ST The Rey Parentage Thread (with new poll; see notes on page 2447)

The person Magali should have asked the question "is there a young Skywalker protagonist in this new trilogy" instead of complicating his own questions. When you ask a complex or compound question, the one answering can pick and choose which part to answer.

But even if someone were to point blank ask "is Rey a Skywalker?" Pablo would still beat around the bush. It's kind of like asking a murder suspect on trial "did you kill the person?"

 

Thank you for your common sense


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We have to recognize, TFA ending and acting were brilliant....biggest cliffhanger in years, nobody can decipher Luke's or Rey's intentions. We would keep writing forever if episode Vlll have not come out in a year an a half....


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I thought it was an awesome, and brave, ending.

 

Maybe the "parents" had obligations to Unkar and left Rey there as security while searching for money?
Without Rey being left there he would maybe kept them all as slaves

 

Regarding Unkar Plutt, I've been re-reading Before the Awakening, and there's a very interesting passage early in Rey's story that didn't register with me before.

Rey is at Niima and sees a familiar ship land - "a Hernon-class light freighter, boxy and ugly. Rey had seen it there maybe ten times before, and so had everyone else." Later, a man walks down the ramp - "the same human she'd seen there every other time." A young girl and an older woman then follow. The man gestures towards Unkar's as he speaks to them. The girl seems sad and reluctant, the man says a few things to her, then the girl and the woman climb back up the ramp. The man then heads towards Unkar's.

At this point Rey drives away on her speeder, mulling it over, and she never comes a conclusion about what's going on. The story doesn't refer to the incident again.

So, a man regularly visits Jakku in the same ship, clearly knows Unkar in some way or has an arrangement with him, and appears to be dropping off a young girl. Perhaps a trader who finds orphan children, then sells them to Unkar so he can use them as scavengers? Young children are ideal for getting into small spaces in crashed space-ships. Maybe there are even families who are so destitute and desperate for money that they would sell their children to him.

I wonder if this is what happened to Rey. As an alternative, maybe her parents needed to get her to safety quickly - perhaps they lived in First Order territory, and Snoke was hunting for Force-sensitives - and they didn't have time to pick and choose where she went, so they sent her with this man. "We'll come back for you, sweetheart" was something said to Rey before she got onto the ship.

To me it seems the most logical reason that someone would leave her with Unkar.

 

Good observation.
The thing is, is this an idea form the novel author himself or is it something that the LF storygroup told him to implement into the story?

 

It would be a strange thing for Greg Rucka to come up with himself, as it's never resolved and isn't setting anything up for later in the story - it's just forgotten about. The passage even ends with "She didn't have the first idea what it had all been about," as if we're meant to think it's important, and then we never get back to it.

At one point there was going to be a scene in TFA where Rey sees a family landing at Niima, in the ship they later decided to use when she watches her "parents" leaving her behind in the Force-back. But that didn't even make it into the novelization.

 

At least this gives us the idea that Unkar frequently gets visits like this. And it's clear Unkar needs "slaves" to scavenge the wrecks.
So, this "man" that visits Unkar frequently could be the one who brought Rey to Unkar and just told little Rey that he will be back for her just to calm her.
The thing is, wouldn't she recognize this guy? maybe he hasn't been to Niima outpost for a long time
Or, it was just some other slave trader, who "found" little Rey "somewhere" and knew that Unkar needed slaves, or just kidnapped her for the sake of making money
Such a slave trader could also have found her in a place where a disaster of some sorts had occurred.
Imagine this, let's say that Rey is Luke's, maybe they (Luke + wife + Rey) we're somewhere (a public place with lots of people) and there was a sudden attack, Luke got separated from his wife + Rey, his wife gets killed (Luke finds her), he can't find Rey and assumes she''s dead. During this attack there was a lot of chaos (so committing a crime during this isn't something unusual), therefore it's totally plausible that some slave trader saw Luke's wife and Rey, killed Luke's wife and took Rey with him to sell her to Unkar.

See, it's not difficult to come up with a plausible explanation that doesn't turn Luke into someone evil who brought his daughter to Unkar.

 

Then why do I see Ben, aka Kylo, obsessed in TFA with...Anakin Skywalker.

TFA never once suggests that Ben is leaving the Skywalker family behind. He's leaving the light legacy of the family behind. He's fully embracing the dark Skywalker legacy.

Which, for whatever reason, people don't want to acknowledge is a huge part of their legacy. Vader and Ren are just as much Skywalker as Luke and Leia.

Kylo is very much "the Skywalker" of TFA. Rey isn't even once presented as filling that role.

 

Kylo is not obsessed with Anakin, he is obsessed with Vader. That difference was clarified by the JJ himself. It’s ‘certain point of view’ that they are not the same person, but a point of view that Kylo definitely shares.

 

Which is why I said in the very post you quoted:

"Vader and Ren are just as much Skywalker as Luke and Leia."

Darth Vader and Kylo Ren are strong, undeniable, searing parts of the Skywalker legacy.

It's not just the good people they may have once been. It's about who they became as well.

Ben, as Kylo, chooses to embrace the darkest extremes of the Skywalker legacy.

 

It doesn’t matter much if they are physically Skywalkers when the movies make a point in separating the two entities. Anakin is part of the Skywalker legacy, Darth Vader not. Ben was part of that legacy, Kylo Ren rejected it.

 

Umm, ok.

 

True.
Anakin Skywalker wasn't Anakin Skywalker anymore after he pledged himself to Darth Sidious's teachings who then named him Darth Vader, Anakin was gone after that (he made a brief (re-)appearance after his son "saved" him)

 

bull. vader is the biggest part of the skywalker legacy and it was evil.

 

But however much Vader wanted to distance himself from his life as Anakin, it's Vader who ends up with the lasting legacy, the long shadow over his descendants. To the larger world, the two are one and the same.

 

Hilarious to see people trying to argue that Darth Vader has nothing to do with the Skywalker legacy.

I can not.

 

The more I contemplate it, the more I become convinced that Rey endured two separations - the first from her parent(s), and the second from someone who was seeking to dispose of her without actually taking her life. In the novelisation, Rey remembers being in a snowy wood and hearing the sounds of a battle raging in the distance. A familiar voice instructs her to stay put and promises to return for her. I propose that that voice belonged to her father, who hid her to protect her from the ongoing battle before returning to join the battle himself. He was slain and the person who returned for Rey was an enemy, a member of the group that has just killed her parents and her people. The person who finds her can't bring himself to kill a small child, so abandons her on the nearest convenient planet, which happens to be Jakku. For various reasons I think the person who found her is likely to be Luke (and yes, I'm aware of all the arguments holding that he would never do such a thing - this theory obviously necessitates a scenario where Luke has gained a harder and more ruthless edge post-ROTJ).

In relation to this, it's also worth mentioning that one of Rey's names during production was 'Snow Girl'. If she was literally conceptualised as a little girl found hidden in the snow, that code name would make much more sense.

 

My point is, legacies are not just what comes in the DNA. It’s a conscious choice as well to continue them or be part of them. When Luke says “I want to be a Jedi like my father” and “I am a Jedi like my father before me”, he is choosing to continue that legacy. That is why people are coming up with theories of Rey adoption as a continuation of the Skywalker legacy.

If I changed my name and assumed a completely new identity and wanted nothing to do with my family not their heritage, I would cease to be part of their legacy. It’s as simple as that. When Vader says to Sidious “The apprentice of Anakin Skywalker lives”, his actions are not depicted as a continuation of the legacy of Anakin Skywalker. He is depicted as one who wants to destroy that legacy and wants nothing to do with it. Similarly, when Kylo Ren says “[Ben] was weak and foolish, so I destroyed him” he is choosing to not be part of that legacy.

Perhaps this would be different discussion if Ben thought Darth Vader was as much part of his legacy and Anakin and Luke. But this is not the case; Kylo (and TFA in general) treat Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker as two separate legacies.

 

Yes, but: "I will finish what you started, Grandfather".

Anakin may be irrelevant to his thoughts and feelings on the matter, but he positions his destiny in relation to his ancestor, to his place as part of that legacy. What little we know about his motivations in TFA is solely related to his lineage, and his affinity with Vader, albeit a warped version.

 

it's actually not warped.

 

I never knew about the Snow Girls codename. Your theory makes sense, though I still find it hard to believe that Luke would abandon a little girl to a life of virtual slavery. I'm honestly starting to drop the idea of Rey Skywalker. Luke being responsible for the death of her parents in some way is the most likely scenario. Too bad because I really liked where they could have gone with a dather-daughter dynamic and it's still my personal favorite theory, I just don't think it's as likely as I once did.

 

Yes, he is continuing Darth Vader's legacy while rejecting Anakin's. That was made pretty clear by JJ. And by the movie itself, as he is trying to destroy Luke, the last of the Jedi and Anakin Skywalker's legacy. Which Kylo does not consider to be part of the same legacy.

 

Yes, I know it's difficult to accept. It would have to be handled very, very well indeed, but I trust Rian Johnson if they do go in this direction - he has handled episodes of childhood trauma and their impact exceptionally well in his other films (particularly Looper), so I believe he can tell a compelling and believable story that would make you buy into Luke Skywalker making what we instinctively perceive as a terrible choice.