**SPOILERS AHEAD**
Staring bleary eyed at my Twitter feed on New Year’s Day, I was soon overcome by the horror that everyone was still arguing about Rey’s parents in “Star Wars.”
Indeed, one of the big mysteries of the new saga appeared to be solved in “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.” During a crucial scene, Kylo tells Rey that her parents were nothing more than junk traders, who sold their child for drinking money, and later died forgettable deaths. There’s no great lineage that Rey descends from, which makes the character even more singular and heroic. It also creates a throughline to the Canto Big kid at the end, who also dreams of fighting with the resistance — it’s possible for anybody to save the galaxy. However, it would seem the door has been left open to fill in some (unnecessary) details about where Rey came from.
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Speaking with Huffington Post, writer and director Rian Johnson explained why it was so important that Rey’s background not weigh so heavily on the personality she grows into.
“The easy thing would be, ‘Yes, your parents are so and so and here’s your place in the world’… The hardest thing she could hear would be, ‘No, you’re not going to get the answer. This is not going to define you. You’re going to have to find your own place in this world. Kylo is going to use that even as leverage to try and make you feel insecure, and you’re going to have to stand on your own two feet,’ ” he explained.
Exactly! And that sounds right on. Except, Johnson kept the door open to the possibility that Kylo Ren lied to Rey.
“Anything’s still open, and I’m not writing the next film. [J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio] are doing it,” Johnson stated, adding: “With all of these movies, Obi-Wan’s whole speech about a certain point of view always applies, so I think that you have to always think about the context of how information is given.”
That last line set up a flurry of activity on social media, with many arguing whether or not there’s more to Rey’s history. Frankly, I hope not. The “Star Wars” stories need to grow and reach out to new places, and ‘The Last Jedi’ certainly swung hard to push the narratives toward the new characters. Pulling that back in ‘Episode IX,’ and making Rey yet another link in the Skywalker (or whoever) chain might limit the imagine of where the franchise can go next.
Thoughts? Continue the argument in the comments section.