Rey Takes Her First Steps Toward Uncovering Her Family History

From EW:

Rey’s family has become the “Rosebud” of Star Wars: Who are they? What’s their significance? How will that revelation shape her destiny?

The mystery was introduced in The Force Awakens when Daisy Ridley’s desert scavenger touched the ancestral Skywalker lightsaber and saw a series of visions, including a starship abandoning a much younger version of herself on the junkyard world of Jakku.

Now, The Last Jedi will finally resolve the question that fans have been debating for two years.

This article, obviously, won’t spoil anything. The theory I’m holding onto is still this one.

But in EW’s interview for our cover story on The Last Jedi, writer and director Rian Johnson did offer his thoughts on a related question: How much does Rey’s past matter — or is this a tangent fans have obsessed over unnecessarily?

“To me, it’s important insofar as it’s important to her,” Johnson says. “And I think it’s important to her in terms of what is her place in all of this? What’s going to define her in this story? She was told in the last movie that the answer’s not in the past; it’s looking forward. But she’s showing up on this island to talk to this hero from the past.”

Let’s just pause for a line from Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon For the Misbegotten: “There is no present or future — only the past, happening over and over again — now.”

If Rey understands her origin, it can be a map for her future, a guide to avoiding whatever fear or mistakes have come before. In that way, Johnson says Rey does need to know. (And so do we.)

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