In defense of Rey Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker, and why I do not think it undermines her arc in The Last Jedi. — Page 3

As I stated multiple times in this thread, Rey’s “They were nobody” meant they didn’t have an actual reason to abandon her - they thought she was WORTHLESS. Even if you ignore Kylo Ren’s following dialogue, it retains that meaning.

“Oh, but that’s what Rey believes!” As I stated, it’s the storytelling truth or else that arc of moving past her awful, shitty parents who hated her would be pointless. She moves past them in TLJ by the time we meet her on Crait. (Again, link to STC, don’t really recommend checking it out if you hate STC.)

I do agree with you that she accepts they’re GONE, but it was ONE of the points of her TLJ arc, not the ONLY one - the other one was that she doesn’t care about her parents anymore, from a personal and validation sense, BECAUSE they threw her away like garbage.

TestingOutTheTest said:

As I stated multiple times in this thread, Rey’s “They were nobody” meant they didn’t have an actual reason to abandon her - they thought she was WORTHLESS. Even if you ignore Kylo Ren’s following dialogue, it retains that meaning.

“Oh, but that’s what Rey believes!” As I stated, it’s the storytelling truth or else that arc of moving past her awful, shitty parents who hated her would be pointless. She moves past them in TLJ by the time we meet her on Crait. (Again, link to STC, don’t really recommend checking it out if you hate STC.)

I do agree with you that she accepts they’re GONE, but it was ONE of the points of her TLJ arc, not the ONLY one - the other one was that she doesn’t care about her parents anymore, from a personal and validation sense, BECAUSE they threw her away like garbage.

My point is that TFA and TLJ deal with how Rey feels about her parents, not the facts. The facts are unknown. We don’t know why they left her there or where they went. We don’t know if they are alive or dead. But they abandoned her without her understanding why. That is the trauma she must overcome. When you experience such a trauma, the truth of the events don’t matter, what matters is how you feel. Kids who are adopted have a wide range of feelings. Two people who had the exact same thing happen at the same age can have widely different reactions. All we are given in TLJ is what Kylo says. Kylo has no real knowledge, just guesses. I believe that he saw her history and what she imagined and used that when he was talking to her to try and turn her to the dark side, so the the nature of what he said has no connection to factual history. When we get to TROS, that part of the story is done. Rey has come to terms with being abandoned. She had found a place. She has been training with Leia for a year.

TROS brings in new information and a new chapter in Rey’s journey. She’d come to terms with being abandoned and now she is faced with the actual facts. Her parents were on the run and left her on Jakku to save her from Palpatine and now she is going to face him. Not only that, but she has powers similar to Palpatine’s and truly fears she might become him. It does cause her to revisit being abandoned, but she had come to terms with the abandonment and that piece really doesn’t impact the story. The revelation that her parents left her to save her comes to light and then is overshadowed by one of them being a Palpatine and what that means for Rey. So she doesn’t go revisit being abandoned. She had already found her place and that is solidified by finding out Leia and Luke knew and when the Jedi spirits support her in the final conflict.

But my point is there was no indication it’s how Rey felt when she admitted “They were nobody.” There’s nothing that contradicts this as truth when we do get to that point in TLJ. If there was a hint that it was what Rey believed in TLJ, then I would agree with you.

And I pointed out before that Star Wars is a fantasy. It doesn’t really have to be accurate to real life.

TestingOutTheTest said:

But my point is there was no indication it’s how Rey felt when she admitted “They were nobody.” There’s nothing that contradicts this as truth when we do get to that point in TLJ. If there was a hint that it was what Rey believed in TLJ, then I would agree with you.

But they were nobody. Even TROS confirms that. It is what happened and why they left that what Rey imagines is more imporant that reality for the plot of TFA and TLJ. But in TROS we learn the truth and it furthers the story rather than reframing.

And I pointed out before that Star Wars is a fantasy. It doesn’t really have to be accurate to real life.

But the best stories echo real life. Especially in fantasy.

KumoNin said:

But they were nobody. Even TROS confirms that

It certainly wants you to believe that. But if you found out that one of your parents (parents who died when you were little and apparently led unremarkable lives), say, your dad, was actually Hitler’s kid (or, for a more canon-accurate example, a clone of Adolf Hitler!) and gave his life to protect you from Hitler, would you really insist that your parents were nobodies? Rey certainly doesn’t

Just look at Rey’s arc in TFA and TLJ. It is all about her parents leaving her. By the end of TLJ she has overcome that issue. In TROS we learn that she didn’t have all the information and that one of her parents (in the film it never specifies which parent and does not mention clones) was a child of Palpatine and her force powers echo his. It is a new journey for her. It might partially reopen the old one, due to what she learns about her parents, but she had come to terms with the worst scenario so learning her parents didn’t just abandon her but were murdered as they tried to protect her would be a positive change. It is confirmation that they didn’t just leave her, she was loved and wanted. But she already found that in her new group in the Resistance. Her character arc in TROS doesn’t revisit that but moves forward with the bad side of the news, that she is a Palpatine and it completely derails her sense of placement. Now she questions if she really can be the Jedi savior (and we see at the beginning that she knows she hasn’t reached the right level of training and mindset yet).

But let’s look at Rey’s parents and what they mean to Rey and her journey. There was a build up in TFA that Rey was somebody. That she came from somewhere. It was mostly fan flamed. She had to be someone. So the reveal that her parents were nobody special came as a shock. To fans. It fit perfectly in the story. Rey wanted to be somebody, to belong with this new group of people she found. But there was no link. She remembers that her parents were nobody special when Kylo forces her to admit it. But let’s compare her lineage to the Skywalkers. Anakin was the chosen one, possibly the most powerful force user the galaxy has seen. But he did not get the right teaching and fell to the dark side, but he had twin children, each powerful in the force. And whether or not Lucas intended it or not, Leia shows she is powerful in ANH when even Vader can’t get anything out of her. Luke, of course, becomes a powerful Jedi and starts a Jedi Academy. He has no children (in the film canon). Leia has one son who is powerful in the force. But Rey is a Palpatine. Sheev is her grandfather (biological or clone doesn’t matter). Sheev is powerful in the force. His child is not. There is no indication of any force powers in either of her parents. This actually works nicely into the story if Sheev’s child is a clone, but that has no bearing on the movies. So in terms of being Jedi, smugglers, or any sort of heroes, her parents were nobody. They were just travelers. And yet from those two nobodies comes a new chosen one, very powerful in the force and able to learn very quickly from Kylo, Maz, Luke, and Leia. How does such a person come from nobody?

I remember the discussions on this site where we argued what family she was. I thought her accent was a key. We had all sorts of theories. A few thought she shouldn’t be related to anyone. Kenobi and Skywalker were the other choices. No one said Palpatine. Then she was nobody in TLJ and then a Palpatine in TROS. But this again parallels the revelations in the OT. Anakin and Vader were different in ANH, then Vader is Anakin and Luke’s father in TESB, then Leia joins the family in ROTJ. Luke has to deal with each of those. Rey has to deal with each revelation about her parents, They aren’t coming back, they are nobodies, Palpatine is her grandfather.

See, I personally find the return of Palpatine and Rey being a Palpatine a genius idea that really caps the series. There is so much symetry and poetry in it. It ties everything back to the PT. And even better, it is so true to the Flash Gordon origins of Star Wars and the Ming origins of Palpatine.

And in the Mandelorian we get a final piece to the puzzle. Making a force sensitive clone is hard. The events that end season 2 have a place in the narrative. That blood sample from Grogu unlocked making a force sensitive clone and the rise of Snoke an the resurrection of Palpatine. At least that is what seems to fit now. We will see where they take it.

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

But my point is there was no indication it’s how Rey felt when she admitted “They were nobody.” There’s nothing that contradicts this as truth when we do get to that point in TLJ. If there was a hint that it was what Rey believed in TLJ, then I would agree with you.

But they were nobody. Even TROS confirms that. It is what happened and why they left that what Rey imagines is more imporant that reality for the plot of TFA and TLJ. But in TROS we learn the truth and it furthers the story rather than reframing.

I was referring to Rey’s parents being bad people who threw her away like garbage - they thought she was worthless. That’s what Rey meant when she said that, they didn’t have a reason to abandon her, they didn’t care about her. Re-read my previous posts and the original. It’s the (storytelling) truth or else that arc’d be pointless, all for nothing - which, again, is what happens in TRoS.

Looks like we’re gonna be going in circles…

TestingOutTheTest said:

yotsuya said:

TestingOutTheTest said:

But my point is there was no indication it’s how Rey felt when she admitted “They were nobody.” There’s nothing that contradicts this as truth when we do get to that point in TLJ. If there was a hint that it was what Rey believed in TLJ, then I would agree with you.

But they were nobody. Even TROS confirms that. It is what happened and why they left that what Rey imagines is more imporant that reality for the plot of TFA and TLJ. But in TROS we learn the truth and it furthers the story rather than reframing.

I was referring to Rey’s parents being bad people who threw her away like garbage - they thought she was worthless. That’s what Rey meant when she said that, they didn’t have a reason to abandon her, they didn’t care about her. Re-read my previous posts and the original. It’s the (storytelling) truth or else that arc’d be pointless, all for nothing - which, again, is what happens in TRoS.

Looks like we’re gonna be going in circles…

I think you are going in circles. If you look at how she felt in TFA, she wanted her parents to come back. She had hope that there was some other reason. But deep down she couldn’t see a reason why they did what they did. Kylo made her face that and deal with it. In TROS we find out that her original hope was true, but it was also true that they were never coming back. She held the dagger that killed them and the force gave her a vision to show her the reality of the past. It was that hope from TFA, reiginted in TROS, that helped her overcome the fear of turning into Palpatine in TROS. Anytime someone is abandoned and doesn’t have the facts they will create fictions in their head about what happened. Often more than one. Rey had the fiction that they were coming back for her and that the had left her behind for no good reason. It is the same as in TLJ when we are related what happened at the Jedi Academy. Luke tells a story then Kylo tells a story, then Luke digs deeper and reveals the whole truth. Rey and her parents follows the same pattern. They are coming back, they were nobodies who abandoned her, they were on the run and left her to protect her.

Lucas like poetry, things repeating. I think the ST we got is full of that. Both in itself, with the other trilogies, and as a saga as a whole. Too much is made of the minute course corrections in the ST and ignore how many of those happened before. Too many whine about a story made up as they went along when that is how Lucas made the OT. Lucas may not like how the ST came out, but I am certain it came out better than if he had done it. We didn’t need to further complicate and explain the mystical force by bringing the Whills into it.

I think Rey being a Palpatine fits the saga perfectly. It gives her a place, a place that was hidden for good reason. It links to the greatest of the saga villains. It gives the story an epic climax that no other villain/hero combination could have had. Evil grandfather vs. troubled granddaughter. And it is fitting in the end that Palpatine made the instrument of his own destruction… twice. And it is even more fitting that in the end the granddaughter of Palpatine takes the name Skywalker to break signify the break with that family.

I do think this is separate from Rey’s feelings of self worth. Those do link directly to being abandoned on Jakku, but the details of her parents don’t matter to that. It was the abandonment without any reason given that did the damage and caused her self-worth issues. All you need to do is research what issues Foster Children deal with to know that. And so many stories have been told about people abandoned as children who have struggles in their lives from that. Rey thinks she has finally found a place, as Leia’s student and Finn, Poe, Rose, and Chewbacca’s friend and then she learns she is the granddaughter of the most evil being the galaxy has seen and she feels herself falling toward that destiny. Just when she was starting to get things together. She has to reexamine things and Luke clues her in and sets her back on her path and then she is joined by Ben and is backed by all the Jedi of the past. So if anything TROS just puts a hiccup in her story, as most series end up doing, and it only makes the ending stronger.