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.
We’ve already seen a bit of Rey’s flaws and failures. Her reluctance to admit she’s been waiting in vain for family that’s never coming back, makes her pass on Han’s offer to join him and Chewie. Running away from her destiny is what gets her captured, and almost costs Finn his life. I imagine she may carry some residual guilt over Han’s death going forward as well.