Not unlike The Force Awakens before it, The Rise of Skywalker is filled with callbacks to the Star Wars movies of old.
From Death Star II to the unexpected resurgence of Sheev Palpatine, this is a film steeped in Star Wars lore, so it should come as no surprise that Rey’s planet-hopping journey leads her to the place where it all started: Tatooine.
It’s the ancestral home of Luke Skywalker (and arguably one of the most famous planets in all of Star Wars), and the final destination for Rey in The Rise of Skywalker. After besting Palpatine and bringing an end to the so-called Final Order, Daisy Ridley’s Jedi travels to Tatooine in order to bury Luke and Leia’s lightsabers, before basking under the planet’s dual sunset in what may well be repurposed footage.
But we digress; while chatting to The Hollywood Reporter, writer Chris Terrio traced Rey’s journey to the desert planet, and why Tatooine served as a fitting finale not just to The Rise of Skywalker, but the entire nine-picture saga.
I can say with confidence that neither the screenplay nor the film suggest that Rey is going to live alone on Tatooine. The track names on the soundtrack were at the discretion of the master himself, John Williams. I can’t presume to say what John meant when he titled the piece ‘A New Home,’ but I can say that Rey’s arc over three films has to do with her finding the belonging she seeks with the new family she’s found inside the Resistance. The very last thing Rey would do after all that is to go and live alone in a desert.
Terrio also clarifies that Rey has no intention of living on Tatooine, even if John William’s wondrous score suggests otherwise. The final track may be titled “A New Home,” but Daisy Ridley’s heroine is merely passing through.
Leia’s childhood home, Alderaan, no longer exists, but Luke’s childhood home, Tatooine, does. Rey brings the sabers there to honor the Skywalker twins by laying them to rest — together, finally — where it all began. The farthest planet from the bright center of the universe, but a beautiful and peaceful place to bury two sacred objects.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now playing all across the globe – China included, though Lucasfilm’s latest has struggled to make much of an impression in the Middle Kingdom. A paltry $2 million haul in its second weekend will only compound the film’s box office struggle… well, ‘struggle’ in the sense that Episode IX is now unlikely to surpass its predecessor (i.e. The Last Jedi) when all is said and done.
