Rey’s Star Wars secret lies in the prequels
Everyone has been looking to ‘solve’ The Force Awakens’ secrets by avoiding the prequels. While that is hopeful it may be a mistake and, in fact, I have a theory that the prequels reveal a little more.
Where does Rey come from? Rey is unlikely to be Han and Leia’s child as Han clearly does not recognize her. Leia is more of a puzzle since she hugs Rey as soon as she meets here suggesting some familiarity. But that suggests that Leia knows who Rey is.
If Rey is part of the usual Star Wars lore though, we would expect her to be part of the Skywalker clan — after all, that is what these movies are about — family conflict masked as the greater conflict between good and evil. To play her part, Rey has to be part of the family.
Some have suggested she is the daughter of Luke Skywalker but this seems unlikely and complicated. There is never a hint that Luke cares anything other than destiny and people who care about destiny don’t have time to muck around with romance.
Instead, we perhaps should look to the prequels. If Rey is a Skywalker she is a descendant of Shmi Skywalker. And if you take a look at the picture above you can see precisely where JJ Abrams inspiration for her came from. She is no royalty figure.
But then she also has to be in the line that carries The Force — however, you want to think of it as being transmitted genetically. One possibility is Shmi had another kid. That is possible but will require some work as there is no hint of such a thing. But it could have been twins and whomever the father was may have whisked that kid away at an earlier time. In which case, what is to explain the whole Anakin is the chosen one or what have you stuff?
The other explanation is to use the other big part of the prequels — clones. Clones were of course mentioned in the original trilogy and mentioned again in The Force Awakens. But what if someone were to clone a Jedi? In that case — again insert favourite genetic theory here — you would get a person or persons with The Force. (Indeed, I recall such a thing — spoilers! — was anticipated in books that followed the original trilogy aftermath).
Now I am not saying Rey is a clone per se but the offspring of one. To make sense she would have to be a clone of someone we knew. There is only one candidate: Anakin Skywalker. What if Anakin Skywalker were cloned by the Emperor as some kind of insurance policy? Then that Anakin could be bred to produce more Jedi. Those young Jedi were then abandoned around the galaxy to be picked up later. After all, if you want some more Sith, it is better to not get the Jedi trained too young. Better to have them suffer and be naturally angry and alone.
The details here become murkier for me. This could be the Emperor. It could be that Luke discovered this and tried to fix it and then failed. Or it could be Snoke who has something to do with it. (By the way, people have suggested that he is Darth Plagueis the Wise given that Kylo Ren calls him ‘wise’ in the new movie and this would further all of the above ideas).
I have to admit that my version here is somewhat complicated but it is as simple as there is at the moment. It is certainly far less complicated than the “Luke’s daughter” theory or the “Han’s memory was wiped” theory. Moreover, it only moderately ties our hands on the prequels so if you are hoping those will be redone sometime you can still have that hope.
