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

I'm sorry but you are not remembering the scene correctly and are simply adding in your own speculation on top of it.

Furthermore, the concept art book you referred to (like the film) makes no mention of her parents and there is only one figure seen standing with her and Unkar just as we saw in the film. If anything I would say it's incredibly evident that unless her parents were just terrible people, it simply wasn't her parents who left her there at all.

I would say it's fairly logical to deduce that Luke didn't simply drop out of contact with everyone he knew and go into hiding simply because Ben turned against him and killed his padawans, but rather because he thought his wife and daughter were lost and he felt he felt he was literally making the same mistakes all over again as his father. Certainly it would have to be much more personal for him to seemingly turn his back on everyone and allow evil to take root again, thus Rey's arrival on Ach-to is Luke's redemption it's the one event that could bring him back to the fold and make everything right, as we're alluded to in the very first line of dialogue in the film.

Not sure why you would think this raises all sorts of new questions, if anything it answers all our questions about what transpired before TFA much more concisely and provides a much better reason for Rey being the key to everything in TFA beyond her simply being a person who is strong in the force who just happened to be at the right place at the right time.

The alternative requires much more convoluted explanations and basically makes all the important questions we have about how we got to TFA entirely separate and unrelated events that require additional explanations and character introductions, whereas the simple explanation that Rey is Luke's daughter only strengthens and builds on the story we already know.

Try to think logically here, if Luke isn't Rey's father we're really left with no sufficient explanation of her ability to use the force and there's no real personal reason for Rey to take up the mantle and pit herself against Kylo Ren, not to mention we'd have to accept that the map leading to Luke coincidently ends up on Jakku, whereas if you simply stop believing in all this baseless speculation you'll understand it just makes plain sense that Rey is Luke's daughter and it concisely explains all the important details about how the galaxy is in the shape it is in in TFA.

If that's not enough for you the novelization even gives the impression that Kylo Ren knows more about Rey than he's telling anyone and makes it pretty clear that Luke knows exactly who Rey is when they finally meet at the end.

Why would they drag all of this out even further and make it all more complicated just for the sake of it? They wouldn't.

These are just the facts, anything else is wild conjecture.

The scene is a direct mirror to the original Star Wars where Luke receives the lightsaber from Obi-Wan and he asks him to come to Alderaan with him, down to the box the weapon is kept in. Here's the main difference, Rey's introduction to the weapon is not particularly pleasant and she more or less has to realize the truth about that weapon and what it means from the beginning.

Following the vision, Maz tells Rey that she knows as well as Rey does that whoever she's waiting for is not coming back, but what she's looking for lies ahead. Maz never mentions family, not deliberately but because she's never even had a conversation with Rey before and the writers are certainly smart enough to realize how weird it would be for Maz to suddenly have all this specific information about her.

Why we're able to deduce that Luke is the family she's waiting for is because obviously we the audience know that's what the conversation is really all about, so when Rey immediately replies with "Luke." she makes the connection for herself. She's waiting for her family and Luke is clearly part of that. Furthermore, like Luke she first rejects the call to adventure, a common trope in mythology and heroic fiction and one of the key points in Joseph Campbell's "The Heroes Journey" which Star Wars is most heavily based on. Just as Luke rejects the calling at first and almost immediately crosses the point of no return, so does Rey.

How you could take all of this to mean Rey isn't related to Luke in anyway is just weird to me. It's pretty blatantly obvious and while the filmmakers are still keeping the specifics about the events leading to TFA secretive, I'm sure they know better than to try to create some kind of major plot twist or reveal involving Rey's heritage that'll come completely out of left field.

 

I'm still undecided about Rey being Luke's daughter. I can see your point about the connections, but at the same time I agree with much of what @master_shaitan has said. There are certain things about Rey and Luke that are glaringly obvious in a suspicious way, which leads me to be unsure.

My own theory is that Rey was the only student of Luke's who wasn't killed by Kylo and the Knights of Ren. Luke was able to keep her safe and hide her. He took her to Jakku because nobody has any reason to go there any more. It's a wasteland, out of the way. Lor San Tekka is her grandfather and he was on Jakku to keep an eye on Rey while also keeping the map to Luke safe.

 

minor bits:

he knows she's the "awakening" and he's guarding that for himself. it's pretty blatant in the book. a little more subtle in the movie.

Han told her. she says as much.

to be honest, it feels that way from this side of the pond for those of us who disagree.

it's not as cut and dried as you present, hence the length of this thread and others on the topic.

 

BDT?

 

You need a big face and a blue sky. I'm sure you could have done this with Finn.

 

Ya okay so they went out of their way to create a character that is so specifically similar to Anakin and Luke, who is very specifically drawn to that exact lightsaber, and who looks a lot like Padme and Leia, and this is all just to lead us on so they can tell us that her parents are dead and that's it? I gotta say they sure spent a of time and money setting all that up just to pay off on none of it and just explain to us that she comes from a family we've never met before and who we will never meet because they're all dead now.

And, are you saying the multitude of other things in the film that are directly ripped from A New Hope aren't suspicious? Did you just forget that the films constantly and very intentionally repeat the same tropes, story beats and themes? I mean we're talking at the level where every single Star Wars movie has the same basic premise.

If Luke was at all involved with hiding Rey, why didn't he just keep her in the care of Leia or with himself who was off on an uncharted system? Why would he leave her on a planet with little to no means to survive on under the care of Unkar Plutt? If Lor San Tekka is her grandfather why isn't she in his care and why did they make absolutely no attempt to show any connection between them?

Also Los San Tekka's backstory is explained in the novelization of the film, he was a member of the "Church of the Force", a group of people who were devoted to the Jedi ideals, and he was also an explorer and traveler who was had aided the New Republic with intel and helped Luke undercover Jedi Lore which the Empire had tried to erase. went to Jakku to retire with other members of the Church of the Force, and it is clearly stated in the crawl that the map is a new discovery not something that he just happened to be keeping around for years, right? Seems like he had gone to the planet looking for the map.

Look I'm all for speculation but there's a few places where I'm drawing the line in Episode 8, and one of them is anything involving Rey's origin because they couldn't possibly make her origins more clearly unless there was simply no mystery there at all, and if she's not Luke's daughter everything they built up to that last scene between them is basically meaningless, it's like the ultimate troll. It's like you people want to pretend that The Force Awakens set nothing up and they can just go wherever they want.

The alternatives don't just make for a weaker story, they make for a more boring one that requires even more exposition. Audiences want to know where Rey came from, they want to know what Luke Skywalker was up to for the last 30 years, they don't want unnecessarily complicated explanations that can't possibly come naturally through the story and requires some kind of scene where they sit down and talk in detail about everything that happened before, there's no more concise way to tell the audience everything they need to know than to simply tell us she's Luke's daughter and they thought she was dead.

I mean hello awkward meeting with Leia at the end of TFA if she's anyone other than her niece.

Look to be honest, if it's not about a Skywalker it might as well not even be Star Wars, that's how most people look at this and I'd have to agree.

 

It still brings the question why the most powerful being of the galaxy left a 5 years old girl on her own to protect her ... There could have been a lot of better choices than giving her to Unkar Plutt.

I'm not sure dropping my kids in a favela to protect them is a good idea. And I'm not sure they will be pleased to learn that I did it while leaving in peace on a beautiful island.

And the protection wasn't very good because she finally get kidnapped by the one she was meant to be hidden and kicked the ass of the dude Luke wasn't able to protect her.

 

That's possible, the eyes look similar.

 

Did anyone already made the theory that Luke memory wiped Rey for any given reason to think of because he wanted her away from all the Force Wars that would come up...He migth have lost his woman because of the Force and now is hidding Rey.

 

Great guy indeed.

MInd wiping his own child, abandoning her to a slaver and go to a sweet island.

Congrats Sir Skywalker.

 

You might be on to something and now that I see the comparison just maybe whoever bencio del Toro is playing he may be playing Rey's father.

I remember reading something on here that he could play a former knight of ren. Who knows. I hope we don't have to wait too long to find out more of his role.

 

I hope so as well, he seems the type to be a knight who knows he could been a mentor to Kylo under Snoke's guide but something happened during the attack on Luke's jedi order that changed his allegiance, like Finn he must have had a change of heart about the cause he was following.

 

I'd put my money on Luke! I'm putting in 1500 credits. Anyone want to take that bet.

 

You're gonna win that Plagueis bet You can then use those credits to pay me off