Our top 5 'Last Jedi' burning questions are all about Rey
"Who is Rey?" is a question Star Wars fans started asking each other after The Force Awakens in 2015. Since then, we've been assuming that the question is synonymous with "who are her parents?"
But in the wake of last night's shocking full trailer for The Last Jedi, which ended with the mic drop of Dark Side devotee Kylo Ren offering his hand to Rey, we're putting a slightly different cast on this essential question.
It's not "who is Rey" in the sense of where is she from; Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has been signaling that the answer to that question is not as important as you think. Skywalkers, Solos and Kenobis be damned: this movie isn't about the importance of heritage or bloodlines. (That sound you just heard was all of 2017, a year of charged political debates in this arena, breathing a sigh of relief.)
It's "who is Rey" in the sense of: what is this awakened Force-sensitive woman with serious amounts of raw power capable of doing?
"Something inside me has always been there," Rey says in the trailer. "Then I was awake -- and I need help." Kylo Ren seems just as prepared to give her that help as Luke Skywalker isn't.
Why?
If you assume -- as many fans are doing -- that every other line in the trailer is spoken to Rey, some dark and disturbing possibilities about this orphan woman from Jakku start to emerge. Let's break it down into five sub-queries:
1. Why is Luke afraid of Rey?
You can see it in the old Jedi hermit's eyes throughout the trailer: Fear.
Handed his decades-old lightsaber by the young woman who found his hidden planet, Luke Skywalker seems not in the slightest bit relieved or nostalgic; rather, he's seriously disturbed. When she cracks the ground in front of him and makes pebbles fill the air, he is agog -- and not in a good way.
"I've seen this raw strength once before," Luke says, wide-eyed. "It didn't scare me enough then. It does now."
Well now. What would make a wise old Jedi cognizant of Yoda's advice about the Dark Side -- "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate" -- give in to sheer emotional terror?
Casting another look of terror in a cave somewhere she also appears -- so again, presumably casting it her way -- he adds: "This is not going to end the way you think."
The audience is duly warned.
2. Did Snoke 'find' Rey?
The trailer's first quote, from Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), plays over a picture of Kylo Ren in a hangar. Naturally, we assume these words are spoken about the subject on screen.
What Snoke says is: "When I found you, I saw RAW, UNTAMED POWER! And beyond that ... something special." (Emphasis very much his.)
But what if that combination of words and images is the magician's misdirection, like a lot of things in this trailer? What if Snoke is speaking these words to Rey when he meets her, as we now know he does? (He doesn't seem likely to speak them to emo adolescent mess Kylo Ren). What if he "found" her, whatever that means?
Well then, as surely as Luke's parental discovery in Empire Strikes Back changed everything in the original trilogy, the way we look at the entire sequel trilogy is transformed.
Suddenly Rey becomes a pawn in a plan concocted by the Dark Side, a pawn struggling to resist her programming.
Suddenly it becomes clear why she was abandoned on the desert planet of Jakku -- not because her parents or caregivers wanted to keep her safe from some power hunting her, but because they wanted to keep her away from them.
3. Did Rey destroy the Jedi Academy?
All along we've been assuming Kylo Ren was responsible for the destruction of Luke's Jedi school. But why?
In the kinda-sorta-flashback known as Rey's Force vision, when she touches Luke's lightsaber in Maz Kanata's castle, we see images of Kylo and the Knights of Ren, lightsabers drawn, surrounded by bodies. A massacre has occurred.
We also see Luke and R2-D2 looking dejectedly at a burned building.
But if you watch closely, these two images are not from the same event (one takes place in a Blade Runner-like level of rain, the other is dry with fiery sparks; in her vision the two scenes merge for a second, but are clearly distinct).
So it's another case of misdirection. Is it possible, then, that Rey -- a young girl who didn't know she was Snoke's pawn -- destroyed Luke's attempts to raise a new generation of Jedi, in a fireball of Force power beyond her control?
What if she's the mystical space fantasy equivalent of a ticking time bomb?
That would certainly give Luke a reason to fear her "raw power" -- and regret not doing so on their previous meeting. And it would also be a good reason for even the saintliest guy in the galaxy to dump Rey on Jakku.
4. What will Rey find in those books?
Again, as the teaser trailer did, the full Last Jedi trailer pointed to a small shelf of books in a cave on Luke's planet. Only this time, Rey is looking directly at them with much interest.
Ancient books on Ahch-to, the planet with the first Jedi temple: this may or may not be the legendary Journal of the Whills, a nerdy name that's been hanging around the edges of Star Wars canon for decades. But whatever they're called, they contain essential -- perhaps forbidden -- information.
Information is power. The Dark Side seeks power. If Rey is an unwitting tool of the Dark Side, this particular library may regret giving her a lending card.
5. What will her 'raw, untamed power' do next?
Okay, spoiler alert: this isn't a dark, gritty reboot of Star Wars. It's still a kid's movie. It's from a Disney subsidiary. Rey is a hero to millions of kids around the world. She's not going to buddy up to Snoke, turn to the Dark Side, slaughter her friends, destroy the Resistance and end up in a black cape and mask -- much as we might love to see a Lady Vader.
But the map of the rest of the trilogy might well be her resisting the lure of the Dark Side, much as Luke had to do in Return of the Jedi. If the sequel trilogy echoes the original, the question of whether she can resist the plan a powerful evil old man put in place for her will dominate Episode IX.
Topics Star Wars
Chris is a veteran tech, entertainment and culture journalist, author of 'How Star Wars Conquered the Universe,' and co-host of the Doctor Who podcast 'Pull to Open.' Hailing from the U.K., Chris got his start as a sub editor on national newspapers. He moved to the U.S. in 1996, and became senior news writer for Time.com a year later. In 2000, he was named San Francisco bureau chief for Time magazine. He has served as senior editor for Business 2.0, and West Coast editor for Fortune Small Business and Fast Company. Chris is a graduate of Merton College, Oxford and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. He is also a long-time volunteer at 826 Valencia, the nationwide after-school program co-founded by author Dave Eggers. His book on the history of Star Wars is an international bestseller and has been translated into 11 languages.
