In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren informs Rey that her parents were filthy junk traders who sold her off for drinking money, but he says nothing of her grandparents, leaving a blank canvas for fans to make a case for whatever interesting ancestors they see fit. Just take this theory here, which connects the young aspiring Jedi to a couple of characters in Solo: A Star Wars Story, albeit in a pretty twisted way.
Redditor Infernir is aware of the previous suggestion making the rounds that Rey’s the child of Han Solo and his old lover Qi’ira, but chooses to place Emilia Clarke’s character back one generation in the timeline. Rey’s grandfather, meanwhile, apparently isn’t Han but a famous figure that makes his appearance near the end of the movie.
“The movie “Solo: A Star Wars Story” felt too consequence free to me, this combined with the very suggestive ending led me to the possibility that Darth Maul raped Qi’ra.”
Right off the bat, this sounds too dark for a Star Wars film, not to mention a Disney film. But while this issue isn’t lost on Infernir, the user continues with the theory regardless.
“The reason they weren’t able to show this further is because of the Star War franchises current ties with Disney.
Nonetheless, throughout the movie Qi’ra always seemed like a slave that was>! sexually exploited by Dryden Vos.!<
In fact she is most likely the one who sold herself to get ahead, she did say she did unspeakable things to Han.”
This is sounding less family-friendly by the minute, but assuming the disturbing subtext is buried in the script, the Redditor goes on to elaborate on Qi’ra’s pregnancy and the lives of her children.
“It is unknown if Qi’ra is force sensitive but what is known is that Rey’s parents were said to be nobodies. Qi’ra had to hide her children so ran away with them from Darth Maul, betraying him, and no one knows of what Darth Maul did to Qi’ra. Then Rey’s parents had Rey, lived a life in poverty, didn’t really live a life using the force so people thought they were nobodies…
“It just makes the most sense though that Qi’ra would want to cut all relations from herself, and especially Darth Maul after finally abandoning him and the whole life with the dark side, to any children that they had. Then the child may have very well not known anything about Qi’ras past, or Qi’ra left the child to someone else and it ended up becoming a nobody, but inheriting Qi’ras traits, acting as a junk trading gambler, betraying people and doing what it takes to survive and get ahead… even selling their own baby Rey.”
There are certainly a few issues to be taken with this theory, besides the dubiousness of such shocking story turns being part of the current Star Wars canon (see the numerous Reddit comments questioning the ability of Maul to procreate after getting his lower half sliced off in The Phantom Menace). Still, there’s something to be said for the intriguing connection this lineage would create between Rey and Kylo, both of whom would have dark-sided grandfathers, despite the young pair ending up on opposite sides of the Force.
The previous films in the current Star Wars trilogy have already evoked parallels between Kylo and Rey, so you can expect this theme to continue when Episode IX comes out on December 20th, 2019. What’s more, despite the disappointing box office return of Solo: A Star Wars Story, you can imagine that Disney will find some way of following through on the Maul tease at the end of the film. Just don’t expect either of these future developments to be quite as alarming as the content of this theory.
