Burbin

Hal 9000 said:

Can anyone translate the new line? Need Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Dutch, and Russian.

It’s in the context of Luke speaking to Rey, just after telling her that Leia chose to follow their mother’s path due to fearing Vader’s hatred.

“By training you as a Jedi, Leia confronted her fears and embraced love over hatred.”

Spanish:
“Al entrenarte como Jedi, Leia enfrentó sus miedos y eligió el amor sobre el odio.”

I thought it was fine in previous versions for Rey to Reply to “this is your fight” with “I can’t get there”, since we already understand the “fight” is on Exegol. Alteratively the last line could just be “let our legacy guide you on Exegol” so it actually connects with the “thousand generations” line & ties things to all past Jedi, which of course has a big payoff on Exegol.

That’s what I mentioned before about the “thousand generations” and “Leia’s legacy” lines not feeling like they have any relation to one another. I think if possible it would make a lot more sense to switch the last two lines around, This way Luke’s dialogue about Leia is bookended with broader talk about the Jedi, instead of having a seemingly random interjection about Jedi generations and then going back to Leia. And I assume “Leia’s legacy” is chosing love over hatred, so it works better to put those two lines together.

If we are going with this dialogue, I think the new line could be mended a bit to help the dialogue flow a little better, how about something like this - “By training you as a Jedi, she confronted her fears and embraced love over hatred.” So the full dialogue would be:

“She was quick to learn in our training. But Leia feared the hatred that consumed our father, choosing instead to follow our mother’s path. By training you as a Jedi, she confronted her fears and embraced love over hatred. Let Leia’s legacy guide you on Exegol. A thousand generations live in you now, but this is your fight.”

You’re right that the incongruence I mentioned before could be explained as Leia fearing herself but trusting Luke, which is why she would send Ben over to him despite having trained as a Jedi herself. In TFA she regrets sending him away, and in this movie she overcomes her fears by helping Rey train. I still think it doesn’t make sense she would let Ben train at all if she perceived there was “too much Vader in him”, but maybe she allowed her son the choice to train regardless of her feelings, just like she took the choice to stop training.

I think a lot of what you’re saying is just arguing semantics. There is a very clear and glaring problem with two very conflicting perspectives. Either Leia belives Jedi training would help with dark tendencies, or she believes it would make things worse. What she says in TFA contradicts what Luke says about her here, plain & simple.

I’m talking about what is actually said and shown on screen, you have this whole other movie in your head where Leia has a whole character arc, but as you said, we got very little Carrie on the film. We don’t see Leia “continue her Jedi path”, we see Leia helping out Rey on HER Jedi path. We don’t see Leia struggle with inner darkness, we see her confidently pull her son back to the light. And we have TWO whole movies where Leia is very clearly NOT a Jedi in any way. It’s stupid for Rey to suddenly be calling her “master” now (add that to the stupid pile for this movie), but at least I can see it as a simple sign of respect towards a mentor that’s trying to help her down the right path, that does not make Leia an actual “Jedi Master”. She was always in tune with the Force and she once trained with Luke years ago, but she never practiced their religion. And it’s better to keep it that way for the sake of continuity with the rest of the trilogy, which I thought was the whole point of this fan edit.

I understand what the lines are trying to convey, I just don’t think they succeed. There’s too much focus on Leia’s failures for it to feel like a positive/reassuring pep talk. The main takeaways most would get from those lines are that Leia gave up on being a Jedi due to fear and that she lost everything and everyone that she cared about, which is just very bleak. I mean, compare it to what Han tells Ben: “your mother’s gone, but what she stood for, what she fought for, that’s not gone”. I think this scene needs a similar, positive spin, which again is what the original lines did by making it Rey’s destiny to finish Leia’s Jedi path.

Then there’s the issue of the idea that Leia would renounce the Jedi out of fear of “the hatred that consumed her father”, that just feels out of character for me. There’s no reason to believe Leia would go down a dark path after dedicating her whole life to the fight against opression. Furthermore, in TFA she says she wanted Ben to train with Luke specifically because “there was too much Vader in him”. Now, why would she send her son to train with Luke because there was darkness in him, when she stopped training with Luke out of fear of the darkness in her? This is completely contradictory, she would’ve forbid Ben from training in the Force if she believed that could fuel one’s darkness.

But she didn’t, because that’s exactly what Jedi training is supposed to be about, learning to control your emotions, rejecting the easy & seductive path. Obviously in the case of Ben it backfired, but he was too far gone (and even then Leia didn’t lose hope in him). Leia never shows any such signs of darkness, and if anything it’d make MORE sense for her to seek Jedi training to quell any potential darkness, just like she did with her son.

Rejecting the Jedi seems like a major sin for the story this movie (and this whole trilogy) is trying to tell, I mean there was an entire movie about how bad it was for Luke to reject the Jedi, and he only did so after everything went down in flames. For Leia to give up over some vague fear of inner darkness makes her look weak and foolish. She would need some major motivation (like a premonition of her son’s death) for her to throw the towel immediately.

And no, Leia was never a Jedi, she gave up on it along with her saber on the last night of her training, so she never became a Jedi (here you’re even replacing that line so we don’t know how far along she was in training with Luke). She was not a Jedi in TFA or TLJ, Luke was the last Jedi, then Rey took over after him. In this film we see Leia taking on a mentor role for Rey, and it’s explained she can do this because she trained with Luke when she was young, but that does not make her a “Jedi Master”. She doesn’t “teach” Rey anything, she just takes her to the place where she trained with Luke 30 years ago, and tries to give her encouragement along the way, while Rey runs training courses and studies the ancient Jedi texts. Rey is the sole heir/last hope of the Jedi, Palpatine tells Kylo killing Rey will “end the Jedi.” Leia is never part of that conversation, because she’s not and never was a Jedi.

I know it’s way way past discussion, but I just skimmed through V5 and I gotta say, I still really don’t like the final AI lines about Leia on Ahch-To, they feel completely out of place on the scene and really took me out of it. Luke’s pep talk to Rey is supposed to be about how she shouldn’t give up on being a Jedi out of fear of turning evil, yet he goes on to tell her about how Leia gave up on being a Jedi out of fear of turning evil, and that’s supposed to inspire her? Even if the original lines are also about how Leia didn’t become a Jedi, at least there the implication was that Rey was destined to pick up and finish her Jedi path, which would give Rey motivation. Here Leia just gave up out of fear, lost everything and died. It’s just such a downer no matter how you spin it, and feels at odds with what’s supposed to be the scene where Rey regains her hope and resolve.

I also feel like putting so much focus on Leia takes it away from the legacy of the Jedi, which is more important to Rey’s journey and the overarching thread of the saga. “A thousand generations live in you now, let Leia’s legacy guide you on Exegol”. That doesn’t even make sense, Leia wasn’t a Jedi, those two lines have no relation to one another, and it’s the Jedi that guide her on Exegol, it’s the Jedi that stand behind her and help vanquish the Emperor. It was nice to add Leia’s voice to the moment before Rey stands up, but she shouldn’t overshadow a thousand generations of actual Jedi.

I get the desire to give Leia a bit more on this movie, but the scene on Ahch-To is not and should not be all about Leia, the focus should be on the Jedi legacy and Rey’s role as it’s heir, the bit about Leia and the flashback should serve that purpose, and not the other way around.

In TLJ we already saw Leia herself was preparing Poe to assume a role of leadership, that was his whole character arc in the movie and it ends with him assuming command of the remaining Resistance members, “What are you looking at me for? Follow him”. It’s true this movie regresses him into hotshot pilot mode, but from his irritable attitude and his convo with Zorii at least there’s a sense that he’s overwhelmed by the responsibility, and he’s been putting it off because he thinks he’s not ready. It’s only after Leia dies that he feels like he has to step up and assume the role she wanted for him.

At least that’s the way I look at it, and it’s stronger if it’s something Poe chooses to do, rather than being told he has to because it was Leia’s dying wish. It was the expected progression of his character coming from TLJ, yeah he probably should’ve started the movie as more of a leader, but like most characters in the sequel trilogy he falters before stepping up and doing the right thing.

I’d prefer if we kept the term “end him” rather than “kill him”, it sounds less violent/harsh and it ties with Rey’s later line, also Palpatine’s been killed before, what Rey needs to do is put a definitive “end” to him and the Sith. Technically only Anakin and Rey were “made” to end the Sith, so even if Luke carries that mighty Skywalker blood I feel it’d be better if he just said “you were made to end him”, it’s more personal and ties more into her destiny. Alternatively “we are meant to end him” would take away some focus from her identity, but it’d better apply to Luke, and broadly to all the Jedi who help vanquish Palpatine by the end.

It’s cool you’re beggining to generate the lines, and it’s sounding good, I really like how you turned Luke’s line into a question. Perhaps you could even have him answer it and say “Because you’re a Palpatine? No, you were made to end him, Rey.” That way it’s more clear Luke is opposing the idea that she’s a Palpatine.

Also I like that the current version leaves it ambiguous if Palpatine directly “made” Anakin & Rey, or if they were creations of the Force (to ultimately bring it to balance) motivated by Palpatine’s dark machinations. The proposed changes to Luke’s dialogue would suggest the latter, while Palpatine himself aims to take credit for their existence and claim them as his own.

Another point against mentioning Vader at the beginning is that there’s no reason to believe Rey would know of his immaculate conception, so it feels more like Kylo is talking to the audience rather than Rey, since he’s basically using Vader to explain the concept. On the hangar scene it feels more like he’s revealing to Rey that his grandfather had the same origin as her, explaining their connection.

Despite what I said earlier about Kylo having visions of Rey, I like the way you worded it, since it sounds more like a recent vision similar to how Rey saw Kylo in the forest when she touched the saber. Maybe it could be something like: “Before we met, I had a vision of a girl. It was you, in the forest. When we fought, the power inside of you awoke. You revealed yourself not only to me, but to Palpatine… just as he’d intended”. Still not sold on the idea, but it’s better.

I still don’t see it as something that really adds anything, it only messes with Kylo’s character in TLJ, and adds an irrelevant layer to the revelations that make it harder to follow. All just to explain why a boy was interested in a girl.

Yeah, you can rationalize how it can all still make sense, but to me it’s similar to implying Luke knew Rey was a Palpatine during TLJ, it just messes with their entire dynamic.

And “lore” is not something tucked away in some novelization, is everything that gets explained about the universe. This includes Anakin’s conception, someone who doesn’t remember it would just be more confused, that’s what I meant. Even if we’re building off of previous movies it’s still better that the core concepts are explained on their own.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I dunno, when I was in the theater in 2015 and I heard him say “What girl?” I genuinely thought that was supposed to be a hint that he was familiar enough with some girl that could have done this. There are countless others on the internet that felt the same way. Clearly Colin Trevorrow thought the same thing. Remember, this reveal we’re crafting is meant to tie together the entire trilogy and make it feel like this was planned out all along. The fact that we already are emphasizing how linked they always were through the Force means it would be a shame not to take this opportunity. We don’t have the luxury of creating our own supplementary material here.

That was such a small nudge in TFA that I don’t feel it needs expanding this late in the story. Maz also asks Han “who’s the girl?” and Han gives her a troubled looked. People on the internet also hanged on to that for countless speculation, as well as countless other hints such as “the supreme leader is wise”. In the end a lot of these “hints” ended up as nothing more that what’s in the text, with no need to expand beyond that.

I also don’t like the idea that Kylo’s interest in Rey in previous films comes from some visions we never see. It makes their relationship far less personal, and it specially messes with TLJ, their whole interaction is the best part of that movie and it only works because their bond comes as something unexpected to both of them. It also messes with the big reveal, Kylo says Rey has no part in the story and she’s nothing, he can’t possibly believe that if she’s “the girl” she’s been having Force visions all this time. This doesn’t tie things together, it breaks them apart.

And besides, as I said, the information in these scenes is supposed to be specifically new information given by Palpatine to Kylo, so no, it doesn’t make sense for Kylo to go on a tangent and reveal he’s been dreaming of Rey all his life.

The line I added “Our paths have always been intertwined." is sort of a small nod that idea anyway if that’s your chosen head canon, but it leaves it open as a conclusion Kylo only took after Palpatine’s revelations. And the reason I replaced that other line is because it doesn’t make sense for Kylo to say “Palpatine wanted you alive before you chose to be a Jedi”, it contradicts everything else he’s said. The whole point is that it doesn’t matter that she chose to be a Jedi, that she’s destined for darkness either way, and he explains later that Palpatine only “wanted her dead” in so far as he was testing Kylo to be the superior heir.

Take a look at my last post. As hiventon pointed out, 9 times out of 10 Rey’s father would think her mother cheated on him in circumstances like this. There really isn’t any room for fear to be involved. Not unless her mother was barren, which isn’t worth stating to make the fear angle work because that would actually make Rey a positive thing and something to celebrate for 90% of couples. I think what I’ve got there is a short enough blurb to explain why a couple would sell their own child. And after that, they aren’t mentioned again, as they shouldn’t be.

Yeah it makes sense that the father might think she cheated, but this strange implication is something we need to avoid, not lean into. I don’t think the implication that Rey’s parents had marital problems because she was raped by the Force is something that fits a Star Wars movie. That’s why I think it’s best to keep it vague, saying neither of her parents expected a child leaves things ambiguous enough, and we already know they didn’t want a child either, since they sold her off for drinking money, so this is just expanding on that.

For you, a well-versed fan in the lore, the direct reference to Vader immediately spells that part of her birth out too much. For others who don’t know as much, I think it’s a sufficient and more relevant hint. Remember, the only thing that is confirmed to fans who understand the lore is that Rey is a birth just like Anakin. That just means she’s practically another chosen one, which should be a good thing! Palpatine’s part in all that hasn’t been revealed yet. Perhaps this is the reason the newest part about her birth coinciding with Palpatine’s return should be removed so we save that for the actual reveal.

I think if anything it’s the opposite, only someone familiar with the lore would understand the Vader reference at all, otherwise they’d be more confused, the reveal should work and be explainable all on it’s own. It makes more sense to leave the reference to Vader until the hangar scene, where we start using direct terms lifted from the prequels, and at which point the reveal has been spelled out in full.

I disagree JJ, TLJ left the story wide open to go in any new direction for it’s final chapter, freed from the shackles of familiar tropes. If episode IX had embraced that we would’ve had a very coherent trilogy, with episode VIII serving as the bridge between the familiar and the new. However that was not the episode IX we got, this is a movie completely focused on looking backwards instead of forward, filled top to bottom with familiar sights, sounds, characters, story beats, etc. and no amount of fan editing can really change that.

Which is why I think the approach we’re brainstorming is the best possible way to salvage this movie, by leaning into what this movie actually is and trying to make that more coherent. We already have Palpatine/the Sith back, and we have Rey going through a new revelation, so the best approach is to use these elements in a way that actually complements what came before, taking even more from previous movies to tie everything together.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I really think the reference to Vader is necessary. It gives a purpose to Vader’s mask looming in the background besides cheap fan service. It also clues more casual fans on to what’s happening assuming they’ve seen episode 1. Plus, the line there needs to be extremely short, just 2-3 words. The line after “Don’t!” is currently too short as you have it. The paragraph after the heroes capture also needs to be a lot longer than that. There simply isn’t enough content there to fill out the space required. The purpose of the sentence you removed is to hint at a connection they’ve always shared through the Force, just as his remarks before we left to the heroes capture are meant to hint at her connection to Palpatine. They both get clarified at the end.

I think referencing Vader on like the second line basically spoils the entire twist before it even begins, things should be revealed at a steady pace to keep the audience involved and guessing, and I think we should give them a bit of credit to try and interpret what’s being said, rather than spoon-feed them so quickly. Vader’s mask works well enough as a visual clue without direct mention.

So first we reveal something was up with Rey since her birth, she was “a child they never expected”, so perhaps the mother couldn’t have kids, we imply that without having to use heavy terms like “barren womb”. Specially since we then reveal they didn’t concieve her in the first place, and whatever reason she came to be was something that scared them.

It’s left ambiguous what would’ve scared Rey’s parents, but we know what scares Rey herself, as we immediately move to the vision of her dark destiny, the thing she’s “most afraid of”. Then we explain the origin of her dark destiny: Palpatine’s return. We imply he had something to do with her conception, but we’re still not sure of how or why, so next we reveal part of the why: there is great power in her, power that awakened at the end of TFA which somehow set things in motion for Palpatine’s plan.

Then finally, at the hangar scene, we reveal the how: Palpatine manipulated the Force itself to create her, and now we tie everything back to Vader/Anakin and the stuff from the prequels, and we get the whole picture. That was my thought process anyway.

As for the lines about Kylo seeing visions of a little girl, I just think that’s a wierd thing to throw out there in the middle of so many big revelations. Kylo being somewhat obsessed with “the girl” in TFA never felt like something that needed to be explained, it always seemed like just part of his angsty teen persona, to be upset that some mysterious girl is thwarting his plans. If anything it feels like something to be left as a hint to their eventual connection, or to be expanded in supplementary material, not in the middle of a huge reveal two movies later, specially since it has nothing to do with what Palpatine revealed to Kylo. I just don’t think it fits in here.

I do really like “the result was his greatest opportunity”. But I think the change you made before that raises some questions. Some people going into this edit would be under the impression that Palpatine cheated death immediately after Vader threw him down the reactor shaft. That is the canon answer, after all. So with the way you’ve currently worded it, it implies that Rey should have been born immediately after ROTJ, which we of course know isn’t the case.

I don’t see why the audience should asume Palpatine returned immediately after his death in ROTJ. In TLJ Luke says “for many years there was balance”, how could there be balance for years if the Sith were alive and well all this time? I think it’d be the other way around, these lines would explain to the audience that Palpatine returned around the time Rey was born, which would also coincide with Ben growing up and beggining to show darkness, the first sign of balance being lost again, according to Luke.

I’m also unsure why you’d remove “Palpatine told me the rest of our story.” It’s to remind the audience to take what he says with a grain of salt.

Again I feel we should trust the audience here, we know what Kylo is revealing here is what Palpatine revealed to him earlier, it’s information they didn’t have in the previous movies, and we’re not supposed to trust either Palps or Kylo, it’s a given that we might question it. But Kylo seems to believe it, so I think it’s better if he says as much, being confident that he understands the whole picture.

I really like the latest draft, however I feel the ideas don’t really flow from one to another, and it’s adding too many extra details that muddle the core concepts. Here’s my attempt at streamlining the dialogue:

"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 birthright, Rey…”

“You’re lying.”

“I’d never lie to you. Your parents were no one. Junk traders with a child they never expected.”

“Don’t!”

“But they had no part in your conception…”

“I don’t want this!”

“…and they feared your nature.”

“No!”

“You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Your destiny.”

(Rey sees the vision of herself on the Sith throne)

“When Palpatine cheated death, it sent a ripple through the Force.”

“Stop talking.”

“The result was his greatest opportunity.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“When we fought for the first time, in the forest, the power inside of you awakened. You revealed yourself to the Emperor… just as he’d intended.”

(Visions of Rey beating Kylo on Starkiller, falling into the dark cave, etc.)

“No!”

(A pedestal shatters and the mask of Vader falls to the ground)

“So that’s where you are.”

“Our paths have always been intertwined."

“No…”

"I’ll tell you why.”

—

“I know the rest of your story.”

“Tell me.”

"Palpatine influenced the Force itself into creating life. First my grandfather, and then you. You were his chosen heir. You… are a rightful Palpatine.”

"The Emperor wants us to fight each other, so his most worthy heir can claim the throne. But he hasn’t realized the strength of our connection, Rey… a bond, not of blood, but of raw power in the Force. We can end him and the Sith, and create a new order, together…”

Thinking back to the idea introduced in this film that Palpatine is a conglomerate of all past Sith spirits, perhaps the reason Palpatine created Anakin in the first place, and later Rey, is because he needed a “perfect host” that could contain these spirits and continue to cheat death.

The film already implies that the cloned bodies are quickly decaying because they can’t contain Palpatine’s spirit. Perhaps at this point even a regular person would not be able to contain the Sith for too long. This would explain Palpatine’s decayed appearance even before his death, specially if you interpret the scene in ROTS as Palpatine revealing his true appearance. If you look back at his conversation about Plagueis, he talks about both cheating death and creating life as almost interchangable, so perhaps that was his plan all along. To cheat death by creating a life form strong enough to contain all the Sith spirits without the need for constant essence transfer into new hosts.

And this would explain why Palpatine would see it a priority to create an Anakin replacement as soon as he came back, while he was barely able to hold on to life himself.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

The idea behind that is he would be convinced Rey is his strongest heir, anyway. The only reason it needs to be worded that way is because we’re trying to reconcile the idea that he initially wanted Rey dead in this movie with the idea of her being his preferred candidate the whole time. So think of it like this, he wouldn’t tell Kylo - “Hey bud, I need you to go get yourself killed by Rey so she can tap into the dark side again.” He’d say what he told him as motivation - “Go on and try to kill her, end the Jedi, and maybe you have a chance of being what Vader could not be (Offscreen: but I doubt it, in all likelihood my chosen heir Rey is going to kill you in anger, so I win either way here).”

The reason he’d say “The princess of Alderaan has disrupted my plan” is because he intended for Kylo’s death to cement Rey in the dark side, but instead Rey healed him and Ben returned.

EDIT: Alternatively, I could make this idea that he wants Rey more apparent and have Kylo’s role as a failsafe less apparent - “I know Palpatine only wants me to try and kill you so that you give in to the dark side.” But this just raises questions about how he knows Rey is his “chosen heir” over himself to begin with.

You could avoid some confusion by changing it to “you were his chosen heir… a rightful Palpatine.” That way it’s clear Rey was the chosen heir when she was created, but he also corrupted Vader’s grandson as a plan B, and now they’re both candidates for the throne.

I don’t see much point in lingering on about Rey’s “parents” when they’re confirmed to be irelevant nobodies, some of those lines could be used to expand on more important bits of the story. Here’s a few ideas:

“I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it… I needed you to see it… the darkness in your nature. Rey…”

Kylo already says “The dark side is in our nature” on the DSII ruins, so this avoids repeating the exact same line twice.

“Your father had no part in your conception.”

Instead:
“But they had no part in your conception”. I think it’d be better to imply Rey is not related to either of her “parents”, and it avoids the implication the husband basically got cheated on through the Force.

“You see it, too, don’t you? The throne.”

Instead:
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Your destiny”. This would bring more focus on Rey’s character rather than the throne itself, causing her to relieve her vision through the mere mention of destiny. And I’d prefer the idea that Kylo knows of Rey’s visions, rather than having seen them himself.

“Your parents feared you. The same way Luke feared me.”

“Your parents were always drunk, especially so when they sold you. Palpatine’s followers had your parents taken. He was looking for you, but they couldn’t even remember what happened to you. They died to ensure you never saw a second chance at love."

I feel like from this point forward it doesn’t make sense to continue talking about Rey’s parents, we get the gist of it, they were nobodies, but Rey isn’t, it’d be better to remove any further reference to them, they have no part in this story. We’ve already moved on to the her vision of the throne and I feel like these lines could be replaced by something more relevant to set up the hangar revelation, I like the idea that Palpatine had been waiting for his creation to reveal itself, as hinventon suggested.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I’m still pretty sure Palpatine was just himself throughout all of his life. Essence transfer requires that ritual we saw at the end of TROS. And we all know Palpatine only killed his master in his sleep. That was the whole reason he likely did it - his master wouldn’t have enough time or awareness to even attempt a transfer like that.

Palpatine tells Rey she straight up can’t put an end to the Sith, the way Vader did. Because of her hatred, her anger, if she tried to kill him his spirit would pass unto her. That’s all that’s needed for the essense tranfer, to strike down with hatred. The “ritual” at the end is just a big show for his followers, but it just boils down to Rey killing him with hatred. It makes sense that’s how the Sith spirits would pass down through generations, as their creed is driven by hate, anger and greed, the apprentice is always looking to overthrow the master for their own selfish reasons, only to be consumed and fueled by the anger and greed of all the Sith that came before. I imagine most would be unaware of the essense transfer until after they’ve already been consumed by it. Then they would look for a new apprentice to continue the cycle.

And I think this fits Palpatine’s character in the previous movies perfectly well, he’s always been presented as the personification of pure evil, he can’t be redeemed or reasoned with, he’s the darkness that must be destroyed. It also explains how he could’ve survived, as his spirit was more than that of one simple man. Makes more sense than him dragging the other spirits from Sith hell for this movie only. It also adds a new layer to Palpatine trying to cheat death, as this is not something original to him, or even Plagueis, but rather something the Sith had been working towards for generations, it makes his manipulation of Anakin even more devious, and it explains why the Sith must be destroyed to bring balance to the Force, as their greed has led to this unnatural ability to carry their essence from host to host, refusing to let go.

hinventon said:

I like the prophecy angle for Rey Nobody, I just think you’d have to really get the point across that she could become evil like Anakin, as telling someone that they’re destined to destroy the sith doesn’t really connect to Rey’s inner darkness immediately. I think that could play great off of Rey’s fear of not being able to live up to the legend of the Skywalkers, though. I also really like the originality of the dyad concept, focusing just on that and maybe connecting the dyad to an ancient sith prophecy involving the rule of two would be an interesting inversion of Anakin’s arc, and could explain that Rey’s link to Kylo’s mind allowed her to intrinsically use his knowledge of the force in previous movies.

Yeah, I think if we went with this angle it would have to be mostly through subtext, most of it is already there in the movie, Rey being the sole heir to the Jedi, taking the Skywalker name, destroying the Sith and bringing back balance to the Force, it’s all already there. But for her to have a struggle the focus would have to be on her being the true heir of Vader, basically everything Kylo thought he was meant to be. We already have her struggle with the dark and her visions, Kylo could reveal she’s the one that’s destined to take over the Sith, basically the way the current nobody cut of Ascendant already works, only now we reveal she was destined to take Vader’s place from the start.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Burbin said:

The thing is, it’s clear Rey is not a 1:1 clone of Palpatine, since, you know, she’s not a younger Ian McDiarmid. She would just have been a creation based off of Palpatine’s genes, at that point what’s the difference from being her decendant? Nothing says she’ll become just like him since she’s already not exactly like him.

Furthermore, and this is an issue that would plague any version of the film that implies a genetic relation to Palpatine: the villain of the movie isn’t Palpatine, it is the countless generations of Sith spirits that once resided within him and now inhabit his rotting clone. It makes no sense to imply Rey is destined to become evil just because she’s genetically related to Palpatine, when the reason he’s so evil are those countless spirits that took over him. This is also why I like the chosen one idea. I mean, it was prophesized the chosen one would “destroy the Sith”, and now we have a movie where the villain is the literal embodiment of the Sith, it just makes too much sense.

You’re being nitpicky on the first point. The fact of the matter is that the majority of her DNA would come from Palpatine (maybe 95%). A normal child would only share about 50 percent, a grandchild 25 percent, etc. Your second point doesn’t make sense. Palpatine wasn’t “all the Sith” until he was summoned with the rest of his pals from Force hell. Everything he did in the prequels and originals he did because that’s the kind of dude he was. Plus, canon has never made it clear who exactly is in control of his body in TROS. We know all the Sith are in there somewhere, but he really does seem to be speaking and using the same mannerisms as Palpatine did in life.

I’m pretty sure the idea behind the essence transfer is an explanation for the rule of two, basically once a Sith apprentice overthrows his master he becomes possesed by his spirit, and the spirits from every Sith master before him. This would mean that every generation each new Sith master would become a bigger amalgamation of “all the Sith”. This would’ve happened to Palpatine before we ever even see him in episode I, when he killed Darth Plagueis in his sleep and became the new master, and this amalgamation of evil spirits is what we saw as Palpatine in all the movies. Vader broke the cycle because he didn’t strike down Palpatine in anger, but rather through compassion for his son, thus destroying the Sith as it was foretold. But Palpatine’s spirit was so powerful after generations of essense transfer that he was able to endure and cheat death through the dark science experiments on Exegol.

I don’t think this does much to make Palpatine’s return more clear, now we’re adding a bunch of extra clones that look nothing like him, and that apparently have nothing to do with the installations on Exegol? And they weren’t grown on a vat like we see on Exegol or Kamino, but were somehow bred inside random women?? if anything it makes it more weird and confusing.

That’s the point - it’s supposed to be weird science, anyway. Confusing? No. It’s simply adding a timeline to the development of Palpatine’s return. At first, some Sith cults tried to develop Palpatine clones outside of Exegol using this method, but they couldn’t conjure his spirit into them. Meanwhile, whatever they did on Exegol succeeded. Once Palpatine was aware of what transpired, he wanted all these other experiments killed off.

It IS confusing to add more strange elements to Palpatine’s return, inseminating random women with Palpatine clones is just a crazy thing to introduce through a few bits of dialogue, specially since it apparently didn’t work and Palpatine just ended up coming back through the experiments on Exegol anyway. At least cloning through lab vats had some setup with Kamino and even more now through The Mandalorian, but breeding random women is just really out there.

Again this does nothing to avoid undoing the big reveal in TLJ, we’re just dealing with semantics at this point, “well Kylo only kinda assumed Rey was a nobody, he couldn’t have possibly known Rey was a genetic experiment done by Sith cultists plotting to bring back Palpatine’s spirit… but his parents were really nobodies!”, how is that any better than Kylo not knowing some random junk trader he saw was the son of Emperor Palpatine, who chose to become a random junk trader?

I was under the assumption that the visions Kylo and Rey received were supernatural through the Force in some way. Because clearly they are seeing into the future, as well. So the idea is that Kylo would have been able to sense through the Force, or the Force would have told him, if there were something special about Rey’s father. Regardless of whatever path he chose in life. And please don’t say “oh, but he would have sensed Rey’s nature then” because the purpose of his vision, and that whole movie, is Rey’s obsession with her parents, not her own nature.

Yeah, you can argue their visions aren’t 100% trustworthy, that’s what the people who wrote TROS would argue, but it doesn’t take away that this revelation is the big resolution to the story in TLJ. Rey’s obsession with finding her parents, Snoke and Kylo’s obsession with lineague and bloodlines, and ultimately the audience’s obsession with getting the “big reveal”, it all culminates with a revelation that totally shatters everyone’s conceptions and leaves them with a new perspective. To take that and go “well, actually, that wasn’t the whole picture, the reality is this totally different thing happened” is just an absolute slap in the face to the entire previous film.

I see, I caught up with like 10 pages from this thread and I saw this idea spring from discussion of ‘nobody cut’ ideas, so I was just giving my own thoughts as to why I don’t think it works in making Rey a ‘nobody’ in any meaningful way. It does make more sense as a change that just alters the nature of ‘Rey Palpatine’, though I still think trying to reconcile Rey Palpatine with the revelations from TLJ is an impossible task, might as well just bite the bullet & don’t dwell too much on the logistics of it all, the more you try to explain it the less sense it makes.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I disagree strongly. Here are some of the numerous benefits to this change:

1. It’s not a copy-paste of “I am your father”. Instead of the reveal simply being a relative is evil, the reveal is that you, as a person, are extremely evil in what is basically another life. Rey’s challenges can’t be dismissed as easily by Luke anymore because nobody has ever gone through what she is experiencing.

The thing is, it’s clear Rey is not a 1:1 clone of Palpatine, since, you know, she’s not a younger Ian McDiarmid. She would just have been a creation based off of Palpatine’s genes, at that point what’s the difference from being her decendant? Nothing says she’ll become just like him since she’s already not exactly like him.

Furthermore, and this is an issue that would plague any version of the film that implies a genetic relation to Palpatine: the villain of the movie isn’t Palpatine, it is the countless generations of Sith spirits that once resided within him and now inhabit his rotting clone. It makes no sense to imply Rey is destined to become evil just because she’s genetically related to Palpatine, when the reason he’s so evil are those countless spirits that took over him. This is also why I like the chosen one idea. I mean, it was prophesized the chosen one would “destroy the Sith”, and now we have a movie where the villain is the literal embodiment of all the Sith, it just makes too much sense.

2. It makes it abundantly clear how Palpatine was resurrected. Ya know, the thing that people most take issue with in the film. As a bonus, it’s more heavily implied what Snoke is exactly compared to Ascendant.

I don’t think this does much to make Palpatine’s return more clear, now we’re adding a bunch of extra clones that look nothing like him, and that apparently have nothing to do with the installations on Exegol? And they weren’t grown on a vat like we see on Exegol, Nevarro or Kamino, but were somehow bred inside random women?? if anything it makes it more weird and confusing.

3. TLJ only places a hard emphasis on Rey’s parents. Notice how Kylo only says he was shown who her parents are - not who she is. Beyond that, everything he says must be taken as assumptions he is making. Let’s take a look at Kylo’s following line: “You come from nothing. [Therefore] you’re nothing.” He’s only saying that because any normal person would think that since the people who raised her and gave birth to her are nobodies, she must be one, as well. Regular TROS straight up retcons this because the son of the Emperor is not nobody - end of story. This change is a clever way of bypassing a complete retcon. Rey’s mother gave birth to a clone of Palpatine, but both parents are genetically unrelated to her.

Again this does nothing to avoid undoing the big reveal in TLJ, we’re just dealing with semantics at this point, “well Kylo only kinda assumed Rey was a nobody, he couldn’t have possibly known Rey was a genetic experiment done by Sith cultists plotting to bring back Palpatine’s spirit… but his parents were really nobodies!”, how is that any better than Kylo not knowing some random junk trader he saw was the son of Emperor Palpatine, who chose to become a random junk trader?

4. TLJ’s mirror cave sequence is a stupid scene ordinally. This change elevates it into an actual hint to her entire backstory and the trajectory of the trilogy. Rey asks to see her parents. She doesn’t have actual parents, so she sees herself.

Well, like I previously said, this would also work if Rey was a vergence born from the Force, with no real parents.

5. There is a reason why Rey’s parents die on Jakku (or are there to begin with). They were looking for Lor San Tekka and his village so that their child could be saved by Luke. This ties back to the very first scene of the entire trilogy.

Like I said before, I don’t think there needs to be an explanation as to why two junk traders were on a junkyard planet, yeah it’s a coincidence Lor San Tekka happened to be hiding there in TFA, but I don’t think such a small plot convenience deserves a big explanation two movies later.

6. Leia accepting Rey into her family is more profound. Of course the daughter of Darth Vader would be willing to accept the granddaughter of Sidious. But a clone of Sidious? That’s something else.

This is also not such a sustantial difference for the same reasons as point 1.

7. It doesn’t require any further changes beyond this scene and what’s already present in Ascendant v4.

And this is the lesson, this wouldn’t require further changes because it doesn’t fundamentally change much from Rey just being Palpatine’s granddaughter. It doesn’t really solve the issues people have with that reveal, it just adds more lore dump exposition and turns Rey into a weird Sith breeding experiment.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I would ordinarily agree with you Burbin - your idea makes the most sense in terms of storytelling, but we are working with extremely limited material in this movie. Which is why I’m leaning toward opposing anything that doesn’t have Rey related to Palpatine in some way. Anything else would simply have to cut too much out of the movie for my liking. Plus, I’m concerned about how the upcoming Rey movie will handle this issue. I think the idea we’ve come up with here is a solid middle ground between Rey’s parents being nobody and her still being a Palpatine. Because in no world is the “son” of the Emperor ever nobody. It also makes Palpatine’s return make 1000x more sense than what we currently have in Ascendant.

I just don’t see much gain from making these changes. You’re coming up with a very complicated backstory that doesn’t really fix much besides making it clear Palpatine didn’t actually have sex. I don’t see much difference between revealing Rey is a Palpatine clone homunculus and just revealing she’s her granddaughter, in fact you’re just skipping over Rey’s dad, who is canonically a Palpatine clone homunculus, so you’re just removing the implied familial relation but everything else is pretty much the same. This doesn’t address the core issue most people had with Rey Palpatine, which is how it undermines the entire buildup from the previous movies for a cheap reveal that comes out of left field, and how it basically erases the big revelation from The Last Jedi by adding a buch of extra backstory that goes entirely against it. If anything this change is more egregious since it goes into even more painstaking detail about how nothing in TLJ’s revelation was true at all.

I was the one that suggested making Rey a new chosen one over on the Rey Nobody thread, I think it covers all the issues Neverar outlined:

NeverarGreat said:

Making that list of plot and theme issues, here are the major ones as I see it:

1: Rey needs some inner darkness, whether that be from early life experience or from an ‘evil’ bloodline.

2: Rey needs a reason to have been left on Jakku, living next to several plot-important ships/places.

3: Rey needs a reason that choosing the Skywalker family name is important to her.

4: There should be a reason that Palpatine in particular is a fitting nemesis for Rey.

5: There should be a reason why a Jedi Hunter would wish to find Rey as a child.

With this revelation Rey would essentially be a new Anakin, with the same potential to fall and plunge the universe into darkness like Vader did. It also gives her another reason for choosing the Skywalker name, as it belonged to her previous incarnation. It makes sense Palpatine would consider her a nemesis and would try to hunt her down. In this version of events, Rey’s conception would be a vergence in the Force, a direct result of Palpatine cheating death and undoing the destruction of the Sith. As for point 2, this reveal doesn’t require an explanation for Rey to be on Jakku, she’s the daughter of junk traders who lived on a random junkyard planet, and that’d be the end of it.

I agree with RogueLeader’s take that we shouldn’t be focusing on Rey’s backstory and making things more convoluted, this reveal would put less emphasis on Rey’s past, it doesn’t matter where she comes from or who she used to be, which is the heart of TLJ’s reveal. As Maz puts it: “The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead”. Instead of threading over the same ground TLJ covered, we’re adding a new dimension to Rey’s character that is more relevant to her present and future, as heir to the Jedi or heir to the Sith. This movie is already bringing back Palpatine as the big bad guy, so it makes sense to bring back the chosen one as well and bring things full circle.

I had a hard time thinking how this could be implemented, since it’d be awkward for Kylo to reveal this and their dyad connection at the same time, but I hadn’t thought about just outright exising the term dyad. I think this would work even better with this reveal, since their connection is apparent without the need for a specific term, they’re both related to Anakin, one through spirit and one through blood.

I like the Sith eyes as a way to make “Evil Rey” her own distinctive character, making it clear when she shows up on the Death Star ruins that it’s the same Rey we saw sitting on the throne in the vision, she’s meant to be the embodiment of Rey’s ultimate dark fate, but that wasn’t really clear on theatrical. which is why I’m not a fan of using the shot from Starlight on the Vision with her Sith eyes on SKB, it takes away from the impact of seeing Evil Rey on the throne, though that’s also because I prefer Hal’s Restructured episode VII, so in my version of the trilogy it just comes off as an odd choice to have a single shot from a previous movie edited to make Rey look extra evil.