The Ending: Beautiful, but problematic

TRoS' ending isn't "open-ended".

Every major and overarching plot and thematic element that defines the Saga films gets wrapped up by the time TRoS ends.

 

I think it’s both open-ended and not. It does indeed tie together many, many elements of the saga and brings it full circle, but it also ends with Rey having settled on a new, fuller identity looking off into a hopeful sunrise full of future possibilities.

"It will be a hard life. One without reward. Without remorse. Without regret. A path will be placed before you. The choice is yours alone. Do what you think you cannot do. It will be a hard life. But in the end you will find out who you are."

 

Good questions . . . for another time.

 

Rey's future isn't relevant to the story of the Skywalker Saga, so nothing about the ending of TRoS is open-ended in terms of resolving anything that IS relevant to said Saga and its story.

 

To be fair, we don’t know what Rey’s future is. We know she’s decided to take the Skywalker name. We know that name is synonymous with being a Jedi. So it’s most certainly implied that she’d be continuing that established legacy forward in some capacity. I don’t see how that’s irrelevant to the “Skywalker Saga”. This chapter in the story is over, but the story itself goes on.

 

@eeprom @NinjaRen

The saga about Jesus begins and ends with the canonical gospels. The story involving his disciples and the church they founded lives on, its still evolving, and is part of the Christians lore, but it's not Jesus story. It's their story. The disciples story, is heavily influenced but the teacher's teachings and actions, but we can't consider their story as a chapter of Jesus story, because that would create a simple problem.

If one's legacy and the actions of his/hers student(s) are considered to be a part /chapter of the founder's story, then there is no Skywalker story to begin with, since with the same argument we get that the Skywalkers were Jedi students, thus it wasn't their story either. The Skywalkers are just a chapter in the Jedi story. Backtracking (using this premise) we end up that there is only one story, that of the first Jedi, and all the rest are chapters.

I find it easier, and more logically coherent, to split it up.

 

In TLJ Luke tells Kylo that he won't be the last Jedi, implying Rey will continue the Jedi. Rey herself says in TROS that she is all the Jedi or all the Jedi are in her or something. I think it's safe to say that Rey is a Jedi and even, by virtue of being the only one, a (the?) Jedi Master. I would like to have seen something showing a continuation is going to happen in TROS. It's implied, like many things, but not specifically stated.

I think from a film making perspective, it's safer to end TROS like they did. It's likely that Rey will train new Jedi and they can maybe make more movies with her later or make novels and comic books and start wherever they want. If they actually showed some footage of her at the end of TROS they would be locked into whatever they showed. They may not have wanted to lock themselves into any specific circumstances for where the story goes next. What if they showed Rey teaching new Jedi at the end of TROS and then Daisy Ridley decided not to return to the franchise? Or worse, died or became somehow unable to reprise the role? While I would have liked to see some Rey/Jedi training camp or something, it was safer not to show it.

 

Interesting take. The “Skywalker Saga” isn’t just one person’s story though. It’s a generational fable. Anakin begot Luke and Leia who begot Rey who, in all likelihood, will beget other ‘Skywalkers’. LFL didn’t decide to call this the “Luke Saga”. It’s the family’s saga. That family goes on. TROS is a conclusion to the first part of a greater story. It, by design, is most definitely not a definitive conclusion though. If someone chooses to refer to it as 'open-ended', they aren't wrong. The ending is indeed deliberately left open. There absolutely is more to the 'Skywalker Saga' to be told.

 

Three of these questions were answered by the Sequel Trilogy, and the fourth is irrelevant.

 

Point taken. Let me put it in another way.

Suppose, you are building a wiki page about the Skywalker family (the story of all members). You can copy Anakin, Luke , Leia and Ben from the wiki, and paste one after the other. Rey Palpatine would be referenced within this page, and you would have a hyperlink reference pointing to another page. You wouldn't put Rey's complete story within this page since this wiki entry is about the members of the Skywalker family. Han Solo also wouldn't be there, despite being the husband.

The skywalker family is no more since every descendant died, and all the people involved in their lives are hyperlink references leading to other pages, other stories. This wiki entry is now closed, since all the information about them has been recorded, but other pages outside this entry can grow. So you get two wiki entries; the closed (Skywalker family) and an open and growing one (Rey's).

Also, you have another entry growing. The Palpatine family wiki, which is a separate entity, and will grow as long as descendants of Palpatine are alive.

This is just how I organize things in my head, but that doesn't much. It's just more convenient for me.

 

That’s certainly is a reasoned approach to differentiating the diverging material.

I’m more approaching this from what I perceive as one of the underline themes of the story: found family is just as valid as biological family. Rey isn’t less of a Skywalker because she was born a Palpatine. In fact, she’s more so since it was an actual conscious choice on her part. She decided to discard her own lineage and count herself among this other one. The film, I believe, is wanting us to view her as THE heir to this dynasty. No less significant than any other descendant. Her story is a Skywalker story through and through.

To put it in the same terms - she’d be featured prominently on the Skywalker page. Any Palpatine connections would be the hyperlinks. But my interpretation isn’t any more legitimate than yours

 

The films themselves offer the answers you were looking for and so there's no reason for me to rehash them here.

Also, you not finding those answers satisfying doesn't mean that they're nonexistent.

 

It is like like one of those 80's OVA's where they tried to compress a 13 episode anime into 4 40 min episodes or when a studio realises they are running out of money or episodes so they just think sod it just chuck everything at it. I would have expected this from a shounen anime or whatever the hell Symphogear is but not Star Wars.

There were parts that I thought were visually impressive and I used my own logic to fill the gaps in the narrative and created my own story in which the Sith Eternal were like the Earth cultists from Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Though it was fun to create my own stories, this is not something I should have to do with a film like this. If they wanted to do a generational series right, Lucasfilm should have looked into the best manga out there- JJBA. In JJBA, each addition to the series explores different concepts and genres but is linked by the central theme of bloodline and destiny.

Personally, I feel they could have cut the Canto Bight sequence from TLJ and used it in TROS with there being a gang of oligarchs manipulating the war like Blue Cosmos from Gundam SEED.

 

1 Ben was betrayed by his uncle then Snoke tempted him with power to destroy them. All the mommy and daddy issue aside.
2 Palpatine was never seen dying he was throw of ledge and we know Luke survived one.
3 Snoke was just a tool.
4 Maz is bought it from the garbage guy who picked it up off the ground under Cloud city.