ST Rey Skywalker/Daisy Ridley Discussion Thread

Harry Met Sally also starred Carrie Fisher as Sally’s friend and basically her mentor. (Giving her life and romantic advice) It also starts out w both leads hating each other and then becoming best friends and then finally realizing that they love each other.

 

We know a bit more about the character. In the Art of TFA book, Episode 7’s original screenwriter, Michael Arndt, is quoted as saying this earlier version of the character was a “loner, hothead, gear-head, badass.” And Lucas said his sequels were about Anakin’s grandchildren, so many fans have interpreted that to mean the female scavenger character who becomes a Jedi would have been a Solo. And it seems like she would have started her training with Luke by the end of Episode 7 at the latest.



Like Leia and Padmé before her, this character seems to have been inspired by Princess Yuki in The Hidden Fortress. For a while I thought she could not be a Solo because she was a scavenger and living alone, but it’s been pointed out that she could’ve been separated from her parents at a young age, possibly due to the pirate attack on the Falcon on Felucia seen in several concept pieces.

Jett Lucas famously compared the plot of TFA to that of the animated movie Anastasia, which would support the idea that the scavenger character is a “hidden royal” like Leia, Padmé, and Yuki. I do think much of TFA’s DNA is very similar to the first movie in Lucas’s treatment, at least in broad strokes, so Jett Lucas may have been thinking the bigger story of TFA was still following his father’s ideas.

Another thing to think about here is the famous Mizzlewump leak of 2012 or 2013, which was alleged to have been about an earlier version of the script and was the first place to mention several ideas that did turn up in the final movie. It mentions that one of the protagonists is Han and Leia’s daughter. And interestingly, based on what we found out about Maul and Talon being the villains of the sequels back in 2020, the leak also said the villain would be an old apprentice of the Emperor’s and his own new apprentice. Which lends validity to the leak, and I mention just to say that there’s several things pointing to this character being the Solo daughter originally.

 

They were all for a romance, just not between Rey and Finn. Instead of the sweet natural chemistry that existed between the leads, and may have made them pivot off that initial H met S 'ship', they opted for the antagonistic kind instead. One existing between an abusive bad boy and the girl who's destined to save his soul.

 

If Rey was more like this, I'd probably like her much more. TFA Rey is sort of an extremely tamed-down version of this, to make her closer to a more universally-appealing audience stand-in, and then TLJ went even farther with this to the point where Rey is no longer interesting to me at all. Her obsession with redeeming Kylo really screams to me "person from the real world who got teleported into Star Wars and thinks that Kylo being redeemed would match the conventions of Star Wars and is thus inevitable and her job". I mean, that's kind of a generous interpretation because it's better than her being motivated by attraction.

 

Let's face it... not having Rey be the daughter of Luke or Leia was a colossal own goal. It may be the obvious route, but that's because it is the most natural one to take... and then of course Rey and Kylo's relationship becomes a sibling one, and is substantially less problematic to frame for that fact (not that I'm a fan of Kylo Ren being Ben Solo, as that is also a monumental own goal too IMO).

 

What's even worse beyond them not making Rey a SkywalkerSolo child ... is that they wanted us to maybe think she was because they needed Rey to 'fit' into the story.

For whatever reasons they had for not doing it, maybe they felt it was too obvious or just not interesting creatively to them, to then go about and make her story so vague, and allude to some Skywalker parentage through mirroring Luke's life, and teasing Solo Parent Figures, or "What girl?" nonsense is just wickedly mean and brazenly off-putting.

It's like a bully teasing you with your lunch box by dangling just out of reach and then throwing it in sewer.

 

I always supported the "Rey is random" theory i.e. Rey's parents are nobodies, not Rey runs around and plays pranks on people at random, but I would support that too

 

I'd rather Just Rey over what we got. But a story with Just Rey from the start and no intentions of teasing some other kind of "Maybe Rey SkySoloKenobiPalpatine" as well.

 

Her being Rey Palpatine and then taking the Skywalker name was the worst possible decision Disney could have possibly made on the topic of lineage in my opinion.

a nobody is much more palatable to me.

 

I liked the Kenobi Theory that Daisy Ridley confirmed. From His time with Satine produced offspring that lead to Rey.

 

I don't dislike it, but it doesn't really add much of anything narratively or thematically compared to her being a nobody IMO. Also, the overwhelming majority of movie watchers don't know who Satine is (though admittedly you wouldn't have to for this to work, just wanted to mention).

 

I feel like her being a nobody is worse and i never understood that desire people had for her to be a nobody

 

You seem to think there’s something inherently bad with a protagonist being an unknown or non related hero

Most of the characters in SW are non-related “nobodies”.

Starting off as a “nobody” and rising up to save the galaxy (all while being mentored by someone more famous) is pretty classic a story you can get.

After all, Anakin was also a nobody too.

 

I disagree. (Even as someone who wanted a Rey Skywalker story)

You just to do it the right way. Not the way we got it. Not half-assed.

1: Luke needs to play a more active role in Rey's training, and trains her because the force is telling him that although she's just a nobody from Jakku, she's special. She's the one. She's the one who's going to lead the Jedi one day. That kind of thing.

2: You then need a Ben Solo who is resentful of this outcome. He's the Skywalker Heir. It's his destiny to take over and lead the Jedi, and yet, somehow, Luke is believes in this 'nobody'.

There's nothing inherently not SW about this. And totally works in a saga story where Luke realizes that the Skywalkers aren't meant to rule forever. That they play a part, an important one, but are not the end. The force has other intentions.

 

Michael Arndt’s description honestly reminds me a lot of Jaina Solo. And he also described her male counterpart in the early scripts, which some fans think was meant to be her brother, as “pure charisma,” which could fit some characterizations of Jacen Solo.

As much as Lucas considered the EU a separate universe, I wonder if some of its general features influenced his sequel treatment. Or perhaps the Solo twins originated in some ideas he shared with the writers who brought them into the EU? It’s probably either a coincidence or unconscious influence, though, but it would be awesome if there was a stronger link there.

Anyway, this all reminds me once again of a Lucasfilm character who very much fit Taryn/Thea/Kira’s early description (except for the gear-head part, which wouldn’t make much sense in context): Kit Tanthalos from the Willow TV series that Disney put away in their vault some years back. Even Pablo Hidalgo once said Kit was how he would picture Jaina Solo from then on. And many fans saw strong parallels between the Willow series’ general plot-line and what little we know of Lucas’s sequel treatments. The series was pretty flawed, but some of its characters were quite memorable, and Ruby Cruz’s Kit was definitely among them.

 

She even sorta looks like a blend of Han and Leia too. And even Anakin.

 

Yes… I’m very much of the opinion that (all issues aside), the Willow TV series made a much better fist of how to construct a sequel, establish new characters etc. whilst staying relatively true to the source. It did what the ST should have done.

 

I really wanted to love Willow series, as I adore the movie. There's an 80s, almost kid like Conan kind of grit about that fantasy world. But I just never got past Ep 3...or 4. I don't even remember. It all felt too much like a cheap CW series. Too modern. Too quippy and sarcastic humor.

That said, I think the 'former hero comes out of retirement' was done generally better.

 

Yes I agree... the Willow TV series suffers from the same issues the rest of Disney and DLF output suffers from... it has an inconsistent tone, it's caught between being a film and a TV series, some of the production values are off etc. but the central premise and how they establish the familiar characters with the new, and in a familiar world but different, is done very well IMO.

 

I also really loved the Moraband/Korriban-like Immemorial City that we got in the series:



Didn’t the Mizzlewump leak also mention excavations in the Sith homeworld?

 

I thought originally they were digging on Jakku for some Sith artifact? Who knows.

I mean that could have been interesting as well. Instead of a junk planet, Jakku is a very remote planet out in the Unknown Regions that was seized by the FO and is being strip-mined / excavated for some mysterious purpose. Maybe they think its some mineral, but its actually a Sith artifact or something. Rey could have lived there, working there, etc. All the same basic background.

 

Yes I really liked that too. We sort of got a taste of it in Episode 1 of Ahsoka... and although it wasn't Moraband, it's easy to imagine how it could have looked and felt in live action.

Yes and that is was also a 'superweapon',,, effectively SKB.