As a prodigy of the living Force, Rey has shown a range of exceptional abilities in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy. Though it’s only after learning about her true heritage that these inherent skills start to make sense.
Rian Johnson originally tried to tackle this issue in The Last Jedi by having Snoke talk about the balance of the Force. In that sense, if there’s a powerful dark side practitioner, the Will of the Force counters that by bestowing someone from the light side with immense power. The last movie in the Skywalker Saga, on the other hand, offers a simpler explanation. Rey was the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, or more precisely, the daughter of his clone. This not only justifies why she was able to match the power of a Skywalker (Ben Solo), but also why she didn’t need as much training as the other Jedi.
Still, one of the things that the Sequel Trilogy failed to address by the end was Rey’s connection to Anakin’s lightsaber. In The Force Awakens, the Jakkuian scavenger experiences several visions related to the events of past Star Wars films after touching the legendary weapon and now, a new reference book called The Star Wars Book confirms that she does indeed possess the Force ability known as “psychometry.”
“Some Force abilities require years of training, a form of instinctual aptitude, or a very strong connection to the Force to access. A small number of Force users, including Rey and Cal Kestis, have the rare ability of psychometry, which allows them to learn about people or events by touching an object associated with them,” the book reads.
This power was originally introduced in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, utilized by Jedi Master Quinlan Vos. As you’d expect, the order didn’t favor the use of this powerful ability since the person in question wasn’t just perceiving events but experiencing them. The Jedi believed that the flood of these alien emotions would disrupt their inner peace. Even Quinlan Vos suffered a terrible fate for succumbing to psychometry.
Still, Rey saw things that the weapon wasn’t present for, so we don’t exactly know how this ability works or if Kylo Ren also possessed it through their Force Dyad. One thing’s for certain, though, and that’s that even the most powerful Force users in the world of Star Wars, like Anakin and Yoda, didn’t seem to have this innate skill, which says a lot about Rey and her destiny to bring balance.
