SPECULATION Is Luke Rey's Father? - The Evidence For and Against

George Lucas: Han and Leia settle down. (2005)
GL: Luke doesn't get married. (2008)
GL: My Saga was about the father, the children, and the grandchildren. (2015)
GL: Tell me about Darth Vader's grandchildren, Abrams. (2015)
GL: I'm curious about Darth Vader's grandchildren. (2015)

GL: For what became Crystal Skull, originally Indiana Jones had a daughter he didn't know about. (2008)

After George Lucas saw The Force Awakens:


LA Times: George Lucas, left, and J.J. Abrams represented "Star Wars" past and present at the premiere of "The Force Awakens" on Monday in Hollywood.
Images: Daisy Ridley and George Lucas (1) (2)

Kathleen Kennedy: “[George Lucas] really liked [The Force Awakens].” (December 4, 2015)
George Lucas: "I think the fans are going to love it. It’s very much the kind of movie they’ve been looking for." (December 7, 2015)
Pablo Hidalgo: "Well, [George Lucas] watched it. And liked it. So there’s that." (May 10, 2016) "He was at the premiere. He gave it his blessing." (May 10, 2016) "The [Charlie Rose] interview was done before he saw it. I was there when he saw it. The audience gave him a standing ovation. Great stuff." (May 10, 2016)

 

i don't disagree with anything your saying.

yes i do think that Rey is Luke's daughter, but Ben is shaping up to be the defining character in this trilogy thus far.. and i strongly believe that Luke's attention will be firmly on reuniting his nephew with Leia (preferably without him sticking a light saber through her chest).

i'm gonna mention emotional attachments again here... so if he does all he can to get Ben back to his mother is that true Jedi behavior?
are we to assume that he will be training Rey whilst trying to redeem his nephew? it doesn't sound like something Yoda would advise.

if there was still a Jedi council... would they be sending an apprentice to save his father? would they send an uncle to save his nephew?
definitely not.

Yoda may have trained him, and he wears a robe and carries a light saber.. but he most definitely does not walk the path of a traditional jedi knight.
i think he embraces family, and my gut instinct is that he would have started his own family.

Rey: Why did he leave?
Han Solo: He was training a new generation of Jedi. One boy, an apprentice, turned against him, destroyed it all.

very clever wording there... 'destroyed it all'. if he had simply killed all the apprentices then i'm sure he would have said 'killed them all', but the wording he uses could very well mean that his son destroyed an awful lot more than just luke's apprentices ??

i don't want this to sound like i'm pushing my thoughts on anyone here though. I haven't really got a clue.

 

I don't think it is out of an emotional attachment that Luke will have to bring back Ben. In fact the oposite. I think Luke represents what is to be a jedi-knight, which is to be compassionate, selfless and wise. Anakin was Obi-Wan's apprentice, and we know that Obi-Wan felt responsible for Anakin's fall ("I failed you Anakin, I failed you.") and tried to redeem himself with helping out his apprentice's son, Luke, but Obi-Wan still failed Anakin as he didn't believe that Vader could be saved while Luke did. I hope that Luke will not repeat Obi-Wan's mistake and brings back Ben Solo who is not only his nephew, but also his former apprentice.

I agree with you, while Rey is the hero of the ST, the other main character and driving force of this trilogy is Ben Solo, but I don't think Rey is Luke's daughter. I simply don't think that would be the most satisfying story to tie up all the movies. To me a better story will be if Rey is a Kenobi. In this way Anakin's lightsaber who Ben Kenobi passed on to Luke and in effect began Luke's apprenticeship as a jedi, will now be the link connecting Rey with Luke as her teacher in the Force. Imagine the curious connection when it is revealed that Rey is a Kenobi and a descendant of a jedi who was Anakin and Luke's master and Ben Solo's namesake. If Rey is a Kenobi she may also be able to redeem her grandfather in helping to bring back the young Skywalker to the light. Thus not only Anakin/Vader's arc will be complete but also Obi-Wan's. What happened with Anakin and Vader is very much connected with Kenobi. We see Vader's shadow still influencing what is happening now - Leia's parentage reveal (Bloodline) and (speculatively) Ben's fall and Kylo's current path of finishing what grandfather started (whatever what Kylo thinks it is)...

I think that Anakin's lightsaber is a very clever McGuffin not only for TFA, but actually something that unites all the episodes - it unites events from the end of ROTS (Obi-Wan taking the saber and going into hiding/exile), ANH (Obi-Wan giving Luke the saber and joining in the events and in effect with this act ending his exile), and now in TFA (Rey taking the lightsaber to Luke to ask him to come back out of his hiding/exile and become her teacher).

The circle will be complete. Another reason I think Rey should be a descendant of Kenobi is that in the previous two trilogies the role of Obi-Wan was crucial. For the sake of the old "it's poetry, it rhymes" it makes sense that this trilogy also has Kenobi.

The way things look to me at present, the most satisfying way this trilogy could go is the grandchildren of Anakin Skywalker (Ben/Kylo) and Obi-Wan Kenobi (Rey) working as a team managing to fix things and bringing balance to the Force. That's how I interpret Colin Trevorow's comments about deeply satisfying and him seeing the ST as not only 3 movies but a direct and satisfying continuation of all movies.

But as you said, I don't want to be "pushing my thoughts on anyone here". I also don't know what is the plan of TPTB. At this point we can only just speculate...

 

This is a good idea DP, it would probably be more helpful. And might even help me change my mind!

Magnar, you are the collector of all quotes - can you make a new thread with all the quotes, FAQ's, etc... on these things? And others can chime in with book knowledge, etc... if needed?

It probably would help the discussion to be more informed if people had all of the info.

Thanks to both!

I'm open to others ideas and possibilities here...if I have come off as otherwise, I apologize. I just don't like being treated dismissively or rudely for an opinion...

BTW - every post refuted the Leia dream in Life Debt as being about Padme....why is that?

Her Luke dream was about Luke. (he was lost among the stars searching for something.)
Her Han dream was about Han. (he dies in the snow)
Her Chewie dream was about Chewie. (he is in a cage)

Nowhere else in her dream is anybody else a "stand in" for another character. It's a literal dream/vision of THAT particular character.

And in her case, she saw her self on a table with a child, no...children! And dying.

It's similar to Padme yes, but saying that "well, that part of the dream was about Padme and not her, she can't have 2 kids" is short-sighted, IMO and out of context...again - the rest of the paragraph of her dream is literal and direct to each person.

Perhaps the writers knew a little something we didn't...

Peace and chicken grease.

 

That quote from GL needs to be read in the right perspective, the original article he mentions that he just doesn't have a story after the OT which means there's zero chance that Luke gets married or that the Emperor get's cloned (which is mentioned in the same sentence), there's zero chance for anything (even Han and Leia having kids) because he has no story.

 

@Jedihopper, a few posts up I did suggest how Han in the snow could be a stand in for Ben/Kylo in the snow, so there is that...

 

Yeah, seems Kylo is a stand in for Han and Padme is a stand in for Leia. Also, I'm not sure how much Leia knows about how her mother died. Either way, there have been several posts that have discussed that vision in detail.

As far as Bloodline is concerned and I'm sure it's same with the other books... the authors are on a need to know basis. So they're not given information about future movies unless it directly pertains to their story. They stay in their lanes. It's seems unlikely Rey's parents would have been one of the things the Life Debt author would know about.

 

Well in ROTJ when Luke asks what/if Leia remembers her mother she said she remembers very little - that she was very beautiful but very sad.
Which was shown in ROTS thus:

O look, a table and giving birth to children and then dying.

I also think so. Even John Williams says he doesn't know (yet) which is frankly quite surprising to me in his case at least...but for authors of tie in books I abslotutely think they are not told many key things to preserve the plot twists...

 

I don't really worry to have a crap outcome as we forgot our child, we thought she was dead or any amateur theory we read everywhere. Just watched the finale of Rebels and they turned something everyone expected ( Ahsoka Vs Vader ) into something noone expected and an awesome scene.

So I do trust the storygroup to make a real cool story about this.

 

Because the mother being Leia doesn't fit with the what we know within the context of everything that had come before it both inside the Star Wars universe and outside of it. Also, if we take the birth as something literal and referring to Leia, our favorite princess-turned-general having twins at some unknown time, and then proceeding to die (and apparently come back to life afterwards). This couldn't be Ben and Rey because they aren't twins (although the idea of Rey having a twin is a pretty cool one).
Also, quick question @Jedihopper; when you first read the vision, did your mind immediately jump to the woman giving birth being Leia herself?

Or maybe, going off the idea it's about things that could have been, maybe it's a microscopic shout out to Jacen and Jaina...

I think Pablo said in a quote once that her adoption wasn't a secret, so they could discuss things about her mother. Or Padme simply misread the context and was talking about her adoptive mother since I don't think Luke revealed their shared parentage until after the question. The Leia comics also showed her having a short...vision thingy of Padme when looking at her mural.

 

Umm...yes. Of course I did.

Why wouldn't you? She literally says in her dream that she is having children.

She says Luke is lost among the starts looking for something, and she means Luke. Not somebody else.
She says Han dies on a snow planet, and she means Han. Not somebody else.
She says Chewie is in a cage, and she means Chewie. Not somebody else.

Then the bit about her having a child. No wait, 2 children! And dying.

After that, she says Obi-wan deactivating the tractor beam, and the OT trio running around on the Death Star. She doesn't say any of them are supposed to be somebody else.

In context of the dream, and in the literary function of the paragraph - it's very out of place for that portion to actually mean Padme. And it's never stated it is.

It's stated it's her. Having a child. Realizing she actually has two kids. And then dying. That's exactly what's stated...

The only reason people are saying "well, that has to be Padme!" (again, which is never said in the book, or about any other parts of the dream)...is because they don't like the idea of her possibly having a 2nd child out there.

All the rest of the dream is literally about the characters she saw. None of them are representing other people.

Just my take on it.

(you know, to read it literal and take it for what it says. )

 

Star Wars ‏@starwars
A legendary Jedi passes the torch to the next generation.

 

ok, so, let's say you're right, let's say the child birth thing is definitely about Leia.

with that established, how does it all fit in? was it Ben Solo that hid her away on Jakku? or did Leia do it and forget in her old age? does her having dementia cause her to have weird Force dreams?

jokes aside! i'm just curious as to how the rest of the pieces would fall into place if you turn out to be right about the dream.

 

Characters are captured and taken prisoner all the time in Star Wars.

Sometimes they're even thought dead even though they are not. Leia said Lor San Tekka was supposed to be dead in Marvel's Poe Dameron #1. But he wasn't yet. (And the LEGO DLC Lor San Tekka/Jakku chapter is titled "LOR SAN TEKKA'S RETURN": Inspired by canon?)

 

Thanks for answering!
I didn't take it that way because of the two children aspect and the fact that, like I've mentioned before, the vision seems to be going back in time.

So, firstly, it's not just two children. It's her having two children AT ONCE. So unless Ben has some secret twin out there that nobody seems to mention or think about, that CAN'T be Ben. By that logic, since Leia and Rey HAD NEVER MET before their meeting in TFA, it's most likely NOT LEIA. And since Leia's still alive...

What I'm trying to say is that this most likely points to Padme and that this shouldn't be used for evidence that Leia and Rey are mother and daughter (not that they can't be - although I lean closer to the "Luke is Rey's parent" theories than Leia if there is a Skywalker heritage - but that this isn't the evidence you're looking for).

 

It's an detailed depiction of an iconic scene from a Star Wars movie! Nothing about it fits what we know about Leia, Ben, or Rey. It's insulting to suggest our opinions (which are nearly unanimous about this vision) are simply because we "don't like the possibility." Believe what you want about the vision, but don't cast aspersions to us for pointing out the obvious story parallels.

 

Rey dreamed of an ocean and an Island, the light saber called to her, and Obi Wan spoke to her as the vision ends. Her connection to Luke is not just random whatever that outcome may be.

 

Speaking of dreams for a moment...

Here's a weird fact I just learned about recently.

There's two different versions of the Junior novelization of TFA. The digital version and the print edition. They are different.

Here is something else I have not been able to personally verify but have seen a person talk about. I won't be able to verify it until I visit Books-A-Million or Barnes & Nobles and look at the print edition. Or someone else could do it for us.

Who is the most famous dropper of the word 'sweetheart' in Star Wars?


Marvel's Han Solo #1

Spoiler: Bloodline

Pablo Hidalgo's claims and replies about the Force vision
Pablo Hidalgo's claims and replies about the books

 

A dream/Force vision can be interpreted in many ways. Visions can be fluid and are not literal. As I already posted, Han in the snow could very well be a vision of the future and stand in for Ben/Kylo in the snow. Leia seeing herself on the table giving birth to one, no, two children and dying is to me obviously a literal call back to her mother Padme as I already pointed out.

As to one seeing oneself instead of someone else in visions. Well, here as a reminder is canonical evidence from Luke's Force vision on Dagobah. So there is that.

 

It was foreshadowing that Luke and Vader were father and son which was revealed later on in the same script.