SPECULATION The Official Rey's Parents in Ep. IX Thread

Did you ever try to kill yourself? I don't think it's that easy, especially if you are Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master. He was torn apart.

 

Clearly you have never seen the prequels. You really think all those Jedi had powerful bloodlines?

 

True... Skywalkers be whiny AF

 

I think you may have misunderstood my post. I mean saying that do people really want a unredeemed Kylo. The post I was responding seemed to think Kylo was unredeemable.

 

Oh sorry about that, it's not your quote to which I was responding there. I must've still had your quote tag in my clipboard when I pasted it to close up that quote. It actually belonged to Jedi73-84(sp?).

 

No problem man. It’s all good

 

In TLJ I think it was made clear that Luke had lost all hope of saving Kylo, not only because he had failed him as a teacher and as a relative, but also, he admits, because He “was no match for the dark rising” in his nephew.

With Vader Luke felt able to combat evil. He also felt light in him, a light he, on the other hand, did not sense in kylo during training or during that ill fated mind reading of his in the hut.

I think Luke very much meant to die in exile. In TLJ we find a hero who has given up. This is not uncommon as we grow older... People with age tend to lose their mojo, even Jedi masters and heroes like Luke. Rey needed to come along to shake him and make him face his demons.

 

I kind of want Rey to be Luke’s kid just to see TLJ lovers get outraged on twitter.

I don’t care who Rey’s parents are. Like if they established in TFA that she was Kira Rey, as originally planned, and they gave her small backstory where it is established she is not related anyone we know. Everyone would be on board. But they made it such a big mystery and TLJ baited fans then went “eh never mind.”

It’s not clear how Rey was able to wield a lightsaber so quickly. Then in the TLj novel, she apparently downloaded it? How is that possible? Is this the Matrix where you just upload a file onto your mind to learn your skills?

If they made her a Skywalker people would have been fine with it. It’s all about how you pull it off. There are several ways you could have made ReySky possible without being hokey.

Setting Rey’s parents up nobody via Vader twist is dramatically unsatisfying. Had Luke trained and bonded with Rey, Luke could have been the one to have revealed Rey’s parents or helped her through the trauma. Luke uses that rock for her to sit on where she remembers the ship flying away, it’s her father’s ship and he was a merchant who sold her off. That’s the thing that keeps her from reaching her full potential. Luke reveals it and helps her through it. They bond and Luke has a new hope that he has trained.

See the difference? This one provides emotion and redeems Luke. His death would have more impact. We have a well loved character that trains the new Jedi leader and sacrifice himself before he passes on.

No we care about Rey more. We want to know how is Rey going to survive without Luke because they bonded so much?

The other thing is people acting like Rey being unrelated to anybody in the previous films is an accomplishment is weird.
We already knew that there were other powerful force users beyond Skywalker. Thousands of years worth of Jedi mind you. Hell, Lucas even said that himself. The whole point of the Skywalker saga was an allegory for family drama, we can all relate to that.

 

I've been thinking about the "Kylo was lying" possibility and it keeps seeming more likely.

Here's the thing.

Yes, yes, Rey is the one who says "they were nobody." But why does she say this?

The dark side cave shows her nothing when she asks to see her parents. She gets this idea from the dark side cave.

In the plot of TLJ, this cave is treated as a dark, ominous place. Her venturing in there feels wrong. But nothing really bad results from it--unless the cave lied to her about her parents.

Which is why, when Kylo tries to pull her to the dark side, she says "they were nobody."

The main evidence to the contrary, in my mind, is that the "her parents were nobodies" thing jives so well with the overall message of the movie.

 

Kylo isn't that great of a strategist. He acts based on his current emotional state. He isn't Palpatine, he's Anakin. Besides, what benefits would one-upping TLJ's non-twist give? Sure, it would be unexpected, I guess. Congratulations, you've surprised the audience, but what else did you achieve? You've made Kylo's portrayal in one scene in TLJ inconsistent with the rest of TLJ and TFA. You've also completely undermined the whole message of The Last Jedi about there being no need for some special lineage to be meaningful. That's not really something wise to do while writing a sequel to a film, is it?

 

It doesn't matter if Kylo lied or not. What matters is that Rey has to forget her parents to grow as a character. Parents doesn't make people great, your own actions do.

In my opinion Rey's parents shouldn't even be mentioned anymore in IX. But I know JJ...

 

Mmmm I don’t think it has to be like that necessarily... I don’t expect Rey to be the daughter of Luke or Han or a force celebrity, but these drunken junk traders are part of the story now and could easily become an element to bring Rey’s story forward... Rey could and probably will grow without her parents, but she could still honour or try to understand where she came from and what brought her parents to become these drunken junk traders...That was for me the real message of TLJ. We do not have to kill the past, completely.

 

Here is the way I see it: E7 and E8 are disjointed, especially with regard to the matter of Rey's lineage. Abrams wrote/directed E7, Johnson wrote/directed E8. Abrams is the one coming back for E9.

It makes more sense that Abrams is going to remain true to his own vision than Johnson's. As such, I expect E9 to be more consistent with E7. The only question is how important, if at all, this issue is to Abrams. He may like the direction Johnson went... who knows.....

 

JJ said, he and Rian had the same idea of Rey's origin => hence her being a nobody. So, I don't think JJ will take that in a different direction and he also shouldn't do it. JJ has to find a way to make everything consistent or TLJ will be even more hated by some people.

 

My question is, what do we mean by “nobody” exactly?

1. Rey’s parents are not known force users.

2. They are not known characters in the saga.

3. Rey’s parents, no matter who they are, are completely irrelevant to the story.

4. Rey’s parents are not known characters or force users in the saga but may have a role in the story, even postumously.

This may have been discussed before, and if so, apologies for not reading the whole thread!

 

Thanks for the info. Picking up on this idea of JJ and Rian sharing the same basic idea for Rey's origin ("nobody"), let me propose we re-analyse Maz and Rey's key dialog about this from TFA.

Revisiting these lines now after TLJ, it really seems clear. Basically, "Whomever you are waiting for on Jakku" (her family - Rey's words before), "they're never coming back" (meaning, her family will not come back for her). And then Maz says, "but, there's someone who still could", meaning, some other that is not part of her family (to Maz and Rey's knowledge at least). So, Luke is not related to Rey.

Then, line 5 and 6 are about passing to Rey the notion that she has a special connection with the force, and that she should embrace it. So, I guess we can now assume the crystal inside was talking with Rey or something?

The only part I think they may have gone a bit overboard was Line 1, "That lightsaber was Luke's, and his father's before him and now it calls to you!". This screams lineage, that Rey should be related to Luke and Anakin somehow. Then the rest is said in the light of this first line already being said first, which can easily distort things for people. Then, anything was possible, and we choose to believe what we wanted or wished.

But looking back on these lines, it seems obvious (now) that Luke was not part of Rey's family, at least to as far as these two ladies knowledge went. It's incredible the tricks our minds creates that does not allow us to see the truth. Even Daisy said in an interview that she thought it was pretty clear who her parents were (or were not I'd add) in TFA.


So, I guess we're discussing Rey's parents for IX just to amuse ourselves at this point, right? Personally, I came to terms with it and accepted it, that Rey is not related to the Skywalkers in any way shape or form. I guess it makes sense now, seeing they want to end the Skywalkers saga with IX, so if Rey is going forward for the next SW adventures, being a Skywalker (either from Leia or Luke's side) doesn't seem to fit with that vision. My prefered theory was Rey Solo, by the way.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 30, 2018, Original Post Date: Sep 30, 2018 ---

Rey said it herself. "They were nobody.". So, we can wonder and analyse why she said that. Basically, they were what Kylo said and she did not denied, I guess.

As for who exactly they were (e.g. force users, will they play a role? if they are relevant to the story going forward or not), I guess no one outside the IX filiming circle knows.

For me, "nobody" means not related to any known character of relevance in the SW universe. That and what Rey and Kylo think "nobody" may mean, which is "no one special", I guess. So, I suppose this was the big reveal of this trilogy, the "I am your father moment". This time around was: "Your father is no one special".

We were all (or perhaps, most of us) "fooled" into thinking she was "special", or relevant in the way she was related with the saga's heroes (and I think line 1 of my post above was the main reason for thar). Personally, I was ok with the reveal and even liked the way it went. I totally get why others did not liked it though.

 

For me nobody means that they are unkown characters to us and the universe. We haven't seen or heard about them before. Maybe the term "random" is much more fitting than "nobody".
Rey's parents should only matter to Rey to let her grow as character. In TFA and TLJ her parents had relevance for her character journey. She had to learn to let got and become her own person. So, IMO Rey's parents fulfilled their part in the story and they aren't needed anymore for Rey's character. Unless you want her to hate Kylo or Luke. Then you can reveal that they are responsible for their deaths.

--- Double Post Merged, Sep 30, 2018, Original Post Date: Sep 30, 2018 ---

I think Maz either meant Luke or Ben. Personally I hope she meant Ben. For me the ST is about becoming family and this is was Maz is implying here. Her biological family lies in the past, she has to go forward and find a new family in Finn, Poe and maybe even Ben.

 

Good point. We cannot exclude Ben being the one coming for her from Maz dialog, or someone else other than Luke. Rey said Luke, but Maz did not confirm. It is implied it is Luke that may come for her (now we know he wouldn't), but the way the lines were crafted it can be anything.

Good point also on Rey's biological family lying in the past and that she needs to go forward and find a new one. Poe, Finn, Ben, place your bets Ahh, Rian even made that somewhat awkward re-introduction between Rey and Poe, to give us ideas. And then Rey looks at Finn with Rose. So, with the past biological family mystery resolved, we're now supposed to choose and speculate who she will make a new family with now?

 

The thought that occurred to me recently was this;Luke wanted to end the the Jedi so the Force passed it on to someone else to begin it again and that was Rey.

Also in TLJ Rey says and I'm paraphrasing"You abandoned the force"

The Force was always calling to Rey it wasn't just the lightsaber. She confesses to Luke there was always something there.

So in my mind the Force merely had a back up plan. If J.J. does it right and I already don't have a problem with Rey random then in teh end it won't matter who they were.

 

Back in the day in the episode XII Rey’s parents thread, myself and a number of others made this exact argument in stating why we felt like Rey was a random. During the run up to TFA my thoughts on Rey’s parents was in flux. By the time my first viewing ended, I was in the random camp and these lines are part of the reason. Therefore, I’m not surprised that is how it it turned out.

I don’t think JJ is going to retcon Rey’s parentage in IX. There is a lot that needs to be wrapped up in IX and spending valuable time going back to address this issue would just take away from everything else.