Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is being released to impossibly high expectations. It’s not just the conclusion of Disney’s Sequel Trilogy, but bills itself as the final conclusion to the Skywalker saga that began back in 1977. As such, audiences expect the film to provide some answers to the bigger mysteries of the franchise and now, writer Chris Terrio has revealed the questions he considered when writing the script.
The revelations came in an interview with Empire Magazine, where he said:
“One of them is a simple one: ‘Who is Rey?’, which is a question that people not only wonder about quite literally, but wonder about in the spiritual sense. How can Rey become the spiritual heir to the Jedi? We kept coming back to ‘Who is Rey?’, and how can we give the most satisfying answer to that not only factually – because obviously people are interested in whether there’s more to be learned of Rey’s story – but more importantly who is she as a character? How will she find the courage and will and inner strength and power to carry on what she’s inherited?
The second one is, ‘How strong is the Force? … What is the Force and how strong is the Force?’ Those two things were really important.”
To me, the whole Rey thing sounds worryingly like they’re about to retcon Kylo Ren’s revelations about her past in The Last Jedi: that her parents are simply “filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money… dead in a pauper’s grave in the Jakku desert.” I really liked that she’s not part of some long Jedi lineage, as a hereditary Jedi aristocracy just seems kinda regressive. Rey should be able to stand on her own two feet as a warrior, not merely because of the happenstance of who her parents were.
However, if we’re going to learn more about her as a character, then I’m interested. Growing up as a dirt-poor orphan scrounging for junk in a desert has to do a number on you psychologically. She certainly had a far worse childhood than Luke, who at least grew up with Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen there to look after him.
And to be honest, I’m not particularly interested in learning what the Force is, either. The last time someone tried to pin it down it didn’t work out so well. One word: midichlorians.
