REY NOBODY - A Collaborative Thread — Page 15

Since there are discussions amounting to Rey Palpatine edits in other threads, I thought I’d post this idea here.

My favored version of TROS is Rey Nobody, but as we know removing the Rey Palpatine revelation pulls a lot of the drama from the already weakened story. So the ideal solution for me has always been to keep the Rey Palpatine revelation, but later reveal it to be a lie.

We can call this “Rey Nopatine”, perhaps. Or not, but it would be funnier if we did 😃

Previous versions of that idea have fallen short, however, because the hangar scene still needs a revelation that does not become undone by the end of the story.

So I started thinking about what sort of revelation would be most useful during the Kylo Quarters Duel, and this led me to realize that one of the big issues with the Rey Palpatine revelation in the first place was that this revelation has no bearing on the story after Rey joins up with Ben on Exegol. The issue of Rey’s parentage is essentially dropped because it doesn’t matter, and really never mattered except as a bit of external pressure on Rey to goad her into conflict with Palpatine, a conflict which would have happened anyway.

An ideal revelation in Kylo’s Quarters would be one that had ramifications extending throughout the entire climax of the film, not just ending in the middle of it. So here is the idea:

During Rey’s training, she would have an extra vision in with the visions of the Sith Throne. This would be an image of Rey lying dead on Exegol, contrasted against the image of Rey sitting on the throne, as if the two images were fighting for supremacy, balanced in opposition.

Then, in Kylo’s Quarters, he reveals the meaning of these two competing visions:

“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 are. Darkness is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“You’ve been having visions…I had those visions too. When I trained with Luke.”
“Don’t!”
“Rey, they were the same visions…the same terrible choice.”
“I don’t want this!”
“The Dark Side…or death.”
“No!”
“I chose darkness…and so will you.”
(Rey sees the two visions, one of herself on the throne, the other dead on Exegol.)
“You can see it, can’t you? That no matter your choice…”
“Stop talking.”
“…you condemn the Jedi to extinction.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Palpatine knows you will choose the dark, Rey. He knows the rest of your story. He sent his assassin to Jakku, looking for you…but your parents wouldn’t tell him where you were. So he killed them.”
(Rey hears the sound of her mother’s death)
“No!”
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

…

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

“He didn’t want you dead…he wanted you with him. Rey…you have his power. You’re his granddaughter.”

“Palpatine wants the strongest of us to take the throne as his rightful heir. But he doesn’t know the destiny that binds us through the Force. You know it’s true…that we will rise…or fall…together.”

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

“I do.”

…

In the scene with Finn, Poe, and D-O, a brief bit of offscreen dialogue is changed to make it clear that Rey told Finn what she had heard from Kylo about her parents, but that Finn later learned from D-O that Kylo’s story didn’t hold up.

“This droid has a ton of information about Exegol.”
“Wait, coneface?”
“D-O”
“Sorry, D-O”
“Rey said he went to Jakku with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“Why was Ochi going there?”
“To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor.”
“But D-O never went there.”

…

In the theatrical version of the film, the scene of Luke’s island was actively destructive to the stakes of the film because the drama was about whether she would be corrupted by knowledge of her true family. Being bolstered by Luke’s pep talk removed any doubt that Rey would make the right decision.

Here, however, the stakes are not about whether she will turn to darkness, but whether she can accept the burden of completing her Jedi path, even if it leads to her death. Here, Luke’s words are far more on point. In fact, the theatrical line about Leia sensing the death of her son at the end of her Jedi path can be reinstated, since it matches Ben’s vision of his death and would confirm Luke’s suspicions that Ben’s vision was accurate. Neither Luke nor Leia could face the choice that they knew Ben must eventually make.

…

This is an optional change, but more dialogue can be inserted into the brief scene of Rey flying to Exegol, indicating that Poe and Finn have decided to trust Rey’s actions, whatever they may be.

“It’s Rey. She’s going to Exegol.”
“But she doesn’t know the truth.”
“She doesn’t need it. She’s showing us the way to get there.”
“Then we go together.”

…

In the final confrontation with Palpatine, there could be another line hammering home that Palpatine was lying to her about her past and that Rey truly is a nobody.

“Before you die, know the truth! You are no Palpatine. You are nothing. A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me. I am all the Sith!”
“And I…I’m a Jedi.”

…

So to recap:

In this edit, Kylo’s revelation to Rey is that he once had the same sort of visions as hers, visions where he saw his death and perhaps even the death of his entire family, and by extension the end of the Jedi religion. This explains why Luke went to an island to hide, and why Rey joined him on this island after she learned the truth as well. The conflict in the film is reframed from whether or not Rey will be corrupted by the Dark Side, to whether she will make the impossible choice between facing Palpatine and condemning herself and the Jedi religion to extinction or joining the Dark Side and surviving.

This also allows Ben to be faced with this same choice…join the Dark Side, or die. He chose to live those years ago, but now he is able to make the choice to give his life for Rey and die as a Jedi. The great thing about these visions is that they must come true. Now there is a reason for the death and resurrection shenanigans at the end of the film, and it resolves these threads at the end of the climax where they belong.

I agree with what everyone else is saying about your latest idea, Nev. The whole “dark side or death” conflict is a stroke of genius, but the rewritten Ochi exposition is more confusing than anything (mainly because it feels like a complete non-sequitur to D-O having “a ton of information about Exegol”). Maybe we could just cut out the “D-O has the information they need” plot point entirely, and imply that the info about the nav tower came from Hux’s message at the beginning of the movie? It would remove one additional twist from this needlessly convoluted plot, at least.

Either way, I think if we’re gonna go with the whole “Rey Palpatine is a lie” idea, the revelation that it’s a lie should be delivered by Palpatine himself, in a classically villainous “I lied!” fashion. The final anime beam clash does seem like a pretty nice place to put it: it’s the resolution of the plot stakes, so it should ideally be the resolution of the emotional stakes as well.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I’d say this is a mischaracterization of things, at least at this point in the other thread. The other idea more or less amounts to Rey Chosen One.

I agree, that was inexact language on my part.

All that being said, the idea we have on the other thread can never be Rey Nobody in essence, because Rey, despite being made by nobody (the Force itself) and raised as a nobody by nobodies, is still somebody of extreme importance in the grand scheme of things. But I think removing the direct lineage to Palpatine makes things more palatable, and for those who preferred a direct link to him for whatever reason, they can still imagine that Palpatine did maybe have a hand in how the Force designed them, despite the conclusion of everything pointing to the contrary (ya know, the part where Palpatine finally admits she’s nothing but a scavenger girl).

This is why I think that your idea, despite how well it works in many ways, is ultimately incompatible with ‘Rey Nobody’, since in that version she is basically another Anakin, the most important person in the galaxy. The story would be a retread of the ‘Chosen One’ angle that we’ve already gotten.

The great thing about TLJ’s reveal about Rey was that we finally had the fate of the galaxy potentially being decided by someone who wasn’t the literal chosen one or the son of the chosen one. Rey may have been strong with the Force, may have even been a powerful Jedi if she were born in the Old Republic, but here she is one of maybe hundreds of thousands in the galaxy who have the Force but have never had the opportunity to develop their ability. Rey has become emblematic of the state of the galaxy in TLJ, and that’s a remarkable and refreshing development, which I think is why it’s worth saving.

Any further issues with her power level aren’t too concerning to me, since in Starlight it’s now established that her quick rise to power was fueled by the Dark Side, and she’s clearly pulling on both sides of the Force throughout the trilogy to allow her to achieve feats long before they would be able to happen if she were on only the Jedi path. And in the final confrontation, she’s only reflecting Palpatine’s power back onto himself, and even then she dies because of it, so she doesn’t need to match him in power to defeat him.

Darth Raditz said:

It’s just that I get hung up on this plot beat specifically, what’s supposed to come across. Is the idea that if D-O never went to Jakku, then Ochi never went to Jakku? Just feels like a slight stretch, imo, unless you have en earlier line of D-O saying “I went everywhere master went.”

Yeah, I’m not happy with this scene either.

StarkillerAG said:

I agree with what everyone else is saying about your latest idea, Nev. The whole “dark side or death” conflict is a stroke of genius, but the rewritten Ochi exposition is more confusing than anything (mainly because it feels like a complete non-sequitur to D-O having “a ton of information about Exegol”). Maybe we could just cut out the “D-O has the information they need” plot point entirely, and imply that the info about the nav tower came from Hux’s message at the beginning of the movie? It would remove one additional twist from this needlessly convoluted plot, at least.

Either way, I think if we’re gonna go with the whole “Rey Palpatine is a lie” idea, the revelation that it’s a lie should be delivered by Palpatine himself, in a classically villainous “I lied!” fashion. The final anime beam clash does seem like a pretty nice place to put it: it’s the resolution of the plot stakes, so it should ideally be the resolution of the emotional stakes as well.

I’d like to cut as little from the film as possible, but I agree that maybe it would be smoother if we cut the bit with Finn bringing up Ochi’s mission, since it’s not something that Poe even needs to hear. Presumably the point of the scene is that D-O has information about Exegol, and that’s why Finn is in a rush to tell Poe about it.

So maybe we can do a bit of scene shuffling to make it work. So after Ben’s redemption, we have the Pryde scene:

“The final order begins…she will come, her friends will follow.”

Then we cut to Rey on the island, since that scene is a good segue into Rey and her choice.

After the island scene, maybe we can cut to Poe and Lando. It may be a bit strange to cut right from the triumphant X-wing from the water right to Leia’s shrouded body, but we’ve already seen her and at least it’s going from one Leia-focused scene to another.

From there we go to Finn and D-O’s scene like we already have, then cut after Finn says ‘This droid has a ton of information about Exegol’.

Cut to C-3PO and R2-D2’s reunion, since it continues the droid focus, and then after ‘picking up a signal…from where?’, we get the D-O plugged in scene. Since we’re cutting Finn knowing about the Rey Palpatine lie, we can keep this scene as it was in the theatrical version.

The only change that we would need to make now is the added Palpatine dialogue to make it clear that his story was always a lie. Because now Ochi’s mission is unconfirmed, the audience is free to recognize that Rey’s vision of his ship in TFA was different than in TROS and confirm for themselves that the story was a lie.

…

And I think that’s…it? Like, it’s kind of crazy how little this idea needs to change the original film, apart from the Kylo quarters dialogue. In fact, the entire hangar scene could be the theatrical version if necessary, though I would prefer to avoid the Dyad reference because it would be a third named reveal in just a few minutes, which I think is too much. But yeah. Kind of crazy how feasible this may be for how much value it could provide.

How about something like this:

“Because you’re a Palpatine? Honestly, I’m not even sure if that’s true.”
(Sits down next to Rey)
“But even if it is… some things are stronger than blood.”

That might be a bit on-the-nose, but I like how it shows that Force ghosts don’t have omniscient knowledge (otherwise Luke could just show up to call BS on the granddaughter story when they were heading to Endor), and conveys a message of “so what if you’re a Palpatine?”: the connections Rey has formed during her time in the Resistance are more powerful than any hypothetical blood relation.

I don’t know if we should be outright denying the story at this point. After all, if we cast too much doubt on Palpatine’s story, we rob it of its power right when it should be paying dividends. Ideally, we would need more thematic reason for the existence of this ruse in the film, more than just a machination of Palpatine. So how about tying it into Leia’s journey?

“What are you most afraid of?”
“Myself.”
“Because you’re a Palpatine? Leia struggled with that same fear.”
“She didn’t tell me…she still trained me.”
“Because she saw your spirit…your heart.”

…

“She was quick to learn in our training. But she feared our family’s darkness within her. She surrendered her saber to me and said that someday it would be picked up again…by someone who would face that darkness, and overcome it.”

…

This way Luke isn’t denying the story, but rather recontextualizing it in a way that makes Leia’s story more impactful. After all, Leia says to Rey ‘Never be afraid of who you are.’ This fear of identity is a part of Leia’s character in the film, and if it’s not for Rey’s benefit, then it should reveal the sort of fear that Leia may still struggle with.

If we make this the reason Leia surrendered her saber, it also gives us a strong hint that Leia believed that her son would have been the one to take up her saber and overcome her family’s dark past. And indeed Ben eventually does triumph in the end, but she couldn’t have realized that Rey would be the one to take up the sword, a girl from nowhere that became the daughter she never had.

And so, Rey can now complete Leia’s incomplete Jedi path in a very literal way that wouldn’t be possible without Rey Palpatine, justifying its existence in the story.

I’ve been thinking further about the weird bits of this film that are underbaked or that don’t make sense, and I think there’s a way to solve some of these issues, and it is this:

Perhaps the Sith dagger is the key.

Consider: When Luke searched the Pasanna desert years ago, he found nothing. If there was a powerful Sith artifact in the vicinity, one would assume that Luke would have sensed it. Therefore, it was not there when Luke was searching for it. By the way, it would be fairly simple to remove Lando’s lines about a clue that led to a Wayfinder (and 3PO’s later reference), and simply imply that they thought that Ochi would have the Wayfinder on his person.

Regardless, the dagger may have been planted later at the site. So who put it there? Palpatine. He placed the dagger on Pasanna though his secret agents: the Knights of Ren. They found the bones of Ochi before the story of the film, and in planting the dagger by the bones they had to fight their way past the giant snake, injuring it.

When Rey picks up the dagger, we just reinstate the dialogue about the dagger doing terrible things.

The reason this dagger is so important is that it is a powerful corrupting influence created by Palpatine himself. We’ve established that Rey could have two visions. Her first, during her training, shows only her abandonment and her potential death on Exegol. Her second vision happens when she is pushed in the desert by Kylo Ren, at the moment she unleashes a torrent of Force lightning on the transport. In this vision, she is on the Sith Throne. Notably, this happens only after she first comes in contact with the Sith dagger.

Right after Rey finds the dagger, the Knights of Ren converse with themselves:

“Alert our master…the artifact has been found.”

When they see Chewie running away, they remark:

“He has the dagger.”
“It was intended for the girl.”

When they are on Kijimi, they could say:

“Our master wants the girl alive. Kill the rest.”

Finally, when they confront Ben at the end, they proclaim:

“Our master always knew you would betray him.”

This acts as the reveal for the Knights of Ren subplot, showing that they have been working for Palpatine, not Kylo Ren, all along. Implying that they were the ones who planted the dagger also gives them something to do, which is far better than the exactly nothing they do in the film.

Finn’s dialogue could be changed to indicate that the dagger is an anomaly:

“This droid has a ton of information about Exegol.”
“Wait, coneface?”
“I am D-O”
“Sorry, D-O”
“D-O went everywhere with Ochi of Bestoon.”
“But Ochi never owned a dagger.”

The Goonies moment makes sense in this cut, since the dagger would have been a recent construction by Palpatine to lead Rey to him, and so it could have been specially constructed to work with the wreckage of the Death Star in its current state of decay. What was once a plot hole is now evidence for the theory.

If Palpatine is able to control people through artifacts like this, it makes sense why Rey finds herself in Ren’s quarters with the mask of Vader: Palpatine has been using it to control him for years. This could also be the origin of the vision where Kylo sees himself turning to darkness, just as Rey sees her first dark vision after she touches the dagger. When she destroys Vader’s mask, that point of control by Palpatine is broken, allowing him to begin to break free from Palpatine’s control.

Finally, the McGuffin heavy plot is now primarily driven by a dagger placed for Rey by Palpatine, which means that it was his intention to send her on this journey and give the artifact a chance to work its power on Rey. The most powerful visions of darkness come when Rey still has the dagger on her person, and notably they drop away when she drops the dagger (and her bag) in the Death Star throne room. At that point, she slowly emerges from the corrupting influence of Palpatine.

This also explains why Anakin’s saber was set up to be such a powerful artifact: it was to establish that this sort of connection is possible, though since Anakin used the saber mostly before he fell, Palpatine’s influence over the saber would be minimal, necessitating the planting of the dagger.

That’s elegant!

Nev you really outcooked yourself with that one, I think I’m in love with this idea

I just thought of another connection. If we wanted to show the origin of the dagger, there’s a shot of the ape-creature re-forging Kylo’s mask on an anvil which could be repurposed with a dagger-shaped lump of metal replacing the helmet pieces. This, and a brief shot of the Knights of Ren standing over the dagger like in the mask reforging scene, could appear to Rey during one of her visions.

Indeed! The powerful artifact that corrupts the bearer is also very LOTR, and very fantasy in general.

I think that if we clearly make the dagger bait planted by Palpatine, this would allow us to have the dagger show Rey visions of her past as well as her future that aren’t necessarily true. Thus, we could reincorporate the flashbacks to Rey’s parents:

“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 are. The Dark Side is your destiny. Rey…”
“You’re lying.”
“The dagger offered you visions…visions of your past…and your future.”
“Don’t!”
“You said your parents were nobody. But you lied to me.”
“I don’t want this!”
“The dagger showed me the truth.”
“No!”
“Now see the rest of your story!”
(Rey sees her parents protecting her, and their death)
“They paid for your protection…in more than one way.”
“Stop talking.”
“Rey…they were protecting you from Him.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“The spirit of Vader spoke to me as well…when I was training under Luke. It’s the same future…the same choice…that has now been revealed to you. Ascend the Throne of the Sith…or die.”
(Rey sees the two visions together, Rey on the throne and then dead on Exegol)
“No!”
(Vader’s mask falls to the ground)
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor’s always 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.”
“Because he saw what you would become. You don’t just have power. You have his power. You’re his granddaughter.”

“My mother was the daughter of Vader. Your father was the son of the Emperor. What the Emperor doesn’t know, is that we are connected by the Force, Rey. Two…that are one.”
“We’ll kill him…together.”

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

…

With this, we can basically keep the hangar exposition the same.

So the concept for the visions in this edit would be:

• Rey has a vision of her death when she is training with Leia.
• The vision of Rey on the Sith Throne, as well as flashes of her past, happens in her struggle with the transport.
• The flashbacks to Rey’s past are put together as one in Kylo’s Quarters.
• The true vision of Rey’s death and the false vision of her on the throne are combined as Rey smashes the pedestal of Vader’s mask.

If we have Finn’s dialogue confirming that Ochi never owned a dagger, it would probably be enough of a negation of the flashbacks that they would be clearly seen as fabrications by Palpatine imparted into the dagger. This is strengthened by Kylo’s connecting Rey’s visions with those given to him by the ‘spirit of Vader’, which has already been revealed to be Palpatine in disguise.

JEDIT: I’m not sure which sequence of events would be more natural in Kylo’s quarters. If we put the flashbacks together early in the sequence like I have it here, that means that Kylo’s discussion about his own visions is pushed back and then he’s talking about Rey’s past and why the Emperor wanted her dead, and this creates a weird segue.

On the other hand, we could have a sequence similar to the one a few posts back where the ‘Dark Side or death’ visions happen first, and then the flashbacks to Rey’s parents happen later, making a natural segue into why the Emperor wanted Rey dead. But then the Vader mask isn’t brought in at the precise time of Kylo’s revelation.

I guess it depends on which bit of exposition is more important, Rey’s past and parentage, or the Dark Side or Death visions. Thoughts?