Rey's parentage will be revealed in 'The Last Jedi' — but will it matter?

A girl is (probably) no one.
 By 
Chris Taylor
 on 
Original image replaced with Mashable logo
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

After the Force awoke in 2015, Star Wars fans found themselves debating one question above all others. Who were Rey's parents, and why would they abandon her in a galactic hell-hole like Jakku?

Now for the first time Lucasfilm has signaled that we'll get the answer in The Last Jedi this December -- but the director of the movie appears to be doing his best to tamp down expectations around the answer.

"It's important insofar as it's important to her," director Rian Johnson tells EW.

Daisy Ridley, who plays Rey, agreed that the answer wouldn't matter all that much. "It’s not like, oh, I know who my parents are so now everything falls into shape," she told the magazine.

Johnson and Ridley both mentioned that Rey had been told not to go looking in the past for her answers; her destiny lies in the future, even though she's just met Luke Skywalker, "hero of the past."

Despite the prevalent theories that Rey is a Skywalker or a Solo or a Kenobi or even a Palpatine, there's a very strong chance that a girl is no one.

As we said at the time, this may be the most satisfactory answer to the Rey riddle. The galaxy far, far away is a really big place; making her an orphan with a famous name isn't just unrealistic, it's elitist.

After all, Anakin Skywalker started out as a slave kid on a desert planet, even if he was the product of a mysterious virgin birth. Everything we saw of Jedi training in the prequel movies showed us kids plucked from all walks of life from across the galaxy.

It's unfashionable to talk about midichlorians these days. But they still exist in the Star Wars universe as genetic markers of Force sensitivity -- and any Jedi will tell you they can crop up anywhere at any time, no matter what your last name is.

Topics Star Wars

Chris Taylor
Chris Taylor

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.

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