I’m very happy that they’ve gone in the direction of strong female leads (though having a young female scavenger main character rather takes the steam out of my own prequel rewrite). However, I feel like Rey is a bit too competent to act as an audience avatar, and may even do some harm if seen as a role model. Keep in mind that Luke was always a flawed character who failed as much as he succeeded in the OT, so people seeing him as a role model recognized that failure is a necessary element of success. Rey on the other hand succeeds to an uncanny degree in TFA. I hope that Episode 8 delves into her character flaws to a greater extent. Of course, we haven’t seen enough of Jyn Erso to make a determination about this, but from the trailer it seems like she will be a more obviously jaded and damaged character with a balance of strengths and weaknesses.