StarkillerAG

Channel72 said:

StarkillerAG said:

2. “It’s by DISNEY… and it’s NOT Andor?! It MUST be bad! REVIEW BOMB!!! REVIEW BOOOOOOOOMB!!!”

Well… I mean… to be fair, if you adopt this attitude, then statistically you’re likely to be correct.

You’re right, but you could at least watch it before giving it a one-star review and whining about how “Disney killed my childhood”. That way, on the off-chance it’s actually good, Disney won’t pull the plug on it just because people assume it’s bad.

I haven’t watched any of this show, and I probably never will (I’ve kind of stopped giving a shit about “new Star Wars” in general), but I think I can say this with confidence: those audience reviews are bullshit. The review bombing is comically obvious. Like, maybe the show has problems, I wouldn’t know, but “30% on Rotten Tomatoes” level of problems? “4.8 on IMDB” level of problems? It really feels like people just want to hate it, for two main reasons:

1. “They put a WOMAN… in STAR WARS?! And she’s… BLACK?! WOKE!!! WOKE!!! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOKE!!!”
2. “It’s by DISNEY… and it’s NOT Andor?! It MUST be bad! REVIEW BOMB!!! REVIEW BOOOOOOOOMB!!!”

Like, if these reviews were at all legitimate, wouldn’t Book of Boba (which is probably way worse) get the same level of vitriol? What about Kenobi, which might be one of the worst pieces of live action Star Wars media ever? But of course, Boba and Obi-Wan are male and (mostly) white, and this was before the whole “Andor is the only good Disney Star War” narrative started, so The Acolyte is the one getting turned into some sort of nerd pariah instead. Like I said, it’s bullshit.

I’ve been thinking for a while about the infamous “Luke tries to kill Ben” scene in TLJ, and I think I’ve come up with a pretty neat idea to fix the scene’s biggest problem: why did Luke think Ben was beyond all hope, if all he saw was that Ben had some pretty scary thoughts? My version, which would be executed with the help of AI, attempts to give that reason. Here’s what I’m thinking:

REY: Tell me the truth!

LUKE: I saw darkness.

Flashback to Luke standing over Ben as he sleeps

LUKE (VO): I tried looking into his mind, to see what was causing it. But instead, I saw his future, and it was more horrible than I ever imagined.

Cut to a montage, with a ROTS-esque dreamlike filter, of Kylo’s darkest moments: destroying the temple, kneeling before Snoke, slaughtering people across the galaxy, watching as the New Republic is destroyed, and killing Han. Cut back to the flashback, as Luke recoils in horror.

LUKE: Ben’s fate had already been sealed.

Luke moves to pick up his lightsaber

LUKE: He would bring destruction and pain and death, and the end of everything I loved because of what he would become. And there was only one thing I could do to stop it.

Luke ignites his lightsaber, but hesitates

LUKE: But yet, I couldn’t do it, and I was left with shame. And with consequence.

Luke sees that Ben is awake

LUKE: And the last thing I saw were the eyes of the monster I failed to destroy.

They clash sabers, and the flashback ends

REY: You failed by thinking his choice was made! It wasn’t!

In this version, Luke’s choice is almost classicaly tragic. Rather than simply seeing what Ben might do, he sees what Ben WILL do, and he thinks that he has only two options:

1. Do nothing, and let everything and everyone he loves be destroyed.
2. Kill Ben and save the galaxy, but live with the knowledge that he killed his own nephew in his sleep.

In the end though, like with all classical tragedies, Luke’s attempt to cheat fate is exactly what leads to that fate happening in the first place: his indecision causes Ben to wake up, see his own master holding a lightsaber over his bed, and strike back, cementing his fall to the dark side. Luke made the wrong choice, but for reasons that are far more understandable than just “bad dreams”.

edlad said:

A idea for V2 I may suggest is to replace the Japanese audio with dubbed over voices, though I can understand the complications of getting volunteers that can sound convincing but that could be fixed with AI.

A very late reply, but I totally agree, both with this and with other Japanese audio fanedits. It didn’t used to bother me, but now that I’ve become enough of a shameless weeb to mostly understand spoken Japanese, it’s very easy to tell that the characters aren’t actually saying what the subtitles claim they are. Dubbing and/or AI is one option, but “silent movie” style fanedits are very underappreciated (especially since you don’t need to do any audio mixing 😉)

Yeah, if I were you I’d transfer your stuff back to Google Drive. 😉 It’s inconvenient for the host, but far more user-friendly than Mega.

Fan_edit_fan said:

If you weren’t referring to any members on this board who don’t have gushing thoughts about any upcoming SW projects…then why did you mention it in the first place? Did you think anyone here wanted to hear your rant on “hating the haters”? Still is not the place for your personal vitriol against a 0000.01% minority.

Dude, he wasn’t saying “Rey is 100% gonna be good and anyone who says otherwise is a hater”, he was saying “Rey has potential, and even if it sucks it won’t be because of its ‘SJW woke agenda’ or whatever.” Try getting some basic reading comprehension before you shit on someone for no reason.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

I want to bring up one last potential idea for this edit that is supplementary in nature to the main course, which is the dyad duel and hangar scene changes.

This edit is intended to be paired with TLJ: Rekindled, which includes Kylo’s line that her parents are dead and buried on Jakku. In original TROS, there are several problems with this idea:

1. Rey’s parents’ ship is seen leaving Jakku.
2. That ship just so happens to be (almost) identical to Ochi’s ship, so how did that end up with her parents to begin with?
3. If Rey’s parents were buried on Jakku by Ochi, then he likely would have encountered the only little girl in Niima Outpost.

I think the only way all of these pieces fit together is if Ochi was the one purposely taking her parents away from her. Now, obviously, this would also mean that Ochi intended to leave Rey behind as well, and not deliver her to Palpatine as he was originally instructed to.

I think a second reveal about Rey’s origin could easily slot itself into Poe and Finn’s discussion about D-O. We’d simply repurpose the footage of the ship taking off from TFA and her parent’s subsequent deaths after Finn’s line: “To bring a little girl he was supposed to take from Jakku, to the Emperor.” Over the flashback, we’d have a Finn voiceover, just like Luke does in the next scene.

“But Palpatine wanted her parents to sell her, instead. He ensured she was left alone and afraid on a harsh world, to push her to the dark side. And eventually to himself.”

Obviously both references to Rey recognizing Ochi’s ship would be reinstated. Now, the biggest problem with this idea is that we’re entering the territory of more hard retcons, which I’d say we’ve thus far avoided with only soft retcons. Specifically, the fact that she was sold for “drinking money”. Maybe the drinks were for Ochi? lol And there is also an argument to be made that Palpatine himself could do a more effective job of turning Rey to the dark side than trauma and Jakku ever could.

I’d still like to hear some other thoughts on this, though. I’m like 90% sure I’m including the Vader duel and Luke and Kylo conversation at this point, and this idea I’m a little under 50% in support of.

Is that idea really necessary for this edit, though? I thought the whole point of rewriting the hangar reveal was to avoid any mention of Ochi being involved with Rey’s backstory, and thus bypass that can of worms completely. It would probably be useful for Ascendant or a similar edit, but I think this edit should continue to keep Rey’s parents almost unmentioned.

Darth Raditz said:

I spent the weekend studying the opening crawls of the movies (both from the theatrical cuts and fanedits), and was hoping to get some feedback on my take for Episode I:

The Jedi Knights, once the guardians
of peace and justice in the galaxy,
have become mere couriers to
a complacent, stagnant Galactic
Republic within the last
millennia.

The TRADE FEDERATION, with
aide from a specter of the Jedi’s
past, has exploited this galactic
malaise with an occupation of
the peaceful Planet Naboo.

Only a chance meeting of two
radical idealists, Jedi
Master QUI-GON JINN of
Coruscant and QUEEN AMIDALA
of Naboo, can hope to settle
this conflict…

Admittedly, there’s a lot I’m trying to cover here: Making the crawl a fitting introduction to the SW universe, stating that the Jedi golden age has waned, the failing state of the government, something from the Jedi’s past opts to threaten the peace, & placing Qui-Gon and Amidala as the most important characters in this episode (drawing on the “Padme as Death Star plans” idea) as well as two of the only people in the galaxy striving for positive social change. I also replaced “blockade” with “occupation” to go with the idea of only one ship being in Naboo space, so a blockade doesn’t conveniently disappear in Act Three.

There’s some interesting ideas here, but I don’t know if it’s sufficiently engaging to be a proper Star Wars crawl: it feels more like dry exposition than the sort of heightened melodrama that made the OT crawls work so well. In particular, the third paragraph of the crawl should provide a natural bridge to the opening scene, like “pursued by the Empire’s sinister agents” in ANH or “dispatched thousands of remote probes” in ESB.

Here’s my own take on the crawl from a few pages earlier, so we can compare and contrast with your version:

The galaxy is in chaos. Driven
by greed and lust for power,
the ruthless Trade Federation
has blockaded the peaceful
planet of Naboo.

As the Federation prepares
to send their fearsome droid
armies to seize the planet’s
valuable resources, the last
hope of Naboo’s queen lies in
the Jedi Knights, guardians of
peace and wielders of the
mystic Force.

Hearing her desperate pleas,
the Chancellor of the Galactic
Republic has sent Jedi master
Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice
to bargain for the queen’s
freedom, unaware that a
sinister force is behind these
shocking events…

krlozdac said:

The thing about the insecurity of Rey being a worthier Sith heir wouldn’t land with either Kylo Ren or the audience given that as far as he and we are concerned, at this point of the story the Emperor just wants to have her killed. The drama is that instead of doing that he’s planning on having her side with him. It is not revealed till later that Palpatine wants her as the heir. Therefore I think leaning into that at this point of the story is a bit premature.

Sorry, but I’m not sure you fully understand what JJB’s goals are here. The whole “Palpatine pretends to want Rey dead but secretly wants her to join him” thing is completely gone, or at least heavily altered. Palpatine’s end goal here, seemingly stated offscreen in the part of his conversation with Kylo that we didn’t see, is for Rey and Kylo to fight each other to the death, so the one who survives can take his throne. Vader saying “you are unworthy” is intended to prey on Kylo’s insecurity over his defeat at Rey’s hands in TFA, implying that Kylo won’t be strong enough to kill Rey and become Palpatine’s true heir.

Spartacus01 said:

StarkillerAG said:

The Sequels (my hypothetical fanedit where Palpatine never comes back)

Ah, that sounds interesting. Can you elaborate, please? What are your ideas to fix the Sequel Trilogy?

I was hoping to do this in a separate thread in the fanedit section, but whatever. Basically, I’m cycling through a few hypothetical concepts for a radical sequel edit, all focused on removing Palpatine entirely (and thus returning the sequel trilogy to how it felt in the TFA/TLJ era):

1. TFA and TLJ are mostly the same, but TROS has been edited to have the Sith fleet be created by Kylo, and the duel on the Death Star is the final duel of the film. This is by far the simplest option (and it’s even been done by a couple other editors), but I’m worried it would leave the trilogy without a proper climax.

2. TFA is mostly the same, but Rey meeting Snoke has been cut out of TLJ entirely (meaning Snoke’s still alive by the end of the movie), and TROS has been edited to replace Palpatine with Snoke (using both AI voices and clips from 21CPeasant’s Legend of the Solo Twins edit). This is also pretty simple (especially since most of the work has been done already), but I’m worried Snoke isn’t an interesting enough villain to carry the main conflict of an entire trilogy.

3. TFA is mostly the same, but TLJ and TROS have been cut into one movie featuring the best elements of both (again, heavily inspired by 21CPeasant’s edit), with the upcoming Rey movie being the final installment of the trilogy. This is the one I’m the most passionate about (especially since it sort of mirrors Episode I being a prologue by having Episode IX be an epilogue), but it depends almost entirely on the Rey movie being good enough to fanedit in the first place (unless I’m fine with the sequels being a duology).

It’s only been a year since I did this last, but a lot can change in a year. So, I decided to take the plunge again and come up with yet another personal canon (or at least, what my personal canon would be if I gave a shit about canon):

Tales of the Jedi (the comic book)
The Phantom Menace (ideally a fanedit, but it doesn’t really matter)
Tales of the Jedi (the series, Dooku episodes only)
Attack of the Clones (ideally a fanedit, but it doesn’t really matter)
The Clone Wars (EddieDean’s Refocused edit)
Revenge of the Sith (ideally a fanedit, but it doesn’t really matter)
Solo (ideally a fanedit, but it doesn’t really matter)
Andor (either the original or EddieDean’s movie edit)
Rogue One (ideally a fanedit, but it doesn’t really matter)
A New Hope (either the original cut or Adywan’s Revisited edit)
The Empire Strikes Back (either the original cut or Adywan’s Revisited edit)
Return of the Jedi (the original cut, Revisited hasn’t come out yet)
The Aftermath trilogy
Bloodline
The Sequels (my hypothetical fanedit where Palpatine never comes back)
The Rey movie (hopefully)

I first truly got into Star Wars during the TFA/TLJ era, so that’s what my canon is naturally biased towards. I used to like the Filoniverse stuff, but the increasingly diminishing returns there have turned me sour towards the whole thing (except The Clone Wars, that’s still good).

RogueLeader said:

The dark side will always exist. Evil will always exist. And in times of peace dark forces will eventually rise again. But that doesn’t mean there is no point in fighting against that evil. So in my mind, that is why Rey proclaims herself a Jedi at the end of the film. Calling herself a Jedi is an act of rebellion against this absurd cycle. It’s saying, “I don’t care if I can’t stop the cycle, I’m going to resist it regardless”. She’ll fight for good because it’s worth fighting for, no matter how impermanent peace is. And that not only speaks to the issue of the Sith and the Jedi, but also with the New Republic/First Order.

But regardless, the movie is open ended enough to make the audience wonder if the cycle is broken, or has changed the state of the galaxy for good. Maybe it has, but whether or not evil will rise again doesn’t matter, because Rey and our heroes have accepted the fact that they will face whatever threats may rise, because it’s the right thing to do.

Does any of that make sense?

I think that’s good, as long as we make it absolutely, 100%, unambiguously clear that Palpatine will NOT be coming back. Evil in general always returning to threaten the galaxy is a nice bit of realism, but the EXACT SAME GUY coming back every 30 years to ensure endless OT repeats ad infinitum is downright cynical. It’s possible for Rey to get rid of Palpatine for good without all evil in the galaxy necessarily being destroyed (although I’m not quite sure how you’d convey that with the footage we have).

Eh, I’m not a big fan of putting fan film footage into any fanedit. Granted, Kylo vs Vader does look a lot more professional than SC38 or something like that, but it still has a lot of moments that make it obvious it’s not official material. In an edit like Hal’s, seamlessness is the goal.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Because we currently have the scene before Endor, the only purpose it serves is reminding us that Palps wants Rey dead and that Kylo knows where she’s going. Arguably, having no such indication that he knows where she’s going would make his sudden appearance on the Death Star better. I like how the novelization describes how Rey is convinced at first that he’s a part of the vision she was just experiencing because it makes no sense for him to be there.

I thought Ascendant moved the scene to before Kijimi, to replace the scene where Chewie is revealed to be alive? It doesn’t really serve much of a purpose there either, but still.

I’m sorry, but that “spoiler” is so obviously BS I can’t possibly imagine it being true. It’s genuinely “Luke calls Rey ‘my baby girl’ at the end of TFA” levels of comically fake. I don’t think we need to worry about anything like that (hopefully, anyways 😉).

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 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.

NeverarGreat said:

Jar Jar Bricks said:

But if he was still clinging onto life through the offspring of the Skywalker’s, why would he even bother doing this with a random little girl, as well? She also cannot be called “a Palpatine” in this sequence of events.

Well we don’t know if he was just ‘clinging to life’ before TROS, just that he had returned at some point and was inhabiting a clone body.

My thought process on this is that Palpatine always wanted someone ‘far younger’ to inhabit, such as Anakin. He could have used the Force to create Anakin or not, but regardless, during ROTS he was probably looking to transfer his consciousness to him. Now, if life force transfer comes with visual changes in a person’s appearance, then we could easily see the moment when Palpatine went all-in with this plan - he used Windu’s attack as cover in order to mask the true cause of his transformation, while he transferred some of his power to Anakin. At this point, Anakin does almost a complete 180 and starts acting irredeemably evil. It was only Anakin’s fall on Mustafar that prevented Palpatine from going through with the full essence transfer, and it was probably Palpatine’s life force in Anakin that kept him alive.

Jumping forward to post-ROTJ, Palpatine probably reincarnated in a pristine clone body. Something after this transfer clearly happened to make this clone body deteriorate, and it may have been that he was transferring most of his life force into Rey in order that she could overcome her crises and be quickly drawn into the Dark Side. He probably planned to get her from Snoke during TFA or TLJ, but when Snoke failed he was forced to wait in a deteriorating clone body until Rey could find her way to him on her own.

The question still remains: Did Palpatine create Rey like he may have created Anakin? It could be that both Anakin and Rey had the Force from birth without Palpatine’s direct involvement, and he would only need to transfer some life force into them at the critical moments in order to corrupt them and their descendants. This seems to require the least effort on Palpatine’s part, and if Palpatine was able to survive his death due to his life force being bound within the Skywalkers, he would have been placed into a new clone body and so would have had the life force to begin this process again with Rey.

But why choose Rey? Perhaps among the Force sensitive candidates his cult could find at the time, she was the most powerful. Ben was doubtless heavily protected at this time, so Rey was the next best choice, a girl from nowhere whose parents wouldn’t be missed. He could have transferred his essence to her remotely, in which case her parents kept her from him, or in person, in which case he then sent her to Jakku to await her destiny.

In either case, the deterioration of Palpatine’s body seems to indicate that most of his power has been transferred to Rey by the time of TROS, and so she is essentially being devoured by Palpatine’s spirit. I’d argue that calling Rey a Palpatine here makes sense, and we could even keep it vague enough that she could have been created by Palpatine, it’s just another unknowable possibility.

And herein lies the main problem with the horcrux idea. It’s such a complex, hard-to-explain concept that it would take several minutes to properly explain it in a film format: minutes that we just don’t have. The hangar scene was only intended to convey a reveal as simple as “Palpatine is your granddad”, not lay out some deep saga lore.

If we want a reveal that we can seamlessly slot into a fanedit with almost no issues, then we need to keep it simple: most of the previous ideas in this thread did a pretty good job of this. But as it stands, I think the horcrux thing will be a dead end if we actually try to work it into the movie.

Jar Jar Bricks said:

Starkiller, I don’t think that’s the difference at this point. The difference is between Rey being conceived as somebody important all along and her being born as nothing but later ascending to greater heights. I personally believe the latter is incongruous with canon due to the nature of Force-sensitivity at birth and how powerful Rey needs to be in the end.

Wait, that’s the argument? Then in that case, I agree with Nev almost completely. The only two things I didn’t like from his idea were Rey not having Force sensitivity until TFA and Rey’s parents being good people, both of which I fixed in my draft.

But I don’t know if this debate’s even relevant anyways, because we’ve already moved on to a new idea. 😉 Geez, it’s like the TFA crawl all over again.

It feels like the main impasse we’ve reached here is a debate over what the “most important part” of the TLJ reveal is: Rey being a nobody, or her parents being horrible people. I personally think the “bad parents” angle is the most important one to push, but I can see the argument for Rey having no blood connection to Palpatine as well.

So here’s an idea: what if we don’t have to choose? I think it’s perfectly possible to use most of Nev’s “Palpatine orchestrated Rey’s abandonment” angle, while still having Rey’s parents abandon her for entirely selfish reasons. Here’s a mockup of what I’m thinking:

“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.”
“I’ve never lied to you. Your parents were no one. Mere fools, easily influenced by Palpatine.”
“Don’t!”
“He promised them wealth beyond imagining, if they just abandoned you…”
“I don’t want this!”
“And they readily accepted.”
“No!”
“You remember, don’t you? How he took them.”
(Rey sees the vision of Ochi’s ship leaving)
“Come back! Nooo!”
“Your abandonment… it was all part of his plan.”
“Stop talking.”
“Rey… don’t you want to know why?”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Palpatine saw your future, Rey. So did I. A girl from nowhere, awakening to power. But your parents would get in the way. So he ensured you’d never see them again.”
(Rey sees her parents die)
“No!”
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

…

“Why did the Emperor come for me?”

“Because he saw what you would become. He saw the power latent within you. So he chose you… to be his rightful heir.”

“You’re a Palpatine. Like my family, you are bound to him by a power greater than blood, a power like life itself. You can feel it… for it connects us as well. But we can destroy him, and bring a new order to the galaxy… together.”

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

“I do.”

NeverarGreat said:

I agree that Palpatine ‘pouring his power into Rey’ isn’t in Palpatine’s character, and is weird for the reasons you’ve enumerated here. So I’ve given it some more thought, and maybe we can use the whole ‘awakening’ angle from TFA to explain Rey’s power.

There is no hint of Rey’s power in the Force from an early age, so it could be assumed that she was chosen by the Force only when she truly needed it. Before this, she was just like any other person. Except that someone like Palpatine may have known that the Force was going to choose her and bestow in her great power, so if he knew this he would want to get to her first, and plant the seed of darkness in her. For this concept, she would need to stay on Jakku because that’s the only way she would be involved in the story and that’s how the Force eventually chooses her, so that means that Palpatine would want to keep her there on the planet until her awakening.

“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.”
“I’ve never lied to you. Your parents were no one. Junk traders from the outer rim.”
“Don’t!”
“They abandoned you for a reason. Don’t you know why?”
“I don’t want this!”
“It was Palpatine’s doing.”
“No!”
“He kept you on that planet.”
(Rey sees the vision of her parents and her abandonment.)
“My Love…be brave.”
“You’ll be safe here…I promise.”
“Come back! Nooo!”
“They were under duress. Forced to do the Emperor’s will.”
“Stop talking.”
“Rey…I know what happened to them.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Palpatine saw your future, Rey. So did I. A girl from nowhere, awakening to power. But you were there on Jakku because Palpatine wanted you there. And your parents played their part.”
(Rey sees her parents die.)
“She’s on Jakku; she’s gone.”
“No!”
“So that’s where you are.”
“You know why the Emperor always wanted you. I’ll come tell you.”

But the problem with that is, once again, it ruins the point of the TLJ reveal by making her parents noble martyrs, rather than “filthy junk traders who sold you for drinking money”. Sure, Rey is more of a literal “nobody” now, but at what cost?

Personally, I still think the Plagueis life-creation route is the best one to go down. It connects Rey to Palpatine in a way that doesn’t feel contrived, while at the same time completely preserving everything said in the TLJ reveal. If you don’t like the idea of Palpatine creating Anakin, you can even have Rey be a sort of “dark Chosen One”: a Sith counterpart to Anakin, created by Palpatine as his personal revenge for Vader’s betrayal.

I agree that this new version is the absolute best so far: it gives Rey an inextricable connection to Palpatine while also completely avoiding any contradictions with TLJ (something I didn’t even think was possible). There are a few minor issues I have with it, though, so here’s a revised take:

“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 expecting a child they never wanted.”
“Don’t!”
“You were such a miracle, Rey… born of a virgin…”
“I don’t want this!”
“…just like Vader.”
“No!”
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you? Your destiny.”
(Rey sees the vision of herself on the Sith throne)
“Luke saw the same fate in me. But you and I don’t want it.”
“Stop talking.”
“Why? I know you better than anyone else.”
(Cutaway to heroes capture)
“Palpatine knew your true potential… your power. The first time we fought, in the forest, the darkness inside of you awakened. You revealed yourself to the Emperor that day… just as he intended.”
(Visions of Rey beating Kylo on Starkiller, falling into the dark cave, etc.)
“No!”
(The mask of Vader falls to the ground)
“So that’s where you are.”
“Before you joined the Jedi, Palpatine wanted you alive. I’ll come tell you why.”
“Rey… I know the rest of our story.”
“Tell me.”
"The Emperor manipulated the Force itself into creating life. First my grandfather, and then you. You’re his chosen heir… a rightful Palpatine.”
"The Emperor wants us to fight each other, so his strongest heir can rule. But he doesn’t realize the strength of our connection, Rey… a bond more powerful than life itself. We’ll end him and the Sith, and create a new order, together…”

EddieDean said:

In fact, I think this can be simplified further, with her parents not needing to be Sith cultists.

Well, I think the whole reason why they would get parents to raise Palpatine’s clones in the first place is to train them in the ways of the Sith. Because of that, the parents would need to be Sith cultists. Kidnapping random junk traders to raise the greatest hope of the Sith empire would be a disaster waiting to happen. 😉

RogueLeader said:

I think if we are trying to find the most agreeable version of Rey Nobody for Ascendant, making Rey a clone of Palpatine doesn’t make sense. To me, Clone Rey should replace the standard Rey Palpatine, not be the version of Rey Nobody. Because Clone Rey still defeats the idea and theme of Rey Nobody. Imo, in a Rey Nobody edit, Rey should have zero previous connection to Palpatine or anyone else.

But I think something like Rey Clone or Rey Anti-Chosen One (Sith’ari) could replace a straight up “You’re Palpatine biological granddaughter”. Because you end up with the same point (the Skywalkers vs Palpatines if you’re into that) but avoid the whole idea of “Palpatine Fucks”.

I’m pretty sure that’s the idea: the Rey Nobody version will stay the same, and this idea will just be “Rey Palpatine, but better”.

Personally, I really like this idea, but there’s one problem I have with it: why did Rey’s parents have to adopt the cloned daughter of Palpatine, of all people? Couldn’t they just go to the Coruscant Adoption Center and find a child that the Sith wouldn’t literally execute them for taking? But, as already mentioned, Rey being in-vitro fertilized within her mother’s womb is just weird.

So, my solution is for Rey’s parents to be essentially glorified babysitters: assigned by the Sith cult to raise Rey in the ways of darkness, they ended up rebelling, and liberated Rey from Palpatine’s control.

Here’s a mock-up of how that idea would work within the context of the scene, along with a few minor changes to other aspects intended to make the scene sound more natural:

“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. I know the darkness that lives in you, Rey…”

“You’re lying.”

“You were right… your parents were no one. They searched for purpose, and it led them to the Sith.”

“Don’t!”

“They were forced to raise you, by the cultists on Exegol…”

“I don’t want this!”

“But they grew to love you.”

“No!”

“Remember them! Remember how they saved you!”

(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!”

“They paid for your protection… in more than one way.”

“Stop talking.”

“Rey… I learned what happened to them.”

(Cutaway to heroes capture)

“Your parents pursued Luke’s protection, searching the Jakku desert for his allies… but Palpatine’s assassins tracked them down. Whether brave or foolish, they made a final stand.”

(Rey sees her parents get killed.)

“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 you were just a prototype… one that became unnecessary after his true return. Rey, you’re a clone of the Emperor. You… are a Palpatine.”

“The only reason for your creation was to be one of his vessels. But what Palpatine doesn’t know is that we’ve become a Dyad in the Force, Rey… two that are one. Together we can end him and the Sith, and take his power to forge something new…”

(Removes his helmet)

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

“I do.”

Woke Palpatine