Star Wars Wednesday: Who are Rey’s parents?

Who are Rey’s parents?

          A few months ago I tackled one of the biggest mysteries to come out of the new Star Wars trilogy: the identity of the mysterious leader of the First Order, Supreme Leader Snoke. Today I thought it’d be fun to look at the other big secret Lucasfilm has drummed up hype for while we wait for The Last Jedi: the identity of Rey’s parents.

          Rey’s patronage has been a topic of discussion ever since before Force Awakens released. From the very start she’s been advertised as a mysterious girl stranded on Jakku with no knowledge of her past. Force Awakens also made waiting for her parents to arrive a large part of her character, at one point turning down the chance to adventure with Han and Chewie so she can go back to Jakku and continue waiting for her family to return. But who is this mysterious family? Knowing this series, odds are it’s someone we already know. But before we get to the suspects, let’s look at some facts.

What we know for sure

          Amazingly, we know even less about Rey’s parentage than we do about Snoke. Daisy Ridley’s gone on record saying that “a lot was answered in Force Awakens”, perhaps meaning that the answer to the big question has been right under our noses for over a year now.

          We also know that whoever left Rey on Jakku used this ship:

          That doesn’t tell us much, but it’s something to keep in mind.

          It’s also heavily implied that Kylo knows who Rey is. Early on when he’s informed that “a girl” assisted Finn and BB-8 with escaping Jakku, he force pulls the officer closer to him and asks who she is, before the scene cuts away. Also in the novelization and LEGO video game versions of the final lightsaber duel between Kylo and Rey, he remarks “It is you” before fighting back.

          And that’s basically everything. So who are our most likely candidates? Let’s check out the lineup.

Suspect #1: Luke Skywalker

          Upon leaving Force Awakens, everyone was basically in agreement that Luke was Rey’s father and he’d get a big “I am your father” moment in Episode VIII similar to the one his dad gave him.

          A lot of the pieces fall into place. The lightsaber that once belonged to both Luke and Anakin Skywalker called out to Rey and flew into her hand at the end of the movie. Her adventure starts out on a desert planet, just like both Skywalker boys. She’s a natural-born pilot, just like Luke and Anakin. Daisy Ridley also bears somewhat of a passing resemblance to a young Mark Hamill, albeit as a female.

          There’s also the hint dropped by Kylo Ren as he reads Rey’s mind in Force Awakens, noting he sees an island in her mind. The same island that Luke is on at the end of the movie? Who knows.

          It seemed like it was destined to be the obvious route to go for. But a surprise roadblock arrived when the promotion for The Last Jedi began: Mark Hamill.

          You see, Mark Hamill has sort of made himself a reputation as the master of keeping secrets for these sorts of things on Twitter. He’s spoken a lot about how he never once divulged that Vader was his father before Empire Strikes Back released. So why is he going around making jokes about Rey being his daughter?

          The most notable example of this was during the Last Jedi panel at Celebration. Mark Hamill was giving nicknames to all the cast and crew at one point, and upon reaching Daisy Ridley, he called her “my daught-errrrr…co-worker. My co-worker.” Also including the fact that we know Disney takes keeping the secrets of upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movies very seriously (and they surely do the same for Star Wars), either Hamill’s trying to throw us off by saying the answer, or Rey isn’t Luke’s daughter.

Suspect #2: Han and Leia

          Ever since I decided the Luke theory wasn’t going anywhere, this has been the most likely option. Rey being the daughter of Han Solo and Princess Leia makes significantly more sense than you’d think, and it even has a few Legends Canon ties that the new movies could’ve taken inspiration from.

          Given that Han and Leia are an enormous focus in the Force Awakens, we already have a lot of evidence thanks to them dropping subtle hints in their dialogue. Han acts as a sort of father figure to Rey throughout the movie, and Leia giving Rey that infamous hug at the end of the movie instead of Chewie (poor guy can’t seem to make it out of the first movie of a trilogy without getting shafted) makes more sense when you realize that she’s her long-lost daughter.

          It’s also implied that Han and Leia got to where they are in Force Awakens after they lost Ben to the Dark Side. Han returned to smuggling, Leia went back to politics. You’d think that losing not one, but two kids would make more sense as to why they were driven apart.

          Plus, Kylo clearly knows who Rey is. We know that he has a soft side, so it would make sense that, while destroying Luke’s academy, he’d take his sister and dump her on Jakku in the middle of nowhere.

          There’s also the fact that one of the most famous parts of the Legends canon was the Solo twins, Han and Leia’s children who later trained to be Jedi. The male twin, Jacen, eventually went to the Dark Side, leading the sister, Jaina, to redeem him. Maybe, as the Lucasfilm story team keeps saying, there is some truth in legends.

Suspect #3: Obi-Wan Kenobi

          Now here’s where things start to get a bit messy. First off there’s no biological way Rey can be Obi-Wan’s daughter; she’d have to be his granddaughter at least. There’s also that pesky “Jedi shall not know love” rule that Anakin broke into a million pieces, leading him to the Dark Side. But seriously, there’s way too many things that tie together to discount this one entirely.

          First off, there’s the issue with Rey’s accent. None of the original trio have a British accent (well, Carrie Fisher did kind of try to have one for a while in A New Hope, but that didn’t last very long). Rey does. Plus, you have to take into consideration that the Force Awakens crew had John Boyega, a British actor, use an American accent for Finn. Obviously she has it for a reason.

          There’s also the fact that Obi-Wan speaks to Rey while she has the lightsaber vision in Maz’s castle, using both spliced clips from Alec Guiness’s time as the character and a new line from Ewan McGregor. He even calls out her name at one point. This would also explain how Rey could use the Jedi mind trick seemingly out of nowhere, as it was her grandfather’s method of choice to dispel a bad situation before it even started. The scenes of her exploring Starkiller Base also bear strong similarities to when you see Obi-Wan turning off the tractor beam on the Death Star in A New Hope.

          There’s also a few options for a potential love interest for Obi-Wan. We know from the Clone Wars series that he had an affair with Satine Kryze, one of the leaders of Mandalore. She was killed off before that series ended, but is there a chance they had a child?

          And even if Satine isn’t Rey’s grandmother, those twenty years Obi-Wan spent on Tatooine gave him ample time to find a partner.

Suspect #4: Emperor Palpatine

          I like to file this one under “OH DEAR GOD PLEASE NO”, because Grandpa Palpatine would be pretty darn awful if you ask me. Remember how terrible the Voldemort twist was in the trainwreck of a script that shall not be named? How would you like that amplified by a thousand?

          But there’s a bit of evidence here. Her lightsaber fighting style bears a strong similarity to the one Palpatine uses in Revenge of the Sith.

          She also hears Palpatine’s weird “Sith battle cry” from Revenge of the Sith in her vision, but by that logic Yoda might as well be her father. The novelization also implies that during her final battle with Kylo, she almost killed him in her rage, but she just left him with a scar insead. I don’t really see this as a reveal of her lineage and more as a foreshadowing of her being tempted by the Dark Side, but to each their own.

          And that’s some of the bigger theories I’ve found among quite a few sillier ones (Ezra of Star Wars Rebels fame and her being a clone of Anakin Skywalker both came up as popular theories). I guess we’ll just have to wait until December to see if any of these are the right answer, because for all we know right now, C-3PO could be her father and we’d probably accept it.