Earlier this week, Simon Pegg made some news when he told Josh Horowitz on the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast that J.J. Abrams probably did have grand plans for Rey’s lineage and the events of The Last Jedi changed all that. Pegg said, “I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by the last one. There was some talk about, you know, a kind of relevant lineage for her.”
This, of course, put social media into a frenzy, again, with Rey Truthers believing there’s still hope that Rey has some secret backstory that has her being related to a famous character from the original trilogy. Because, you see, according to them, in The Last Jedi, Kyo Ren lied to Rey to trick her into thinking she’s nobody. (At this point I won’t dare point out that Rey said it herself because no one wants to listen to that part.)
Ugh, I hate this subject! So this is the last time I will be spending any sort of effort explaining why this idea to retcon Rey’s lineage is stupid. First of all, I don’t take anything Simon Pegg says at face value for reasons I won’t go into here (you can ask me later), but let’s just say his word is not gospel to me. Second, why would J.J. Abrams be the overall architect of this trilogy? He bolted after The Force Awakens. That’s great he had “an idea,” but, at the time, the next two movies weren’t his movies. By the time he came back on for Episode IX, he already knew what happened in The Last Jedi.
So if you are a Rey truther, what is it you want? Why is her family so important? (Though, I will concede she does need a last name. It’s weird the two main characters of this trilogy don’t have last names. Just make it Rey Sunstalker, or something?) And I’m not saying J.J. Abrams won’t retcon Rey’s lineage in some way, it’s his movie after all, but what I am saying is that doing so would be stupid. You basically have four options and all of them are stupid and bad and I will explain why.
Option One: Rey Solo
Rey has met both Han and Leia and neither of them knew her. “Oh, but maybe they didn’t know!” So, from a story perspective, that’s what you want to go with? “Han and Leia didn’t know.” So you want to spend precious minutes of Episode IX with a whole segment of exposition explaining how both Han and Leia didn’t realize they had a second child? And remember, this would have to be done without Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher. There’s already some criticism that they weren’t the best parents for sending Ben Solo off with Luke, so you want to make them even worse?
Option Two: Rey Skywalker
A large portion of the plot of The Last Jedi was the fact that Luke Skywalker has no idea who Rey is and wants her to go away – then eventually teaching her that a person doesn’t have to be a Jedi, or a Skywalker, to have a connection to the Force. So how does this one play out in the next movie. Does Luke come to her in a vision and say, “So you thought I was a dick before? Well, watch out, because I have some news.” So either Luke just lied the entire movie, which would really be awful, or we’d have to, again, use precious minutes from Episode IX listening to Force Ghost Luke discuss how he met a woman, who has never been mentioned before, and they had a kid, but he had no idea it was Rey and didn’t put two and two together … until now. Yeah, that sounds like a great movie.
Option Three: Rey Kenobi
So the first option here is that Old Ben met a woman on Tatooine and had a child and Rey is, shockingly, almost 40 years old. Rey’s age will be the big reveal in Episode IX. The other option here is strikingly bad and I love how people just throw this around like it’s a good idea, “Oh, she’s Obi-Wan’s grandchild.” So, it would be bad enough listening to Luke talk about this mystery woman we’ve never met, but in this scenario we’d have to listen to a story about three new characters we’ve never met. “Rey, back on Tatooine, Ben Kenobi met a woman and we need to tell you about her. We need to tell you about her because she had a child. And that young child would grow up to be … someone who met another woman. And then those two had a child … zzzzzzzz … zzzzzzzzz … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
Option Four: Rey Palpatine
Why? And how? This gets into Kenobi territory with the whole either Rey is 40 or it involves three new characters problem. “Um, maybe the evil Force ghost of Palpatine created her?” Yeah, and maybe the evil Force ghost of Ric Olié created her! I guess we can make up any dumb thing. I would love to hear either of these explanations and why this idea sounds appealing in the least. That’s the problem here, everyone keeps arguing how, technically, this could happen, but no one has yet made a convincing argument why it should happen – which is much more important!
Bonus Option Five: Rey Binks
Honestly, this make just as much, or even more, sense than all the others. At least we have no idea what became of Jar Jar Binks after Revenge of the Sith, so for all we know he was out siring children and leaving his lineage all over the galaxy. I’m not even kidding when I say I’d be happier with this outcome than the other four possibilities.
Alright, that’s it. I’m done.
You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.
