Darth Raditz

True, it is a difficult needle to thread, but not impossible. As far as the big picture goes, it’s a matter of Kylo not wanting to be beholden to Palpatine, but not necessarily not trusting him, either. He could still think that Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter because that’s the only way he can rationalize Rey being as powerful as she is. Or he believes it because Rey believes it. I’ve hammered out the hangar scene again:

Kylo: Rey…Wherever you are…you are hard to find.
Rey: You are hard to get rid of.
Kylo: I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. Darkness is in your nature. Rey…
Rey: You’re lying.
Kylo: You said your parents were nobody. The way I see it, the only liar here is you.
Rey: Don’t!
Kylo: I’ve been inside your head. Are you afraid to admit it?
Rey: I don’t want this!
Kylo: Search your memories!
Rey: No!
Kylo: Your parents. See them!
(Rey sees her parents protecting her, and their death)
Kylo: They paid for your protection…in more ways than one.
Rey: Stop talking.
Kylo: Rey…they were protecting you from Palpatine.
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
Kylo: Think about it, Rey. About how you’ve grown so powerful, so fast. About how our bond in the force could be created. And yet you still resist the truth. Be honest about who you are, Rey!
Rey: No!
(Vader’s mask falls to the ground)
Kylo: So that’s where you are.
Kylo: You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.
(In the Hangar)
Rey: Why did the Emperor come for me? Why did he want to kill a child? Tell me.
Kylo: Because he saw what you would become. You don’t just have power. You have his power. You’re his granddaughter.
Kylo: Skywalker & Palpatine, still fighting his war. Alone, all that waits is the Dark Side or death. But together, through our bond, we’ll have peace…make things the way we want them to be!
Kylo: You know what you need to do. You know.
Rey: I do.

This way it’s more that Kylo is coming to his own conclusion about Rey’s origin, even if he’s incorrect. As far as having our cake and eating it too, let’s go back to my idea of Rey getting to Exegol using Kylo’s memories (using previous scenes in a black & white filter to show she’s calling on them). I think we can do the same with denoting what parts of Kylo & Rey’s visions are true and which ones are fabrications. When Kylo thinks back on his past actions or we see the TFA flashback of Rey’s parents abandoning her, those moments are in black & white, meaning they actually happened. When we see visions of Kylo/Rey dying on Exegol, Kylo/Rey on the Sith Throne, or Rey’s parents telling her to be brave, those scenes are in color (or saturated color), meaning there’s something off about those visions.

I think you could cheat by mixing black & white visions with the saturated color visions. For example, Rey’s parents telling her to be brave in color, Rey’s parents abandoning her in black and white, a shot of Ochi in black & white (with the dagger cropped out), and Rey’s parents dying in color. I wonder if it’s worth reinstating the ticking clock to add pressure to the situation, so that Rey & Kylo don’t really have time to question. If all else fails, Nev’s given us a good skeleton for a “Rey Nopatine” edit, I’m just trying to figure out what muscle I can add to it.

As far as capitalization in the text crawl goes, I’ve already explained my reasons well. Besides, treating this as the end of the Skywalker Saga, I think it’s fine to be experimental in what could be capitalized.

I still want to keep the first line of my crawl, since it’s more than just a callback to TFA’s crawl. Going back to the idea of TRoS’ crawl being a send up of the entire Saga, hammering home that Luke, the man who started it all, is dead, serves as a grim reminder to the audience. Again, there are no more safety nets. The galaxy is a scarier place now, everything more or less depends on Rey & Leia can only help her so much.

I’m more or less satisfied with the final bit of hangar dialogue. As an audience member, I like the idea of someone in-universe going “seriously, Palpatine again?” & Kylo lends himself better to that idea than most. As far as streamlining motivations, Kylo still thinks too deeply in Sith terms, which is why Rey doesn’t join him then & there (plus the Palpatine-lie that shatters her worldview). You could easily delete her saying the “I did want to take your hand” line, especially if she senses Leia’s dying as a result of healing her son. Rey runs away in shame, and we avoid any unfortunate implications of her “fixing” Kylo.

Take three on the crawl:

Luke Skywalker is dead.
While his sacrifice sparked the
flames of hope across the galaxy,
they risk being extinguished by
the despotic First Order.

Since the Battle of Crait, Rey,
the LAST Jedi, has undertaken
strenuous training and studies the
teachings left to her, so that she may
better assist General Leia Organa’s
small yet unfettered Resistance.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren
has traveled to Mustafar, blindly
chasing whispers of an OLD POWER
that, when uncovered, will spell the end of
everything…

I did take out the second mention of Luke death (since I realized that was a bit much), and played more into Kylo’s blind rage at the beginning of the movie.

So, I watched a video by Schaffrillas Productions on the Star Wars opening crawls, and he made two very salient points: The best crawls draw a straight line form the last movie to the first movie, and RotJ was great at being a capstone to, what was at the time, all of Star Wars as a whole.

While the theatrical cut of TRos does neither of these things, I notice that even fanedits like Ascendant only address the first point, like it’s just another chapter of the Skywalker Saga and not the conclusion of nine films that it is/was. So, I wrote something last night, woke up feeling unsatisfied with the first paragraph, rewrote it, & will post both versions, see what feedback I get. Here’s the second draft:

Luke Skywalker is dead.
While his sacrifice sparked the
flames of hope across the galaxy,
they risk being extinguished by
the vicious Knights Of Ren.

Since the death of her master, Rey,
the LAST Jedi, has thrown herself
into training and studying the
teachings left to her, so that she
may be better equipped to help
the small yet unfettered Resistance.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader
Kylo Ren has traveled to
Mustafar, chasing whispers of
an OLD POWER that, when
unleashed, will spell the end of
everything…

This crawl sets up a very dire situation for the state of things. It’s similar to Ascendant, but with a callback to TFA’s crawl in the first paragraph with the one word sentence that sets the stage for the film. I also went with Knights of Ren over First Order because (A) it lets people know we’ll actually see the Knights this movie & (B) it shows that The First Order and it’s figurehead, Hux, are more or less on their way out.

For the second paragraph I call Rey “the LAST Jedi,” which I find works in a number of ways. First, it’s a callback to both TLJ and another one to the TFA crawl, where that phrase first appeared. Second, the reason “LAST” is capitalized is to hammer home that she’s the only one left. No “there is another” safety net, if she goes down, the Jedi are over. The reason I don’t include Leia is because she never completed her Jedi training, and like Maz said in TFA, you don’t need to be a Jedi to know of the Force. This paragraph will also be echoed by Poe later when he tells Rey that she’s their best fighter and should be out on missions. Again, increase the direness of the situation.

Last paragraph, again, very much like Ascendant’s crawl, but I replaced “hidden power” with “OLD POWER” to both hammer home that what Kylo’s searching for is important as well as emphasize how Palpatine has been a part of this war for a long time. Also, as opposed to more passive language in other paragraphs (“risk being extinguished,” “may be better equipped”), the last phrase of the crawl uses very strong language of “when unleashed, will spell the end of everything.” Hard to be more encompassing of the end of the Skywalker Saga than that. Plus, having the last line of the last main crawl be the word “everything” foreshadows how Palpatine will give Kylo “everything.”

For arguments sake, here’s the first draft:

Luke Skywalker is dead, but
his sacrifice sparked the flames
of rebellion across the galaxy,
uniting people more than ever
against the despotic First Order.

Since the death of her master, Rey,
the LAST Jedi, has thrown herself
into training and studying the
teachings left to her, so that she
may be better equipped to help
the brave yet thinly spread Resistance.

Meanwhile, Supreme Leader
Kylo Ren has traveled to
Mustafar, chasing whispers of
an OLD POWER that, when
unleashed, will spell the end of
everything…

First paragraph is a bit more optimistic, more of a positive spin on Luke’s sacrifice, and actually used First Order here because it’s almost a given that their days are numbered. For the second paragraph, the end started as “brave yet thinly spread” to “small yet unfettered.” The former was an awkward attempt of showing how the galaxy is rising up while still painting the Resistance as the underdogs. Just because they’re united across the galaxy doesn’t mean they’re organized/centralized.

I’m trying to lean away from Kylo wanting to hide angle to more “I’m sick of the same thing playing out again and again,” hence still trying to get Rey to join him.

Also, in my ideal vision, Kylo doesn’t really take a moment to consider his life and Palpatine’s offer until he touches Vader’s mask again in TRoS. The way I have it played out is that he hears Palpatine over the radio on Crait (inspired by popasketti’s edit), searches rumors of Palpatine’s survival for a year, then after seeing Zombie Palpatine, goes into a state of shock when he realizes his life has been a lie. If, like RogueLeader said, TFA were edited to make Kylo have a vision of Vader saying “if the Jedi are not destroyed, there will be civil war without end,” then Kylo’s vision in TRoS can have him heat the same dialogue, but in Palpatine’s voice.

Currently, I see Kylo’s motivation not so much as wanting to run away with Rey but more “either we kill Palpatine together or not at all.” And in that light, I’m not sure if he would destroy his own Wayfinder, since his Plan A is “kill Palpatine with Rey at my side.” It’s just he’s still a bit power hungry, which is why Rey doesn’t trust him. Actually, let me tweak the speech a bit more:

“Skywalker & Palpatine, still fighting his war. Alone, all that waits is the Dark Side or death. But together, through our bond, we’ll have peace…make things the way we want them to be!"”

Another call back to RotS, this time with Palpatine telling Vader that with the Sith ruling the galaxy, they will have peace. Kylo’s arc here is almost an inverse of Anakin’s RotS arc, so desperate to rise (heh) above his baser instincts, but still beholden to a toxic mindset he’s been groomed all his life into.

Depending on the execution of Leia dying/Kylo being healed, you could say that Rey is so ashamed of her actions that she decides to go full hermit mode (especially if she blames herself for Leia’s death). As far as plugging plotholes, maybe a little tweak to the end of Kylo’s hangar speech:

“Skywalker & Palpatine, fighting the same old war. Alone, all that waits is the Dark Side or death. But together, through our bond, we have the power to grant the galaxy a fresh start…together."”

Or, if that’s still too soft-hearted of Kylo Ren:

“Skywalker & Palpatine, fighting the same old war. Alone, all that waits is the Dark Side or death. But together, through our bond, we can restart…make things the way we want them to be!"”

The ending bit is more passionate/self-centered on Kylo’s part, and it’s a direct callback to what Anakin told Padme on Mustafar in RotS. Even when Kylo’s trying to do right, he’s doing it wrong.

I wanted to take another crack at Rouge Leader’s idea of turning the ST’s weaknesses into strengths/Kylo’s growing nihilism about the galaxy/SW, while also keeping Nev’s ideas of the dagger being a plant/the Sith or Death visions, and addressing Eddie’s concerns of why Palpatine would perpetuate this cycle:

Kylo: (Force Skyping Rey on Pasana) Palpatine wants us to fight.

Rey: Serving another master?

Kylo: No. Don’t play his game, Rey. I offered you my hand, once. You wanted to take it. Why didn’t you?

Rey: You could’ve killed me. Why didn’t you?

Kylo: I’m sick of playing out the same cycles, over and over.

Rey: I see through the cracks in your mask. You’re haunted. You can’t stop seeing what you did to your father.

Kylo: I’ve been haunted since my Jedi days. Since I started hearing the voice of Vader in my head. And it’s lead me to this moment. I’m going to find you…When I offer you my hand again…you’ll take it.

Rey: We’ll see.

(In Kylo’s quarters)

Kylo: Rey…Wherever you are…you are hard to find.

Rey: You are hard to get rid of.

Kylo: I pushed you in the desert because I needed to see it…I needed you to see it…who you are. Darkness is in your nature. Rey…

Rey: You’re lying.

Kylo: You said your parents were nobody. But the dagger you found tells another story.

Rey: Don’t!

Kylo: It revealed your parent’s fate. Are you still afraid to see it?

Rey: I don’t want this!

Kylo: Search your memories!

Rey: No!

Kylo: Remember them. See them!

(Rey sees her parents protecting her, and their death)

Kylo: They paid for your protection…in more ways than one.

Rey: Stop talking.

Kylo: Rey…they were protecting you from Palpatine.

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

Kylo: I didn’t believe Palpatine either, when he told me who you were. He’s lied to me for years…inside my head…in the voices of Vader…Snoke. But the dagger proved he was right…about who you really are.

Rey: No!

(Vader’s mask falls to the ground)

Kylo: So that’s where you are.

Kylo: You know why the Emperor’s always wanted you dead. I’ll come tell you.

(In the Hangar)

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

Kylo: Because he saw what you would become. You don’t just have power. You have his power. You’re his granddaughter.

Kylo: Skywalker & Palpatine, fighting the same old war. Forced between the Dark Side or death. But now we’re connected, by a power the Emperor cannot comprehend. Run away with me, and we’ll forge a new destiny…together.

Kylo: You know what you need to do. You know.

Rey: I do.

…

As far as solving the issue of “why would Kylo still have his Wayfinder if he doesn’t want to play Palpatine’s game/how does Rey get to Exegol without either Wayfinder,” I have another idea. Instead of cutting to the Wayfinder in the X-Wing, we could do a brief cut back to when Kylo first made his way to Exegol in black & white. Imply that Rey is using her bond with Kylo to search his memories in order to recreate the path to Exegol. It’s not totally farfetched, within the same realms of possibility of D-O having a map to Exegol stored away, at least.

Ascendant already makes it so Rey was at Ach-To for a full night, you can just reuse and regrade scenes of her meditating on her visions, the dagger, & Exegol, figuring out where it is (recolor her gray robes white if you have to).

Better yet, have Rey follow the fleet to Exegol because D-O has the star charts to Exegol in its memory banks. Other editors have made D-O the ture key to getting to Exegol, so it’s not a huge stretch.

Going with the idea that the dagger was created by Palpatine, have Rey use that against him. Rey faces her fear, focuses in on the dagger’s origin, and uses that to get to Exegol (and leave coordinates for the Resistance to follow. That’s how you get around the lack of Wayfinders.

Ooh, much has been discussed in the past few days, so I’ll go at it in order.

…

The new Leia dialogue makes, both in terms of making the movie more about her and adding to Rey’s character arc. The only thing I’m sad about is now there’s no reference to Padme and Leia opting to follow in her mother’s footsteps, or the implication that Luke eventually learned about. It’s a change I can live with, character progression over lore/fanservice, but you can still have the subtext there:

“She was quick to learn in our training. But she feared our father’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.”

…

The idea of the dagger being a creation of Palpatine used to manipulate Rey is a great one, and that way you don’t have to have Luke immediately cast doubt on the Rey Palpatine story. My only issue is that the Knights of Ren are now explicitly loyal to Palpatine with no real autonomy of their own. I don’t read the EU, but I’m sure that that’d rub some hardcore fans the wrong way, and I typically prefer edits that are as canon compliant as possible (as much as a Rey Nopatine edit can comply to canon, at least).

Maybe after Rey finds the dagger, the Knights say:

“The found the dagger…alert the corpse.”

On Kijimi:

“The ghost wants the girl alive. Kill the rest.”

And when facing Ben on Exegol:

“We should’ve known you’d betray the plan.”

…

As far as “Dark Side or Death” vs. “parents” visions, if we’re going with the idea of Rey Palpatine being a lie and Rey’s true arc being having the courage to die to defeat Palpatine as the main core, the Dark Side of Death visions should be the first thing Rey sees, with memories of her parents coming second because they’re not important to who Rey is and are likely fabrications anyway.

Also, Nev, if you were theoretically doing this edit, would you change the planet Rey buries the Skywalker lightsabers to Jakku? Jakku means more to Rey than Tatooine meant to either Luke or Leia, and I’d like to see you “graveyard planet” take on Jakku again. Then again, Tatooine probably means more to Anakin than either of his kids, so maybe Anakin’s ghost should just bee added with Luke & Leia?

I just brought it up because if the only references to Rey Palpatine are the hangar scene and the end of the movie Palpatine going “just kidding” would be awkward. That said, your idea of changing the subtext of Luke’s line to that of “are you seriously buying this? Wow, you are new to this” is cleaner. It may be a bit too subtle, but it’s definitely a cleaner idea.

And the fourth advanced option, Palpatine-less.

Love all these ideas coming together. My one issue, Nev, is that I do think there needs to be one more hit to the idea that Ray Palpatine might be a lie (good old rule of threes. First the initial reveal, then the moment of doubt, then deconfirming the reveal). I still think the best place to put this would be on Ach-To, go with the idea I had of changing Luke’s “because you’re a Palpatine” to “Because of Palpatine?” and covering it by only showing the beginning clip of Luke speaking. Luke knows the Emperor lies, he shouldn’t believe a word he says.

With that I think it’s pretty solid. One other thing I’d like to change would be switching Rey saying “Be with me/And I am all the Jedi” to “I am one with the Force & the Force is with me.” It’s a subtle callback to Rogue One, it’s a Disney SW callback so it feels relatively fresh, and it fits the situation of this movie’s climax. Like in Rogue One, Rey is saying a chant to give her strength in the face of certain death.

NeverarGreat said:

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.”

I really love your brainstorming Nev, and I want this to work (I love the idea of Rey having visions of her death, nice callback to the DotF script). 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.”

I also don’t see how “Ochi and D-O not making it to Jakku” equates to “Rey couldn’t be Palpatine’s granddaughter” for Finn. Just because they didn’t look for Palpatine’s granddaughter on Jakku, doesn’t mean the theoretical granddaughter couldn’t be on another planet. Unless the idea is that they were never looking for Rey, but then the dagger not the hanger means even less? I dunno, maybe I’m just overthinking it, or underthinking it.

I do like Palpatine saying at the end “no, you’re not a Palpatine.” I’d like to marry that to your other idea, as instead of hearing the Jedi, Rey hears the voices of her friends & Ben encouraging her, and further saying that “your power is your own, Rey.”

As a minor note, I would love a reference back to her Awakening in TFA. Maybe something like this:

“Wherever you are, you are hard to find.”
“You’re hard to get rid of.”
“You’ve come a long way since Starkiller Base…and the dagger has shown me the rest*…who you are. Darkness is your destiny, Rey.”

*Referencing your comments about Ascendant, when you finally saw it.

Again, I want this angle to work, and am more than happy to refine ideas with you.

Going with the idea of the Grogu rescue openinng Mando movie three, maybe you can establish in the crawl that while making the preparations to fight Gideon, he has the Armorer make the beskar chain metal, as if to say that he will rescue Grogu from the Empire and the chain mail cements it.

I think you could accomplish this by taking the scene in Boba where Mando gets the chain mail and split it into two scenes, one at the beginning and one near the middle. It always bugged me in Boba where after revealing to the coven that he removed his helmet that they didn’t immediately try and take the beskar back from Mando before kicking him out.

I don’t think that Rey being suddenly chosen by the Force is antithetical to canon, and in fact it goes back to how the Force might usually work in the galaxy according to the '77 film. Anyone can learn to use the Force, and anyone can be suddenly chosen by it to do great deeds, hence the ‘may the Force be with you’ benediction. In fact, it seems unusual for the Force to be passed down through bloodlines, with the Skywalker family being one of the few examples of this. For most people, most Jedi, the reason they have the Force is a mystery, even if it’s usually identified early in their lives. But remember, Midichlorians are only a symbiote with the Force, not the reason for it. A person could suddenly be chosen by the Force later in life and then accumulate Midichlorians that communicate with it. And Midichlorians aside, the Force choosing a person for greatness is a very Aurthurian legend way of the Force working, with Rey being called to the Skywalker’s sword.

Maz tells Rey that the Force has ‘always been there’, but Maz isn’t a Jedi, she’s just very old. There’s no indication that she has the desire or aptitude to be a Jedi, so I think it’s a fair expectation that Maz is just telling Rey that the Force is available to everyone in some capacity, at all times. She could just as easily tell this to Chewie and it would be true. When Rey later says that ‘something inside me has always been there…now it’s awake’, she could just be referring back to Maz’s statement about the Force and not that Rey was always special. In fact, the important part is that awakening, the Force choosing Rey to accomplish some destiny.

I think that’s the point of TLJ, in my opinion. Rey comes from nothing, no special creation or lineage, and it’s only a chance awakening in TFA that brings her into the story. I don’t think that Broom Boy was intended to have some special parentage, he just chose the Force or the Force chose him at the end of the film, just as it can choose anyone no matter how small. In fact, TROS itself continues this thesis when Finn discovers that the Force has awakened in him as well. No special parents with him either, and that’s what makes Rey’s special status so detrimental to all of this.

TROS’s revelation about Rey destroys TLJ’s thesis by saying that Rey always had powerful blood. Neither my Clone Rey idea or JJ’s virgin birth Palpatine creation idea is able to negate the destruction of TLJ’s thesis because both ideas state that Rey was singularly important from the moment of her conception, and always would be. The only way I can see to preserve TLJ is by establishing that Rey’s first moment of importance is her awakening in TFA, and the only way to do that while also talking about her past is if Palpatine foresaw this awakening and sowed the seeds of darkness in Rey before that happened.

And yes, in a perfect world Rey’s parents wouldn’t matter, but if we delete the flashbacks and that motivation for destroying Palpatine, well, that would just further diminish Rey’s motivation. We have to consider the practical impact of deleting more of this already eviscerated film.

I think the issue with Rey’s parents being good is less about their goodness and more about the way they are handled in TROS. It doesn’t make sense for her parents to sell her to Plutt to keep her safe, since no good parent would willingly do that. They almost surely could have chosen a better person than Plutt to keep her safe, so it just doesn’t fly that they would really have Rey’s wellbeing in mind.

However, there’s actually an issue with TLJ’s version of Rey’s past that ties in here. If Rey’s parents were trash who sold her the first chance they got, then they wouldn’t have sold her when she was six. They would have sold her as a newborn, as most people who aren’t able to raise a child would do. Even if they kept her until she was six, she probably would have been malnourished and sickly, not like she looked in the flashback. So this is a problem with TLJ, and this is actually evidence that her parents did care for her, at least a little. That is why I think there’s value in keeping the flashbacks, but just making it so that her parents were forced to give up their child. It is the best fit for the facts at hand.

Very, very well said, Nev. Your ideas and creativity truly convince me that a “Rey Spiritual Palpatine” take that honors TLJ is possible. It’s certainly what I’m going to keep advocating for, at least. With fanedits, I’m all for being as canon complient to the franchise as possible (it’s why I don’t generally gravitate Prequel Edits that drastically change Dooku’s motivations) but there’s got to a point where you musn’t be afraid to address acknowledge a the more problematic aspects of something you love (i.e., Indiana Jones is more or less a grave robber). Star Wars needs more nobodies who become somebodies, not an endless cycle of bluebloods.

This is what I mean about why trying to fix TROS’ midpoint being sweaty. I get that it’s hard to do something new/different in a movie where Palpatine has to be the main bad guy, but going back to the idea of Palpatine having a hand in making Vader does help tie the nine movies together. What I take issue with is intrinsically tying Force ability into genetics, which is where TLJ won me & TROS lost me (even TLJ Luke was sick of hearing about “that mighty Skywalker blood”).

I’m fine with Anakin’s virgin birth (in theory, at least), is because it plays on the Jedi’s expectations in their prophecy so much that they can’t see that Anakin’s going to lead to the Jedi Order’s downfall. I like the idea of Palpatine causing Anakin’s virign birth because then that creates subtext of Luke having to fight a destiny he had no say in. But if Palpatine is involved in a second virgin birth (whether or not he was actually involved with Anakin), it just creates a feeling of “wow, the only important people in the universe are the Palpatines/Skywalkers, huh?”

The reason I like Nev’s wording is because it is vague enough that Palpatine did something to Rey as a child that it could literally be anything when she was already born and new to the world. She didn’t start life as a Palpatine, her progress was affected by Palpatine, which makes the idea of brining Palpatine back and having him somehow connected with Rey go down smoother.

If Rey is only as strong as she is because she was born that way due to Palpatine’s machinations, it stops being a trope subversion for Anakin & Luke’s story, and just becomes more of the same, reinforcing what TLJ was trying to get away from by tying it back to blood, when the Force should be about mysticism, spiritualism, etc that should be accessible by everyone. For me, the less talk of blood the better.

I can’t remember where I saw it, I want to say it was somewhere on this website, but Star Wars has always had an issue with time compression (the main example I saw was that the entirety of TESB was supposed to take over months, but you never get that idea from the movie itself).

Here’s an idea I literally had just now. How about after Luke rescues Grogu and takes him, cut the goodbye scene short, cut to Boba Fett taking over Jabba’s operations, then cut to Mando at Luke’s planet, asking Ahsoka to give Grogu the beskar chain mail. It makes a minor plothole of how did Mando get on and off Luke’s planet, but it would solve a major pacing issue, both in transitioning from Mando 2 material to TBoBF material, as well as all the waiting Mando & the audience have to do to even meet Ahsoka & drop off the gift. Just make the transition from show material as quick/engaging as possible and hope people don’t complain.

It’s sweaty, yes, but any take on fixing TROS’ midpoint would be sweaty, as this thread has proven. What I especially like about this take is that it’s an angle on Rey Palpatine that circumvents if not outright denies the idea that the Force is specifically tied into bloodlines, like how later Mandolorian seems to imply. As Nev put it, all Palpatine did was “pour his dark power into [Rey]”, which could mean a number of things. Rey, her family, and the Skywalker family are all still victims of Palpatine’s machinations, which is a more important takeaway from TROS.

For these revamped New Republic edits, I’ve always been in favor of ending Episode 2 with Grogu being captured. Lets you have a dark ending, you get to move most if not all of the Luke crap into one Episode, and you get to trim even more of Book of Boba Fett to your liking and avoid most of the bad stuff there as well.

I really live Nev’s most recent take on things, it’s the cleanest marriage of Rey Palpatine & Rey Nobody. Rey’s uniqueness wasn’t because she was born/made/conceived differently, she was inoculated. I also don’t have an issue with Palpatine choosing a scavenger over a Sith loyalist for a few reasons. The main reason is that foolhardy Force users in Star Wars put way too much stock into visions and sabotage themselves as a result.

The second reason requires some explanation. There’s an old DC comic called Armageddon 2001 that depicts a fascistic society where conformity is enforced & heroism is outlawed (being a vigilante, memorabilia, etc.). The dictator of this society, Monarch, wants to conduct time travel experiments to both protect himself from unexpected attacks and ensure that his form of peace will last after he’s gone. The only problem is that none of his subjects survive the experiments, and the protagonist, Matt Rider, explains that it’s a matter of willpower: by outlawing heroism and enforcing draconian rule, Monarch is eliminating the qualities in his society that are necessary for it’s survival. As a result, Matt becomes one of the subjects for the time travel experiments and actually survives the process.

I can see Palpatine doing the same thing, looking for an outsider like Anakin that would have the necessary qualities that his followers wouldn’t have and setting up the steps necessary for Rey to one day become his most viable host. Also, like I said before, putting too much stake in his own visions and trying to get the outcome he wants. After all, his overconfidence is his weakness.

JEDIT: If you do need an even stronger reason for Palpatine to target Rey specifically, you could always make Ochi’s knife a Sith Artifact her parents found, of which Child Rey would be very succeptible to it’s influence and put a big target on her back. Still keep in with that “right place, right time” angle.

Rewatching Nando V Movies TROS videos, and I’m kinda convinced that JJB is right: there needs to be a potentially canon-altering twist that recontextualizes the Skywalker Saga, like the Skywalkers and the Palpatines being one in the same. Rey can even still be a Nobody, the big threat that Palpatine personifies for her is the idea of the Star Wars legacy being a colossal lie. The big reveal in the hangar could be Kylo saying “Palapatine…is the First Skywalker.” That way, her taking on the name Skywalker is her reaffirming the stories she grew up on still having value.

Le’s try this (not posting the whole rewrite since it’s well trod at this point)

Kylo: (Force Skype) Palpatine wants us to fight.

Rey: Serving another master?

Kylo: Please. He’s a decrepit fossil.

JEDIT:

Kylo: I offered you my hand once. You wanted to take it. Why didn’t you?

Rey: You could’ve killed me. Why didn’t you?

Kylo: I was missing a piece of the puzzle.

Rey : I see through the cracks in your mask. You’re haunted. You can’t stop seeing what you did to your father.

Kylo: I’ve been haunted since my Jedi days. Since I saw a vision of Grandfather & Palpatine, side by side. And it’s lead me to this moment. I’m going to find you…When I offer you my hand again…you’ll take it.

Rey: We’ll see.

END OF JEDIT

(Later)
 
“You were right…your parents were no one. Toys for the Dark Side to break.”

“Don’t!”

“But not you. Like my grandfather, you were different, powerful…”

(Later)

“Why did the Emperor come for me?.”

“Palpatine created Vader, Rey. And he perfected that trick with you. Your his heir to the Empire.”

“That’s why our bond is so strong, Rey. We’re connected to him…nothing but potential vessels. But we can kill him, and bring a new order to the galaxy…together.”

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

“I do.”

I’d really like to do away with any specific mentions of bloodlines. It reminds me too much of Grogu’s blood being used in cloning experiments and how uncomfortably eugenicist Star Wars can be at times.

Here’s an attempt at the hangar scene with a bit more wiggle room:

“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 you to see it… I was wrong… You don’t belong to the Light, Rey…”

“You’re lying.”

“I’d never lie to you… your parents were no one. But they didn’t start out as junk traders.”

“Don’t!”

“As the Sith’s loyal subjects, they were assigned a child to raise…"

“I don’t want this!”

“…and then kill."

“No!”

“But they’d learn how to love, so they went into hiding.”

(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)

“Rey, my love… be brave.”

“You’ll be safe here… I promise.”

“Come back! Nooo!”

“Upon Palpatine’s revival, they became desperate.”

“Stop talking.”

“Rey… I learned what happened to them.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“Your parents sought Luke’s protection, searching the Jakku desert for his allies… but Palpatine’s assassins tracked them down. They resisted fiercely, only to be forgotten by the sands of time."

(Rey sees her parents get killed.)

“So that’s where you are.”

“See you soon.”

…etc

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

“Because Palpatine needed a host. One that was modified with his genetic code. You don’t just have power…you have/rival his power.”

“Palpatine views you as nothing more than a leftover liability. But what he can’t see is that we’ve become a Dyad in the Force, linked by Snoke, but grown beyond that. We can end him and the Sith, and create something new, together…”

(Removes his helmet)

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

“I do.”

And as a bonus, some decidedly less vague D-O related dialogue:

“This droid has…thank you, I appreciate that. General?”

“General.”

"This droid has scanned every planet he ever visited.”

“Wait, coneface?”

“D-O”

“Sorry, D-O”

“Rey believes he went to Jakku with Ochi of Bestoon.”

“Why was Ochi going there?”

“To find a dead child he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor.”

I had wanted that last bit to be “To bring a child that untimely died on Jakku, to the Emperor” but didn’t think the words would convincingly match Finn’s lips. Essentially, Rey is making assumptions about what D-O knows, not realizing she may not be the child Palpatine was looking for. Finn, having a fuller picture, takes that to make the final assault on Exegol into a rescue mission for Rey.

NeverarGreat said:

I don’t think that Kylo should tell Rey that Palpatine is lying to her, or giving her visions. I think that can be implied, however, if the visions first appear in some fragmented form when Kylo interacts with the Vader helmet and they share a vision, basically like the theatrical version of that scene.

In the Kylo quarters fight, it could be that Kylo is surprised at the new version of Rey’s past that he has seen, since he didn’t see that in her memories before, but I don’t think he should outright suggest that this is a device of Palpatine. Again, if Rey knows for sure that Palpatine is lying about her past, then she can easily discard it. So that interpretation should remain plausible but unconfirmed for the entire runtime, and the story should be about Rey choosing which story to believe.

I agree that Rey believing the story to be true should be held for as long as possible to maintain story tension. I just wonder if there’s a way to show that Kylo is confused by this new vision to better sell the idea. I might take a crack at wording the hangar scene to frame it so that the Palpatine story is just something Kylo heard, not confirming or denying anything, only to then reiterate all he thinks is important is the Dyad he and Rey form.

NeverarGreat said:

For this to be communicated, we would need to alter the D-O scene and maybe give D-O some new lines if we want to be fancy, in order to prevent confirmation of Rey Palpatine. Luke’s line of ‘Because you’re a Palpatine’ doesn’t actually need to change, since it could merely be that he is giving voice to her greatest fear, not confirming it. His next line could be ‘Leia sensed your fear.’

It would depend on what lines D-O would have, but the thread seems to be heading in the right direction so far.

NeverarGreat said:

The only other thing that is needed to pull this off is to give Finn a line where he pushes back against Palpatine’s story and tells Rey that she ultimately must choose her destiny, not the Emperor. For this, I think it would be interesting if we used this opportunity to give Finn some closure to his character arc as well. From a practical perspective, Finn would want to get to Rey in order to convey his doubt to her, which means that his mission at the end of the film would be similar to the one in TFA: he is involved in a Resistance attack but has the ulterior motive of wanting only to find Rey. However, he ultimately chooses not to find Rey and instead chooses to sacrifice himself for the Resistance, knowing that this time his sacrifice will not be in vain…

Removing the voices of the Jedi that Rey didn’t know in life will emphasize that she has rejected her desire to find belonging in the past, and will choose instead to take Finn’s advice and rely on the strength of her friends for her future. Burying the old lightsabers in the homestead is final confirmation of her new resolve.

Ooh, I really love this idea, since I think the only film in the Skywalker Saga where the final battle is a rescue mission is Phantom Menace? I think the only issue then is a lack of reaction shots of Finn sensing Rey’s death & resurrection, but I could just be overthinking it.

I think where I’m getting hung up on, as far as “Rey Palpatine/Clone is a lie/unconfirmed in-universe” is that as it stands is that we don’t have mock-ups of these ideas to see them play out in practice. Going over the past posts, the idea that Rey’s visions not being part of her childhood but Palpatine sending her specific images to manipulate her is a bit of a hard sell since we haven’t written a version of the hangar scene where Kylo tells her that’s what’s going on (not yet anyway).

I do like the idea of every time the Palpatine reveal comes up after the scene itself if people cast doubt on it (new lines for D-O, Luke saying “because of Palpatine” instead of “because you’re a Palpatine,” Finn telling Rey she knows the truth that Palpatine’s not her family, etc.) but I’m concerned there’s still too much evidence that points to Rey Palpatine being true.

I followed development of a Palpatine-less edit of Episode IX called “A Spark of Hope,” and one idea the edit toyed with was having Rey narrate the summation of her journey while burying the lightsabers. It ultimately went in a different direction, but it would be a clean way of having Rey state “whether what the Emperor said was true or not doesn’t matter. What matters is the future & moving forward” or something like that.