Rey’s vision in Star Wars: The Force Awakens has been a subject of ongoing speculation and curiosity for fans, but this latest theory suggests that we might have been viewing it wrong this whole time.
A new piece from Screen Rant is concerned with the footage featured in the mysterious montage of the Knights of Ren, who are seen surrounded by corpses against the backdrop of a barely-visible building on a dark and stormy night. Though this structure is widely interpreted to be Luke’s academy, which Kylo and his peers destroyed after Ben Solo and Luke’s falling out, the article points out that the building’s surrounding pillars don’t correspond with the temple seen in The Last Jedi. From here, the conclusion is drawn that this is a different building entirely, and that Rey is actually watching Kylo Ren lay waste to another Jedi temple.
The idea certainly seems plausible, but perhaps another, simpler explanation is that the visible difference between the structures featured in The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi is nothing more than a continuity error. After all, these two movies were being handled by two different directors with their own fairly separate visions for the series, so it’s surely possible that Rian Johnson just took a few liberties when he created his version of Luke’s temple.
That being said, now that J.J. Abrams is returning to the franchise, it remains to be seen whether he’s chosen to honor the subversive take on the property that Johnson offered, or create a sequel that hews closer to the more traditional vision we saw in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. With details on next year’s film in short supply, we’ll probably just have to find out when Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.
