It’s safe to say Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (which marks its third birthday today) is the franchise’s most hated big-screen release. The prequel trilogy is now solidly into its critical rehabilitation phase as those that enjoyed it as kids find many reasons to love it as adults, The Clone Wars animated movie is at least appreciated for introducing us to Ahsoka Tano, and the other Disney-era films may be divisive but absolutely have their merits.
But there’s little love for The Rise of Skywalker, which is widely considered a cinematic disaster by fans and critics alike (as proven by its lowly 52% Rotten Tomatoes score). However, on Reddit the final scene of the movie, in which Rey buries the Skywalker lightsabers in the Tatooine sand and takes on the name Rey Skywalker as Luke and Leia’s Force Ghosts look on approvingly, is now getting almost universal praise:
People… adore this movie?!
Did we fall through a portal to Bizarro world?
What the heck is going on!?!
Oh, all this is coming from r/TheSequels rather than r/StarWars. This subreddit seems to be a sanctuary for those who want to praise Disney’s trilogy without being mocked, with its mission to create a space where fans can only say “positive things” about these movies. They also have a specific rule that there is to be “no negativity regarding Ben Solo’s fate, without exceptions”.
We suspect that if the same post were put to the wider fan community, there’d be a somewhat different response, as Rey becoming an unofficial ‘Skywalker’ neatly undermines the sequel trilogy’s attempt to put magical aristocratic bloodlines behind it and argue that a hero can come from anywhere.
So, these poor deluded souls aside, The Rise of Skywalker is thankfully still considered the disaster it so very obviously is.