ren is a farce. Remember, his whole argument here is that “the dark side is in our nature”. So this exponentially strengthens his own deluded beliefs.

Now onto the characters themselves. Firstly, there is one of two options. Either there was so much evil in a young Ben Solo that Luke saw absolutely no chance of redemption in him, or there are so many evil instincts in Luke that he was willing to strike down his nephew over some bad dreams. Or a combination of the two somewhere. Luke then isolates himself from the galaxy to protect them from himself and what he suddenly believes is a flawed Jedi religion. As for Leia, she uses aggression to take down the brother who’s trying to teach her, and she senses that there is a dark fate waiting for her if she continues being a Jedi at all. So she is too fearful of herself and that to continue at all.

None of this sounds like what should have happened to the offspring of who is essentially Force-Jesus. Yes, he turned into Darth Vader, but that took a hell of a lot of manipulation on Palpatine’s part. It wasn’t something that just switched or snapped like it seemed to in Kylo and Luke. Plus, Anakin was redeemed! He returned as a Jedi. That should have had a greater impact on the trajectory of his offspring.

Now, all of this is likely because the writers wanted to elevate Rey as the main character, so they had to write random reasons for the Skywalkers to be in more minor roles. But the fact that we could actually EXPLAIN why things turned out so bad for their family? It seems like one we should take.

Another random thought. George intended for Leia to be revealed as the real chosen one in Episode IX. This could still line up with the prophecy, since when Leia was born Anakin Skywalker was dead thus “born to no father”. However, with Rey finishing Leia’s Jedi path in TROS and finally defeating Palpy, they both technically become part of the chosen one prophecy.

And the fact that George intended to dive headfirst into the microbiology side of the Force in his sequels screams to me that he intended to show how the midichlorians can be influenced to create life. He probably planned this dark Skywalker twist for episode VIII. I think this is why he planted those seeds in ROTS, because he fully intended on confirming it in a way that wasn’t just dialogue but rather visuals. But obviously that couldn’t fit into a movie as full as ROTS.

I’m sorry, but I personally believe the final installment of a 9 movie Saga is not the time to be wishy-washy on things, no matter what. It needs to be firm in its convictions, revealing something that would make the rest of the saga be viewed differently. Some of my favorite movies have a twist in them that make you see what happened before in a new light. The fact that this twist would affect 8 movies-worth of content is pretty incredible.

Yes, this story idea isn’t for everybody. I seriously doubt George’s vision for the sequels would have been, either. People online say they would have preferred what I mentioned earlier about George’s sequels, but that’s only because it’s different. But at this point I’m pretty stuck with this idea. Hopefully it can be seen to fruition someday.

Lol but that phrase was only used to justify a controversial (at the time) twist and keep it as fact.

The mainline Skywalker movies have always been able to change current canon, if that is what they wish. They aren’t necessarily beholden to anything.