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rex-shadao · 4 years

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The Failure of Rey Nobody

I haven’t done a Star Wars analysis or review in a long time. But with the recent release of Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker and the subsequent details being revealed, I feel it’s a good time to go over what happened in TROS and how it affects the rest of the saga. Oh, there’s a lot to go over, but I’ll stick with one particular topic that I have an ax to grind on ever since the post-TFA release...

The topic of Rey’s parents and heritage.

As I’ve stated before, this is going to involve MAJOR spoilers from TROS, so please don’t continue reading if you don't want to be spoiled. Let’s begin, shall we?

So it turns out that Rey is actually related to someone important in the Saga. While parents were nobodies just as Kylo Ren said, her grandfather is not. And no, it’s not Obi-Wan Kenobi. It’s Sheev Palpatine.

That’s right. Emperor Sheev Palpatine of the FIRST Galactic Empire aka Darth Sidious aka the BIG BAD of Prequel and Original Trilogies... is the grandfather of Rey. And here I thought Harry Potter and the Cursed Child revelation was dumb but at least there I can understand how Lord Voldemort could have a child since he at least has a fanatical lover known as Bellatrix Lestrange. But Palpatine is never shown to have any mistress, not in the films or expanded media. And his characterization indicates that old Sheev only cares about power and immortality. Why does he need to produce heirs when he has a powerful Darth Vader and his more powerful offsprings, Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, to groom for the throne? That is if he ever wants to give that up.

Regardless of that fact (that’s for another topic), the fact that Rey is revealed to be a Palpatine completely undermines the argument that Rey Random/Nobody advocates preached for the last three years or so. That making Rey a nobody with unremarkable parents would send a stronger message for the audience and kids. That making her a Skywalker would somehow imply that you could only be a hero and a Jedi if you came from Force royalty bloodline. And that revealing that Rey is unrelated to anybody is a “great” subversion of the Luke, I Am Your Father trope.

I don’t know about you, but having Rey be related to the Lucifer of the Force, the most evil man in the galaxy, and the mastermind behind the Empire and the First Order, that is anything but a nobody. It’s pretty much making her a Skywalker except with none of the actual Skywalker relationship benefits like good family members (Luke, Leia, and Padme) and a dynamic with Kylo Ren that isn’t Reylo. Oh, I can see all of those TLJ defenders being pissed off about TROS retconning the Rey Nobody reveal and blaming JJ Abrams for “caving” to the angry fans... but honestly, this was inevitable.

Rey Nobody was doomed from the beginning.

Why? Because it offers no real narrative after the revelation. It’s a meta-subversion that went after a short-gain that wasn’t needed to begin with. Here are several reasons:

1) The idea of a Nobody becoming a hero or a Jedi is not new in Star Wars.

If you only see the films on a surface and don’t pay attention to the EU material, you’ll be left with the impression that the Skywalker family are the only people who have the Force due to their ancestor, Anakin, being literally born from the Force in a virgin birth. But if you think about it for a moment, you would know that the Skywalkers were an exception to the rule. Jedi were celibate and they were not supposed to have families. How Force-sensitive people were found were dependent on luck, and Anakin himself came from a lowly position of a slave in a backwater planet of the Outer Rim.

So by default, potential Jedi always came from random people scattered across the galaxy. Their parents were almost always muggles, and there’s no great mystery about them beyond what happened to them. And for a Jedi, their story path lies ahead, not behind unless there is something about the past that they should know.

Story-wise, the default explanation for Rey’s origins is that of any Jedi. She’s a nobody born to a bunch of nobodies and lives on a backwater planet with a greater future ahead of her. The idea that is somehow a revolutionary concept in Star Wars is almost laughable. It’s the same as making a big surprising revelation that Mulan is a woman in an army where every other soldier else are women as well. People can accept Rey Nobody from the beginning like every other Star Wars character introduced in the Saga. It’s only when you imply there’s more to the character than meets the eye...

2) The Mystery Box Hype

The Mystery Box is designed for one thing only. To make you generate hype and investment into something that has very little to show. It’s a great ploy to draw in an audience and see where you can take the story that would please the most people. But the Mystery Box has a critical weakness. Sooner or later, people would want to know what’s in the box, and they have spent money and time for that box. The last thing they want to hear is that they paid for an empty box.

This is the undiscussed part of the Mystery Box factor. People would rave about how Steven Spielberg created suspense and true terror by not showing the shark when it attacked people in the film. But what they don’t talk about is that Spielberg nearly destroyed himself and his production trying to get good footage of the shark in its full glory. Spielberg knew that the audience wouldn’t forgive him if he never showed them the actual shark that he hyped up from the beginning.

This was a critical flaw in Rey’s Mystery Box heritage. As stated before, Rey started off in the film as a nobody. That was no mystery. So to imply that there is something hidden from the audience, something that vague enough for Han and Maz to get lingering shots about her identity, creates higher expectations. It’s not necessarily about her parents but rather her role in the story. All of the Skywalker Saga visions, Anakin’s Lightsaber, Luke being her destination, etc. They seem to hint that Rey is important to the Skywalker family, whatever that reason may be, and it’s something that no other Force-sensitive person could do except her. Of course, the big reveal in TFA is that she is Force-sensitive (as if that is surprising) but TFA didn’t clear up on Rey’s parents. No faces, no names, nothing. They are still a mystery that needed to be resolved despite what Maz Kanata states otherwise to Rey. So we have two mysteries regarding Rey: Her connection to the Skywalkers and the starship leaving Rey on Jakku.

These two mysteries could be connected but not necessarily so. But they had to be addressed in some way or some form.

And did TLJ address these two mysteries? No. It didn’t. The best answer for the Skywalker connection is Snoke’s “The darkness rises and the light to meet it,” implying that Rey was destined to rise and combat the evil that is Kylo Ren. Which is a generic answer that doesn’t explain why it has to be her and not someone else (remember, she didn’t choose to be the hero when those TFA visions happen). The other mystery, her parents, is a non-answer. Instead of revealing why the starship left Rey, TLJ focuses on the identity of the parents and reveals them to be filthy, deceased junk traders who sold their daughter for money. It is clearly a meta-message to say that Rey has no place in the story and that she must forge her own path as Rey Nobody... except it answers nothing.

It’s the same status quo that Rey was in from the very beginning of TFA. She’s a nobody who would become the next Jedi hero and her parents are unimportant for the story. Most reveals like Darth Vader being Luke’s father or that Bucky killed Stark’s parents are effective because they move the plot further and gives us something to look forward to as we wait for the sequel to answer the questions from the reveal (like how would Luke face his father, how would Cap and Iron Man repair their relationship, etc.). But with Rey’s mysteries being revealed as something we would already be accustomed to, there is nothing for the audience to wonder for the next film. Why should we care about the ship in the flashback if it’s just Rey’s parents selling Rey off for drinking money? Why should we care about Rey’s connection with the Skywalker Family if she is not part of their story?

3) Meta-Narrative over In-Universe Reason

If you hadn’t noticed already, I’ve made a big emphasis on how Rey is assumed to be a Nobody at the beginning of TFA. That is no mistake. Because in-universe, Rey has no reason to believe that her parents or heritage were anything special. She doesn’t believe that she is a Skywalker or a Palpatine. She’s just an orphan lost in a world that has abandoned her. She would be glad to find a new purpose in her life and resolve her parental abandonment issues. This is Rey’s character at the end of TLJ. It hasn’t changed since the end of TFA. She learned nothing about herself except the confirmation that her parents were indeed nobodies. Despite what Rian Johnson may say, that is not the worst thing Rey would hear as an answer.

Luke was content with his father being just a spice freighter navigator, and he was delighted to hear that his father was really a powerful Jedi Knight. The answer that broke his spirit wasn’t Anakin was “a filthy junk trader” who gave him away to Uncle Owen; it was learning that Darth Vader, the evil man that he hated for killing his father and Obi-Wan, was his father Anakin. To be related to an evil mass murderer who now wants you to join him and take over the galaxy together can traumatize any orphan who longed for a family, including Rey.

But Rey Nobody doesn’t offer that emotional narrative. Rey Nobody was the starting status quo of TFA and TLJ offered nothing for Rey’s character beyond a “romance” with her archenemy. The mysteries surrounding Rey have been answered with the starting status quo in an attempt to send in a meta-message that was unneeded from the beginning. In short, Rey Nobody renders Rey to be a static character as everything about her was already answered in TFA.

Now compare that with Rey Palpatine.

Rey Palpatine, as dumb as it sounds, actually raises the stakes for her. She is now related to the most evil man in the galaxy, and that evil man wants her to join him (or inherit the throne). Rey must confront her grandfather and is now faced with the prospect that she would turn to the Dark Side because of her Palpatine blood as well as the moral dilemma of getting the family she wanted at the cost of knowing they are part of the most hated lineage in the galaxy. There is tension, there is a personal conflict badly needed for her after TLJ...

And all of this could have been done with Rey Skywalker. Rey Skywalker would have a lot more personal stakes, tensions, and weight considering how the films are billed as the Skywalker Saga. It would have been perfect. Instead, we get Rey Nobody... which didn’t offer JJ Abrams the conflict he needs for her in Episode IX thanks to the last two episodes playing around Mystery Boxes, so he retconned Rey as a Palpatine instead. A Morton’s Fork at work, congratulations!

If you wanted Rey Nobody, you should have started her as Rey Nobody and then build up her character to make us care instead of surrounding her in mysteries that may not be satisfied.

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