Myself, I didn't become vocal about it since I was trying to not spoil it for anyone. Plus, while I am sure enough in my opinions to run a blog, I tend to allow people to like what they want without saying anything. Such as not telling people to quit with the #BenDeservedBetter. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
I feel people have misinterpreted the ending of The Rise of Skywalker and so wanted to finally give my two cents on it. The best way to understand the ending of the most recent Star Wars movie is to recount Rey's journey throughout the sequel trilogy.
Rey was born with an infamous name and a dark heritage. While her father and mother did not have any memorable deeds to their name, her grandfather was an altogether different matter. Though Sheev Palpatine had appeared to be nothing more than one of the only good politicians in the Old Republic, he was the Sith Lord Darth Sidious.
Because of who Palpatine was, his son decided to be a nobody. He didn't want to get involved in the Dark Side and his wife also agreed to this.
So who is the other half of the Force Dyad? Ben Solo, son of Han and Leia Organa Solo. Like her, he came from a powerful line of Force Users. His uncle is Luke Skywalker who is the son of Anakin Skywalker. As Ben grew up he became obsessive about Anakin Skywalker, specifically the time period in which his grandfather was the Sith Lord Darth Vader.
Rey being a Palpatine is a good twist and makes her rethink who she really is. Her character arc in the sequel trilogy is all about finding peace with who she is. So having her have to come to grasp with being the granddaughter of a Sith Lord is a powerful thing.
However, I would have preferred if Rey hadn't come from any great lineage. To me her coming from no one helped restore the mysticism that the midichlorians ruined. Yes the ability to use the Force is genetic, but it is completely random who gets the right genes to use the Force. Just because your parents are extremely powerful Force Users doesn't mean you will have any ability to use the Force.
Rey did not have the easiest of childhoods. A majority of my readers, for better or worse, know who their parents are. They know where they come from. Expectations have been given to them as they made the hard journey to adulthood. Rey did not know where she came from and so had no expectations other than what she gave herself.
One of those expectations was that her parents would eventually come back to get her. That she would eventually explore the galaxy with her parents. She also expected them to be someone and not just any average people.
The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker make no mention of Rey having any friends on Jakku. Yet even without having any friends growing up, her ability to form connections with others is still there. She is still able to form friendships quickly with BB-8 and Finn.
Rey being able to connect with others and having a strong moral compass shows how she will be able to resist the Dark Side. It doesn't matter that her father is a powerful Sith, what matters is that her heart is strong enough to stay in the light.
Near the end of one of the long days Rey had grown used to living, she met BB-8. Another scavenger had been about to destroy him when the young woman rescued him. She hadn't had a family to raise her and yet had a big enough heart to rescue a droid. Maybe this was the Force making sure Rey went towards the destiny that was hers. Either she would succumb to the Dark Side or she would rise to the light.
If Rey hadn't rescued BB-8 she would have never met Finn. It was the former stormtrooper that started her down the road of finding and joining the Resistance. Though he himself was trying to run away from the galactic conflict. So his early attempts at helping Rey were really just lucky accidents.
While Rey cared about both BB-8 and Finn, she was less trusting of the latter. This due to the droid not liking the former stormtrooper at first. As Poe Dameron, BB-8's owner and companion, was missing and Finn was wearing his jacket...well...you can see why the droid wasn't trusting him in the beginning.
I would say Rey's large heart is what drove her to wanting to join, but she was too naive to understand the depth of her decision. All she knew was that many great people were a part of the organization and she wanted to do good.
Some people say Rey didn't have a character arc in the sequel series and they are wrong. The naive woman from Jakku transforming into the new seasoned leader of the Jedi (or Jedi-like) Order is one large change she made.
Han also played another role for Rey. The woman had never known her parents and so felt an innate desire to connect to the man for that reason. Han was not only old enough to be her father, he was a hero and so she couldn't help but connect with him.
Rey thinking of Han as a father figure is the reason why she shared our pain at his death. Even though she hadn't known him for thirty-eight years, his adventures spanning both movies and the old Expanded Universe, she had started to think of herself as his daughter. Rey also saw him as this unstoppable hero that couldn't be killed and so his death was a rude awakening to her.
From the information we got from The Rise Skywalker about Ben Solo and Rey being a Force Dyad, her connection to Han was most likely influenced by that. Though Ben was doing his best to be Kylo Ren, a servant of the Dark Side, he was still devastated about killing his father. So it makes sense that Rey felt that same pain.
Rey and Kylo Ren first met on Takodana. She had been traveling with Finn, BB-8, Han Solo, and Chewbacca. Everyone but the former stormtrooper were on the lookout for the Resistance. But before they could simply make their way from Takodana, the First Order attacked.
Rey got separated from the others and did her best to hold her ground. But as Kylo was at full strength he was able to easily subdue the woman. He knocked her out and carried her back to his ship for interrogation.
What is interesting to note about Kylo capturing Rey, is that he was strangely interested in her. It wasn't in a way that suggested Rey was a stranger to him. The reason why it appeared he knew her was because he did. Sort of. As they were a Force Dyad, one soul in two bodies, they both knew each other.
But it was Kylo who made the first move to meet the other side of himself.
Even when he does his best to break into her mind, he fails. He fails so badly that she is able to get into his mind and torment him. This does not show Rey having superior power, just a more stable mind. She is able to remain focused while Kylo's emotions are all over the place. He has feelings that he doesn't understand and he is still trying to dedicate himself to the Dark Side.
Rey, on the other hand, is able to have much clearer goals. All she needs to focus on is getting out of this situation alive.
Due to being mentally and physically injured, Kylo wasn't fighting at full strength. So when both Finn and Rey are able to stand up to him, this isn't proof that they are superior fighters to the Dark Side user. It's just proof that Kylo wasn't at his best.
There is a good chance that Rey could've killed Kylo. So why didn't she? It wasn't because she loved him, it wasn't until The Last Jedi that she started thinking kindly of the man. The reason she didn't kill him was because Starkiller Base was being destroyed. She wasn't so vengeful that she'd be suicidal in pursuit of killing him.
One plot point of The Force Awakens was that the Resistance was attempting to find Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. Sometime after his Jedi Academy had been destroyed by Kylo Ren, he had faded away into the background. It isn't until the end of the movie that his location is revealed and Rey is sent to get him back to the Resistance.
The Resistance's need to find Luke is due to his reputation. He was one of the key players in taking down the Galactic Empire. So they think that he is also the only hope in defeating the First Order.
Upon Rey finding Luke, he tosses the lightsaber that she offered him. It turns out that the Jedi Master adopted a cynical attitude after Ben Solo turned to the Dark Side. He blamed himself for what became of the man now calling himself Kylo Ren.
While many did not think Luke would act the way he did in The Last Jedi, I did. He was highly idealistic in A New Hope and his way of thinking was only justified in the Original Trilogy. He had never truly experienced failure like he did with Ben. So of course his idealism would come crashing down hard after he was the reason a powerful Dark Side user came into existence.
I like this version of Luke and, no, not because it's subversive. Seeing a broken and lost hero makes an important statement to both Rey and the viewer. What is that statement? It's: we can't always depend on those we idealize because they are only human. They are susceptible to everything we are. Our heroes won't always be there when we need them and so we must step out from their shadows.
While Rey is training with Luke, she forms a relationship with Ben Solo. It begins with her loathing the man to her realizing the kind side of him. The side of himself that he is trying to push away to be loyal to the Dark Side. And yet that side of Ben is one that becomes clearer the more he talks with Rey.
As they are a Force Dyad, their connection with each other is unusually strong. Rey and Ben can talk with each other over vast distances while seeing each other. In fact they can sometimes feel the environment the other is in. In The Rise of Skywalker this way of communicating evolves to the point they can also give the other items.
Supreme Leader Snoke claimed to have been the one to establish the connection. Even before the fact Rey and Ben were a Force Dyad was revealed, I knew that had to be a lie. Their feelings for each other were just too strong to have been faked.
Reylo (the relationship between Kylo Ren and Rey) is a popular canon ship in Star Wars. But just because it's popular doesn't mean everyone loves it. And, guess what, people are free to like and dislike whatever they choose. However sometimes it seems people's interpretation is so wrong they're only believing it to be on the moral high ground. Basically using a fictional relationship to show how moral of a person they are. Because fandom can get really weird at times and remind me why preferring rarepairs is actually a good thing.
One of the wrong interpretations of the ship is seeing Reylo as abusive. To me that doesn't sit right as it conjures up images of relationships where the woman makes excuses for all of the man's bad behavior. The woman continues the relationship with hopes of changing her lover. And, to make matters worse, this is shown as romantic and what love should be like. For a popular example just look at the relationship between Bella Swan and Edward Cullen from the Twilight series.
While both Rey and Kylo have harmed each other, all their conflicts boil down to them being on opposite sides of a conflict. The 'abuse' is merely how enemies react to each other.
Over the course of The Last Jedi Rey starts to have feelings for Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren. She has started to see him as a person worthy of love instead of a villain worthy only of death. This wasn't because of one conversation but many. Their love was most likely helped by them being a Force Dyad.
Rey physically leaves Kylo Ren and mentally blocks him from ever contacting her again. She is not the victim, she is the hero. She makes the right decision even when her heart tells her something else.
And why does Rey decide to leave him? She realizes that he is no different than Snoke and it would be wrong to be by his side.
But it is my theory that between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker that Rey and Kylo had some communication. I think so because she wasn't that surprised when Kylo Ren contacted her in The Rise of Skywalker.
One of the things I loved in The Last Jedi was the revelation that Rey came from nobody important. To me this helped bring something back that had been lost from the series for some time: that anyone could become a Jedi and you didn't need to be from a certain lineage to be one.
I would've loved if that had stayed canon, but it didn't. So from a storytelling point of view, that revelation should have never happened. If it had never happened there would have been more time for her being a Palpatine to have more of an impact on the story. As is, she seems to recover from the shock very quickly.
So to find out that she isn't the decedent of one of the great heroes, like Obi-Wan Kenobi or Luke Skywalker, and instead one of the great villains would have been devastating. It could've been cool to see her slowly come to terms with her heritage and having her realize it doesn't define her future.
Even within the short time that Rey struggles with the revelation she is a Palpatine, it is shown clearly how devastated she is about the news. She decides to try and hide away from the rest of the galaxy so she doesn't harm anyone. The same thing that Luke Skywalker did before her.
It is sort of poetic that both Rey and Luke had the same basic thing happen to them. They are both idealistic individuals that are put through a horrific event that threatens their entire belief system. So they flee in a misguided attempt to keep the ones they love safe.
In a sad way, Rey became like one of her idols.
The reason Rey is easily able to snap back is because of Luke Skywalker. In The Last Jedi it was the young woman who had snapped the Jedi Master out of his self imposed exile. So, in essence, it was Rey's kindness that helped her out of her own ordeal.
A large chunk of The Rise of Skywalker is Rey and gang trying to find Exegol, the hidden planet of the Sith, and that journey leads them to the second Death Star. Due to her rashness, she goes to the structure without waiting for a time when the weather would make travel to the wreckage safer.
On the second Death Star she encounters Kylo Ren. Fueled by her own emotions and the fact they're enemies, they fight. The fight consumes her to the point that she Force Pushes Finn away so her friend can't interfere.
While Rey and Kylo are fighting, Leia Organa Solo is on Ajan Kloss. Even after everything Ben Solo has become, Leia loves him nonetheless. Before Han Solo went to Kylo, the old woman had asked for Ben to be brought back home. So, unlike Luke Skywalker, she decides to use her remaining strength to try and turn her son back to the light.
Leia's timing couldn't have been any worse as the moment she calls out to Ben, he is distracted just enough for Rey to land a deadly blow against her opponent.
I have heard some people saying that when Rey had to use her own life force to heal the Dark Side user, she could do it without paying a cost. That is not the case as you can see her hand in slight pain afterward. It is a very subtle motion so unless you're looking you might not notice it.
Even though Rey healed Ben, she wasn't going to stay by his side. He was still an enemy and her heart couldn't have what it wanted. But she does tell him that after he killed Snoke, if he had renounced the Dark Side she would've taken his hand.
While Ian McDiarmid gives another solid performance as Palpatine, the reason for him being in this film is very flimsy to the point of being silly. If Palpatine's return had been built up in The Last Jedi then there would be more room to improve his storyline in The Rise of Skywalker.
As is...
Rey arrives on Exegol to fight Palpatine, her grandfather. Once she starts talking to the great Sith Lord he reveals his actual intentions. He had always intended to draw her to the secret Sith planet so as to use her as his willing or unwilling host. While this does seem threatening, there are plot holes that make this not feel as threatening as it should be.
Anyways...since Rey is the hero of this series, she would never bow down to Palpatine no matter the threat. She is not the same woman as she was when leaving Jakku. Now she has started to truly see the galaxy as it is. She has seen her heroes as mere shadows and had to become better than the ones she used to idolize. Rey has also dealt with her feelings for Ben Solo in a mostly mature manner.
So when Rey stands against her grandfather she is at her prime.
During the time Rey has been facing her own demons to end up fighting Palpatine, Ben Solo has been fighting his own. He ended up throwing away the lightsaber he used when taking on the name Kylo Ren. The scene was a mirror to how he had killed Han Solo in The Force Awakens.
Due to his feelings for Rey, most likely intensified due to them being a Force Dyad, he feels compelled to stand by the woman he loves. Showing that Ben is truly Han's son, he goes to help Rey with nothing but a blaster.
Rey senses Ben when he arrives on Exegol and uses their intense connection to help him. As she had two lightsabers, she gave him one through the same method they had sent things to each other previously. Because he was now properly armed, he was able to survive getting to her side.
However, what they couldn't have counted on was how Darth Sidious reacted. He and, therefore, Snoke hadn't realized Rey and Ben Solo were a Force Dyad. Instead of feeling fear, the Sith Lord saw an opportunity. Because the pair are a Force Dyad there was more than enough energy to give Darth Sidious the power he craved.
After Darth Sidious consumed enough power, the fight started in earnest.
Early on in the fight Ben Solo is tossed aside and so Rey is forced to confront Palpatine on her own. It is up to her to use everything she has learned to defeat one of the greatest evils the galaxy has ever known. But she can't do so alone.
At the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker she is practicing a technique so that she can communicate with all the Jedi both living and dead. So, of course, during her fight with Palpatine she calls on the strength of the entire Jedi Order. It is only by the strength of the Jedi Order that Rey is able to defeat her grandfather.
While Rey defeated Darth Sidious, her grandfather, the victory cost her the ultimate price. In that final battle she ended up dying. She had been so willing in her beliefs that she had boldly gone to death so that the galaxy stayed safe. She had died so that her friends would be able to live long after the fight had ended.
Early in the battle with Darth Sidious, Ben had been thrown down a crevice. To me that had signaled he was not dead. You do not build up a character for three movies and give them a compelling character arc just to kill them off that quickly. Unless you're the final season of Game of Thrones and decide to kill a great villain with bricks.
Anyways...after the battle Ben manages to climb up where he sees that Rey is dead. He is more than devastated as she and his mother were his two reasons for going back to the light side of the Force. Rey had helped him see a side of himself that he had tried to push away for so long. So he crawls to her side and embraces her.
Ben Solo had done many horrible things while adopting the name Kylo Ren. He had killed his father and after killing Snoke took control of the First Order in a thirst for power. He had even tried distancing himself from his parents for some time. Yet he was now different than the man who had done all of those things. He had become a man that had broken free of Palpatine's control and was now an ally of the light side of the Force.
So Ben did what Kylo never would have done, he used Force Heal to bring Rey back to life. He sacrificed himself for the woman he loved. The woman who had finally helped him start to see the error of his ways.
Rey has no idea what Ben had done so that she could live. She is imagining a future with the man she loves. She sees a man who will stand by her side and how they will make each other stronger than ever before. She has the hard task of restarting a Jedi, or Jedi-like, Order but at least she has Ben by her side.
In her happiness she kisses him and he returns her affections. But just as their romance has truly started, he dies and she is devastated.
But since Ben brought Rey back to life, couldn't she do the same to him? Why didn't she make the effort that he did for her?
Even if she was able to bring him back to life, that would mean both would die until their bodies finally decomposed. There would be no way for both to live at the same time. It could be that she didn't want to start this cycle and was strong enough to step away from it. Just like she was strong enough to go away from Kylo Ren.
The more likely explanation, though, is that Force Healing to the point of bringing someone back to life requires a lot of concentration and energy. As Ben hadn't been able to fight the final battle against Darth Sidious, he had a large store of energy. Then there is the fact Rey was the only thing on his mind which added his ability to concentrate.
Rey, on the other hand, had just defeated Palpatine which cost her so much energy to the point she died. Even though she had the concentration needed, she did not have the energy. Her situation is similar to Prince Elfangor's in the first Animorphs book. In that book he was injured and dying even though he had the ability to morph which would have healed all of his wounds. This would have also allowed him to escape from being eaten alive. He didn't morph because he did not have the energy to do so.
A Force Dyad means one soul in two bodies. It means that the two physical bodies aren't all that important as it is the singular soul that is. In this case one part of the soul refers to itself as Rey and the other as Ben Solo. So when Ben dies he doesn't actually die. Instead he reunites with Rey and the two become one.
One soul. One body.
I admit this is a headcanon, but one that seems to fit. Although with the upcoming novelization it could be disproven.
Mama and Lockne had always had a strong psychic connection. Each one could feel what the other was feeling. In the game Mama managed to block herself from Lockne because...long story. Anyways...it isn't until Mama is about to die that she reunites with Lockne.
And when Mama dies her and Lockne become one. She even mentions at least once that after becoming one there is really no difference between them. I see this thing happening with Rey and Ben Solo after his death.
There is a certain group of Reylo shippers that went to Twitter with #BenDeservedBetter after The Rise of Skywalker was released. This group of shippers thought that since Ben died that was a cause for outrage. Because how could you say you liked Ben Solo and/or Reylo and think this is a good thing? Everyone knows that once a character dies everything about them is automatically ruined.
If Ben's death had been poorly done, say like Peter "Littlefinger" Baelish from Game of Thrones, I would be joining in the outrage. You can't build a character up and have the audience focus on them only for them to have an insignificant death. But the thing is, Ben's death was not poorly done and showed great character growth.
Ben decided to turn to the light and help Rey with her fight against Palpatine. His last act was to bring his love back to life which required a level of selflessness he hadn't had before. His death was poetic and showed the completion of his character arc. That is hardly a reason to cry foul and merely shows the childishness of certain shippers.
Plus there is a fact that even though Ben died, he didn't die in the classical sense. The Force Dyad finally became one.
Rey has had an extremely hard time during the course of three films. She shed her naive thoughts and yet still kept her kind nature. She has seen her idols as flawed people and yet that did not deter her from her own path. She has learned the truth of where she came from and yet did not let her future be determined by her past.
So at the end of The Rise of Skywalker she decided to pay tribute to both Luke Skywalker and Leia Solo by burying their lightsabers. I admit there were better places to bury the lightsabers, but I don't hate the idea of her doing so on Tatooine.
While on Tatooine, Rey encounters a woman that asks for her name. It is that moment that the Force Ghosts of both Luke and Leia appear to her. Ben Solo doesn't appear with them as that part of the Force Dyad has reunited with Rey. Ben and Rey are now one so it wouldn't make sense for him to appear as a ghost.
In recognition of Rey's ties to Ben, Luke, Leia, and the Light side of the Force she takes the last name of Skywalker. She also tells the woman her new last name. I like to think that the Ben side of her, that is so obsessed with Anakin Skywalker, pushed the idea on her and she mentally rolled her eyes but ended up agreeing.
I admit that bit of headcanon helps me endure Rey choosing a last name at all. I had wished Rey had decided that she preferred paving her own path without being attached to any great lineage. During the sequel trilogy she had been faced with her idols being very human, after all.
Yellow lightsabers were most commonly used by Jedi Sentinels and show that the wielder has a greater grasp of the Force than other Force Users. This most likely indicates that Rey will both be the leader of a new Jedi Order or Jedi-like Order. A yellow lightsaber could indicate that she does away with the dogmatic Jedi and embraces all of the Force.
In The Last Jedi it was hinted at that the Jedi Order needed to change and that the Grey Jedi are canon. So what better way for Rey to create change than by seeking actual balance of the Force and making a Grey Jedi Order? Her having a yellow lightsaber makes that an extremely likely possibility.
Unlike what many thought, Rey most likely won't stay on Tatooine. She was just there to pay respect to Luke Skywalker and Leia Solo, the two people that mentored her in the ways of the Force, and would then leave. However it might be a good idea for her to stay on Tatooine and start her new Order there.
One of the failings of the Jedi Order is that it became too political. Instead of ensuring that justice was kept in the galaxy, the Jedi had to do what the Old Republic thought was right. Such as in The Phantom Menace Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn and his apprentice Obi-Wan Kenobi were sent to Naboo to make sure the laws of the Old Republic were kept. They didn't go because the Jedi felt something in the Force or they felt inclined to go.
Rey now has the chance to make her Order free from any political leanings. Tatooine is out of the territory of both the Old and New Republic. Which means it will most likely not be in the jurisdiction that replaces the New Republic. So by establishing an Order there, Rey won't be under any obligation to take orders from a political leader.
Also the final shot is a homage to A New Hope with Rey taking Luke's stance in the first Star Wars movie. There was no other reason for that to be done.
So what about any callbacks to The Force Awakens, the film where Rey started her epic journey? When she arrives at Luke's home she slides down a hill on a piece of scrap metal with her theme playing. A very similar scene was in The Force Awakens.
Rey taking Luke Skywalker's pose from A New Hope also signifies more than just a mere homage. It shows that Luke's mantle has been passed down to Rey. Unlike him, she stands in front of the two setting suns with experience to face whatever the future brings her.
Remember you can submit ideas for future posts HERE. I also talk about other fandoms, so don't feel that you have to only submit ideas for Star Wars posts.
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