Hey, remember in Star Wars: The Last Jedi when Kylo Ren told Rey that her parents were “filthy junk traders” who sold her off for drinking money? It was a bold choice by director Rian Johnson to give the hero of the sequel trilogy a past that didn’t connect directly to the greater Star Wars mythology. She wasn’t a Solo or Kenobi or a Palpatine; she was just some no one who came along and got a chance to change the galaxy.
Then, along came J.J. Abrams to direct the final movie in the sequel trilogy: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. He decided to change all of that, and decided that Rey wasn’t no one after all: she was the secret granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine.
“I think one of the themes of the movie is that anyone can be anything regardless of where you’re from, and I don’t know if it resonates for everyone but I think there are quite a few people who appreciate that idea of not coming from a place that you’re not particularly excited about following or proud of,” Abrams explained to a crowd at a screening of the movie back in December. “And though I completely understand ‘you’re nobody’ is a devastating thing, to me the more painful, the more shocking thing was the idea that you’re from the worst possible place.”
"And is that thing that you feel that you know is part of you somehow, that you’re haunted by, is that your destiny? And the idea that there are things more powerful than blood, as Luke says, that thing was a really important thing to convey for us."
To me, I think it would have been more resonant had Rey really been no one. Giving her a storied lineage undercuts the idea that a hero can come from anywhere. Does the Force just restrict itself to a few bloodlines? Is the broom boy from The Last Jedi a secret Palpatine as well?
But Abrams had other ideas. “The idea that these two main characters, both the grandchildren of these crucially important characters, Palpatine and Skywalker, the idea of these two houses coming together in this next generation felt like there was an inevitability to it,” he continued.
I’d counter that with this argument: History repeating itself is boring. Also, Abrams diluted the Rey Palpatine storyline by making the Emperor a clone, and her father a failed clone of the original…in the novelization, anyway.
Hopefully, in the next Star Wars trilogy, we’ll get a new set of heroes who come from nowhere and whose names don’t mean anything.
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h/t Collider