SPECULATION Do Rey's Parents Matter?

The point for me wasn't blood line obsession for fictional characters.
For me there is no obsession with Who is Rey related to?

Instead it's kind of an audience self insert into a protagonist. Who am I? Who am I related to?

Also is it okay to commit patricide? Apparently according to a cool character from Star Wars it is as long as the father figure didn't love him enough.

 

Yeah, imagine what the Saga would have been like if Vader didn't say "no, I am your father." That little line opened the door to all this. I imagine that going into 5 if you told people that Vader was gonna be Luke's father, I think they would all think you are crazy.

 

VADER: "Luke, I am your..."
*unsurprised and expectant* LUKE: "Father?"
*removes helmet* LEIA: "Sister. SURPRISE!!!"
LUKE: *still jumps*

 

indeed.

 

That's really interesting and insightful.

I gotta say I've felt this way for a while but couldn't find a way to put words to it. But yeah, too much backstory is probably half of the issues at least with fan reaction (especially negative reaction) to the ST. Some fans want fan service, others, want something completely new. Some fans want everything to connect, while others only want things to connect in certain ways (ST to OT, while others is ST to both PT and ST). I think a lot of fans have their head canon, some are happy because the story more or less fit their head canon (if it wouldn't have, maybe they'd be haters too now), while others are happy they were surprised, or had less expectations. I think it goes beyond head canon though, as you said, some fans are "hungry for elements to repeat."

I guess the longer you take a story, especially with the same characters (or even bloodline) the further you go the more likely you wind up losing some fans, either by jumping the shark, or just not being able to get as large of portions of the fan base to suspend their disbelief. Spin off and new sagas might be the way to go in the future.

 

There were no red herrings in TFA the question of "who is Rey" was a huge question. What we have learned is that who she is unrelated to her position in a family. We have learned that her importance will be her actions what she has done and what she can do.

 

At this point Rey’s parents don’t matter. What mattered was that Rey was able to finally accept that they were nobodies and they didn’t matter. What matters is that she realized that sh is her own person in this galaxy and that her future depends on what she does going forward and not what happened in the past.

 

Rey's parents being no one matters.

1- It gives her ownership of her place in the story. She isn't special because of her DNA. She is just special. Anyone can have a galaxy changing destiny. It matters that no secondary factors define her place in the galaxy.

2- It provides yet another opposite parallel to Kylo Ren. He comes from the most famous Force family of all time. Rey doesn't.

 

No. They don't. Move along.

 

It depends complete on the screenwriter. It is up to him/her whether the parents of a fictional character matter or not. Before ESB Luke's parents didn't matter at all. After ESB his father became significantly important. Same happened to Luke's mother when the Prequels were released. If JJ decides that Rey's parents are important to the story then they are. If he stays with Rian's vision then they aren't. It's easy as that.

 

One of my biggest issues in TLJ is that the revelation of Rey's parents being nobodies doesn't matter at all. She had already put the search for her parents on hold at the end of TFA. The revelation of who her parents truly were didn't change anything. I would have preferred a storyline where she abandons the resistance to continue the search for her family. When she finds out that her parents were nobodies and didn't care for her at all she realizes that home is where your heart is and returns to the resistance and her friends who truly care for her which makes them her real family. The way her parents are revealed in TLJ doesn't have any impact on the audience because it doesn't change Rey's course of action in any way.

 

It's hugely important what happens - the idea is that she is in denial. It's not about her having memory loss or just suddenly finding out. She "knows" it all along, but as we see in TFA, she refuses to confront the truth.

In TFA it was about accepting that they weren't coming back. That's what got her off Jakku and into the adventure. In TLJ, her story has changed. She has become a part of something huge and she wants to understand her place in it - why is the Force so powerful in her and what is her destiny? She seeks answers to this from Luke but he doesn't give her what she needs. So she looks to the Dark Side and from there she gets drawn to Ben Solo. Because of this, she makes the mistake of thinking she can turn Ben and save the Resistance. As with Luke in TESB, it turns out ok in the end, but it nearly went badly wrong. But regardless of that, she has learned the lesson now.

She's gone from waiting for her parents - accepting they're gone - discovering her power - trying to understand her place - accepting she has to find her own place and "self"...

In IX she will find herself in the same position as Luke. She's a Jedi now. She knows what she has to do. But something will have to be thrown at her to get to, at some stage, consider joining the Dark Side. My view is that this might once again link back to her parents. Or it might only be based on the danger her friends find themselves in. We'll see. But the reveal in TLJ was perfectly in keeping with her character and journey. It made perfect sense and provided a different story so not to rehash Luke's hero journey.

 

i agree that the story is set to go in a different direction to that of Luke, but there was no reveal in TLJ about her parents.

sure Ben got her to say that she's nobody... ironic that she actually says "they were nobody", the very word that SW fans have been using in debates for 2 years.

he then says:-
"They were filthy junk traders...
who sold you off for drinking money.
They're dead...
in a poverished grave
in the Jakku desert.
You have no place in this story.
You come from nothing
you're nothing.
But not to me.
Join me.
Please."

he was literally trying to make her feel as crap about her past and who she is, as Ben does about his past and himself. cold and brutal manipulation pure and simple.

i'm not saying that there is still going to be a big Skywalker/Kenobi/Palpatine etc reveal, but what we heard is not the truth.. certainly not the whole truth. Rey may move forward from what she has learned and experienced so far, but there is more to her past and i'm sure it will be a bit part of ep9.