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ariainstars · 4 years

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Rey Palpatine, Kylo Ren or Ben Solo: Who’s Got the Button?

Warning: longer post.

Who Is Rey?

Sigh. I can’t believe I was this naïve. Really, I can’t.

There are narrative parallels between The Force Awakens and A New Hope, of course. But apart from desert planet and droid, the parallels between Rey and Luke, which many fans took for a sign that she might be a secret daughter of his, are few.

Rey is a slave on a desert planet who collects and repairs spare parts. Her parents were nobodies. She doesn’t want to leave because it would make her lose the tenuous link she has with her family.

She saves someone she just met in a brave, crazy stunt where she proves that she is a very good pilot even with hardly any training.

She meets a kind elderly man who tells her about the Force. He is a father figure for her because she doesn’t have one, but he gets killed about a day after she met him.

She had barely known about the Jedi but finds out she has talent in the Force, so instead of going home she is sent to train with someone whom she doesn’t know and who is not very willing to do so, and not capable of being a father figure for her either.

This is Anakin to a T! And Anakin ended up being the bad guy in the end. I’m sure that watching the PT, no one who was unfamiliar with the saga would have believed he would be.

It is not a coincidence that Ben’s light sabre looked like a cross and Rey’s like a fork: that was another dead giveaway announcing that he would be the victim in this story, and she the perpetrator.

„Show me again the power of the darkness, and I will let nothing stand in our way. Show me, grandfather, and I will finish what you started.” Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens

Ben and Rey are a dyad, meaning that in one way or another, their destinies parallel one another. It was he who wanted to “finish what his grandfather started”: but it was she who actually finished what her grandfather had started. Jedi and Skywalker family are extinct; Finn may or may not be Force-sensitive, but he’s not trained. All of this leaves Rey solely in charge. And everybody cheers her, the way Palpatine was cheered when he ended the clone wars. But the dirty work had been done by Anakin; same goes for his grandson.

It all fits together too well: Rey was always meant to turn out evil, while the “bad guy” in truth was the hero all along. If you watch the Sequel Trilogy again and feel annoyed by their development, try to look at it from this perspective.

“Now, fulfill your destiny and take your father’s place at my side!” Palpatine in Return of the Jedi

Palpatine always needed someone young and fresh by his side to give him strength; which could be explained by the fact, finally addressed in The Rise of Skywalker, that he is some kind of clone. Not being capable of living on his own, he wanted Rey to kill him so that all of the darkness inside him would possess her, and he managed. Now he is reborn, and the young woman stepping into his shoes believes that the worst is behind her. The truth is that the Enemy is now an inherent part of her.

The good news is that by this time, Rey has also made the experience of unconditional love: Kylo / Ben saw her at her worst, but he still cared about her. Some viewers thought that Rey would be the key to Ben’s redemption, but honestly: that story had already been told with Luke and his father. The alleged bad guy saving the alleged heroine from herself is a new message in Star Wars; a message so powerful that I still didn’t get over it.

The Heir of Sheev Palpatine

Palpatine’s role in the saga tends to be downplayed although he is the mastermind behind it all: in the PT he is literally one of the first characters we see. It is easy to say that he was the devil incarnate who wanted absolute power - he also was a sly and influential politician, and after the clone wars he did bring peace to the galaxy reuniting the Republic and the separatists under the roof of the Empire. Anakin and his heirs could not make up for his sins because they were busy with their own and the Jedi’s.

As the audience, we want to see our heroes happy; yet their failures and unhappiness are often necessary.

Anakin and Padmé had to die so their children could grow up the way they did, two idealistic souls untainted by the Jedi’s sins.

Leia had to lose Alderaan, else the princess would hardly have had a chance to marry the scoundrel.

Luke had to lose his home with his uncle and aunt, else he wouldn’t have agreed to come with Obi-Wan in the first place; and he had to go through the trauma with his father’s revelation to become the wise and strong hero of Return of the Jedi.

And sad as it is, Ben had to spend almost all of his life in a dark place. The few moments of understanding he had with Rey in TLJ were probably the few rays of lights in his whole adult life; no wonder he fell so deeply for her that he would literally have done anything for her; he had to become a besotted idiot who saved the girl he loved although she had literally killed him and usurped his whole heritage.

Meaning: Rey was always meant to take over.

This is not only the story of the Skywalker family, it’s also the story of a galaxy in desperate want of balance and peace. And if you want to tell how that is accomplished, you can’t erase Palpatine from the equation. Palpatine is a “clone”, i.e. he is not wholly human; which makes him a parallel to Anakin who ostensibly had been generated without a father. Rey, flawed as she is, is a young woman of flesh and blood.

The Prequel Trilogy humanized Darth Vader; the Sequel Trilogy did the same with Palpatine. Few viewers expected this because one hardly gets interested in the villain’s bloodline. Vader’s portrayal as Anakin Skywalker in the prequels was also largely disliked because the young man was everything but cold and sardonic like the villain he became later. And as many viewers did not like to see “their” Darth Vader humanized (portrayed as a good little boy and then an ardent, stormy young man), now we don’t like Palpatine coming back in form of a young woman, who for sure is deeply flawed but not by far the monster he was. Palpatine always wanted to use Anakin’s, the Chosen One’s, power for himself; and with his final plan he managed to blend his heritage with the soul of the last Skywalker scion.

The Heir of Anakin Skywalker

Vader had to become Palpatine’s ally and to serve him loyally to make the old devil let his guard down enough for him to kill him at last, just like Kylo had to fool Snoke that he was still on his side while in the Throne Room he was silently plotting his demise. Anakin always was the hero of the Skywalker saga, a fact that is largely overlooked. His son pushed him to do the right thing, but the decision was his own, and he paid with his life.

Many fans of the Original Trilogy and also of the prequels dislike the sequels heartily because to them it “retconned” or “cancelled” what had happened before. Which is not quite true; the original heroes did find their happy ending. We witnessed what came after that, which irritates us because it’s something we usually never face once the credits roll or the book covers are closed. That does not mean that the heroes’ accomplishments are obliterated.

My guess: these fans might be right and the Skywalker saga is indeed at its end with Return of the Jedi. The saga was Anakin Skywalker’s story, and he died.

What did not die was his heritage - his sins, his excruciating pain, but also his heroism, and his prophecy as the one who would “bring Balance to the Force.” The mistake of his heirs was having wanted to go back to what once had been. Their links to the past were tenuous, e.g. we never learn how Luke came to know what had made the Jedi fail (the content of his second lesson to Rey); in any case, he must have learned it only after the fall of his own temple, in order to explain why he wanted to give up on the Jedi. Obi-Wan never told about his own faults, the clone wars, the Republic, the creation of Darth Vader; most importantly, he never mentioned to Luke that his father actually was the Chosen One, and that the Force wants Balance. It is not surprising that Luke and his friends could not build lasting peace, not knowing what had caused the conflicts. They had to fail; “failure is the greatest teacher” means that only from understanding and moving away from those failures the galaxy will (hopefully) finally learn to avoid repeating the Empire, the First Order, the Final Order etc. over and over again.

I also did not like very much what the sequels did to the heroes of the original trilogy, honestly. But had they survived, found together again, and or proven more heroic and less flawed than they were this time around, the general audience would never have stopped pestering the studios with wanting more of Han, Luke and Leia. And that’s not how it’s supposed to be. They’ve done their time; they had their happy ending. They had their hero’s journey. They ended the Empire the way they wanted, their achievements were completed. It is up to the next generation to learn from the past and build something new and better. We, in our everyday life, also have to bring the people we once looked up to (parents, teachers, mentors etc.) down from their pedestal and to acknowledge the good they did but also see their failures and limitations, if we ever want to get on with our own lives.

In this light, the Sequel Trilogy is indeed not part of Anakin Skywalker’ story. If Ben is brought back and stands good on his promise of finishing the Chosen One’s work, then it will be a new saga - his. Not his grandfather’s any more.

Though a Palpatine, I believe Rey does have the potential for finding balance and unite the galaxy. If Ben, her dyad, comes back to do his part, the galaxy will be again under the rule of two powerful Force users the way it was when the OT begin; but this time they need a chance on something united and positive.

Balance At Last?

The authors repeatedly stated that the sequels would be “very much like the prequels”: not incidentally. The prequels also were the story of a usurpation, where at the end everything that was good seemed forgotten or turned into the hand of the wrong person.

This sheds an interesting light on the next trilogy: by this logic, it ought to mirror the original trilogy.

Whatever you can say about the Star Wars saga, it never repeated itself. It has recurring themes, which do not run in circles but in spirals; like in any family, or political system, the lessons not learned always demand their price.

All of this is not to say that I like this ending. The Rise of Skywalker mostly is so dissatisfying because being Episode IX it ought to have been a definite ending, but it does not feel like an end. It feels more like a new beginning, or an interruption of a story that was largely not yet explored. The new heroes have wrapped up the past, but what about the galaxy’s future? A future that has maybe already begun with the Mandalorian’s mysterious adopted Child, who symbolizes faith where Yoda was all about (avoiding) fear?

Rey and Baby Yoda both are two younger and more innocent versions of someone we are very familiar with; and they are both paired off with someone who becomes a redeemed version of a familiar villain - Rey with Kylo Ren / Ben Solo, who is reminiscent of Darth Vader, and the Child with the Mandalorian, reminiscent of Boba Fett. Also, the Child knows Force healing, the way Rey does.

It seems to me that this must be announcing a continuation that fits to it all and brings the loose strands together. If the Force is at work, then it knows what it’s doing.

Luke was always one to give people a second chance: in A New Hope, we see him befriend literally anyone who is willing to go along. Star Wars is all about getting another chance. Are we really supposed to believe that Ben Solo is gone forever, and worse, that he deserved no better than dying after sacrificing himself for the girl he loved? Did Luke Skywalker in person come to Crait, sacrificing his life in the process, to give his nephew a second chance only for him to disappear never to be seen again?

Ben and Rey being a dyad means that they mirror one another, in every way: what happened to one will happen to the other too, eventually. The iconic “You’re not alone” is so powerful because it comes from a person who knows damn well what loneliness means. If Rey finished what her grandfather started, then so must he. When the Republic fell everybody also believed Anakin to be dead; he wasn’t. and when Han left Luke and Leia towards the end of A New Hope, they did not count on him coming back; but he did.

The next trilogy is not yet announced but it has been known for years that it’s in the cards; thankfully it’s in the hands of Rian Johnson, who already proved that he can tell a masterful Star Wars story; and who reintroduced the subject of Balance again. I still hope that this image was a foreshadowing, not an empty promise.

The ST doesn’t really make sense - not yet. That doesn’t mean it won’t make sense when the rest of Rian’s story is told.

“Hope is like the sun… If you only believe in it when you see it, you will never make it through the night”. Let’s keep our hopes up, fellow Reylos and ST fans. 😉

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jackiestarsister · 4 years

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My thoughts on “The Rise of Skywalker”

I just saw The Rise of Skywalker with my friend @ewoking-on-sunshine. I’m still processing it, but I have many thoughts. Spoilers below the cut.

It’s not a perfect movie. But I enjoyed it and am, for the most part, satisfied. All I wanted was for it to be enjoyable and make sense and bring some resolution to the story. I think it succeeded overall.

I feel like I can’t complain too much, because the biggest things I wanted to happen did happen: we got Ben’s redemption, a freaking Reylo kiss, and Ben smiling. We even got beautiful things I wasn’t expecting, like Han’s scene, and the revelation that Leia trained as a Jedi for a time. I think it can stand on its own as a story in itself, though The Last Jedi may remain my favorite installment as far as story craft.

Here are my miscellaneous thoughts and opinions:

~ Much of it feels like fan fiction. Whether that is good or bad, I’m not sure. It could just be that the fans were particularly good at predicting possible developments and the general direction of the story.

~ Nothing was revealed about Kylo’s style/method of governing, or whether he did anything to expand the First Order’s power as Rey predicted they would do in TLJ

~ Palpatine’s return could have been set up better

~ The symbolism and significance of Kylo killing his abuser is changed, if not completely ruined, since Snoke was Palpatine’s puppet, and Kylo seems to enter Palpatine’s service after learning that he was the one who manipulated him throughout his life. Maybe Kylo thought if he refused he wouldn’t be able to get away alive?

~ Palpatine’s plans are as confusing as ever. Just how much he controlled, what he was aware of, and what his true intentions were is unclear. In particular, I’m confused about the fact that Palpatine made Snoke, who seemed ignorant of Rey’s origins and told Kylo to kill her, and the fact that Palpatine told Kylo to kill Rey when it turned out he wanted her to come and kill him. Were Snoke and/or Palpatine using reverse psychology in giving Kylo those orders?

~ Palpatine probably had the means to prolong and/or restore Padme’s life the whole time Vader was trying to find a way to do so

~ It is unclear whether Rey ever told anyone about her bond with Kylo or how he killed Snoke (which is pretty relevant information for the Resistance).

~ It’s unclear whether Rey and Kyko have seen or felt each other through the Force at all in the past year. Each movie shows several Force bond connections in a short period of time (one or two days each), and that would add up to a lot in a year, so I’m guessing they didn’t have any for that interim. It seems that although Rey closed the door, Kylo opens it. I don’t really like what that implies.

~ The beginning revealed so much and moved from one set of characters to another so quickly that I wondered whether the story was going to continue following the hero/heroine’s journey(s). Eventually it did, but it felt like the strangest beginning for a Star Wars movie, especially compared to the brilliant opening sequence of The Force Awakens.

~ Rey and Poe’s bickering was fun to watch

~ They did pretty well using those bits of Carrie Fisher footage and making Leia’s death play a role in the story. I’m sure if Fisher were still alive they would have had more justice for Leia.

~ I wish Rose had played a bigger part in the story, and that her relationships with other characters had been clarified and explored more.

~ I wish Ben had interacted with other members of the Resistance. He and Finn had so many parallels in their arcs, and the two of them actually had a couple scenes together, but they were always distant, with Finn watching as Rey interacted with Ben.

~ What was Finn going to tell Rey? What was their relationship about when it came down to it? They had such a wonderful dynamic and intertwined arcs in The Force Awakens, but in this installment it felt like they were running parallel to each other.

~ Giving Poe a shady past as a spice smuggler contradicts his canon backstory revealed in Before the Awakening by Greg Rucka.

~ Hux’s death was disappointingly anticlimactic. Seemed like a waste of his character. I’m not sure how I feel about the twist of him being the spy. He seemed so much less the crazed man who fired Starkiller or the calculating menace who considered killing an unconscious Kylo. Before TROS, Hux’s motivations seemed more political and ideological, a contrast to Kylo’s motives which seemed personal.

~ In what capacity did Pryce serve Palpatine in the previous war?

~ The fact that Rey is a Palpatine raises all kinds of questions about her family. There could be a whole trilogy about what kind of relationship Sheev and his child had. I wonder if the mother of his child was Mara Jade or someone like her who worked closely with him. But the mention of cloning and other strange techniques for making or passing on life makes me wonder if his child was even “natural” or somehow made.

~ Rey’s Dark Side heritage makes her affinity with the light side even more ironic and miraculous. Or maybe the irony is that someone as dark as Palpatine could come from such an idyllic utopia as Naboo. Maybe they are trying to show that it is our choices, not our origins, that define us.

~ The fact that Rey is descended from a powerful established character takes away from the idea that Rey represented for me and many others, that a great person can come from humble, unimportant origins.

~ Finn’s arc was opposite of predicted stormtrooper rebellion. The stormtrooper paradox still holds.

~ The hunt for Sith clues doesn’t make sense. It makes even less sense than the search for Luke in TFA, which was full of holes and unexplained coincidences.

~ The way Ben stands on the Death Star looking out at the horizon was 100% Byronic hero, but also similar to Luke’s posture when looking at the Tatooine suns.

~ Seeing Kylo talking to Han and Rey talking to Luke underscored how Kylo and Rey are co-protagonists.

~ How long did Ben stay at the Death Star ruins contemplating his and Rey’s situation? Apparently long enough for Rey to go to Ahch-To, talk to Luke, and go to Exegol, because he arrives there later than her. Time and distance in these movies have never made much sense, but I wonder if there might be some deleted scenes involving Kylo at this point. Did he realize he had lost control of the First Order? Did he ever think about ordering them not to follow Palpatine?

~ Regarding minor pilot characters: Happy to see Wedge Antilles back, sad to see Snap Wexley die.

~ Poe could have had better resolution for his arc as an emerging leader

~ Finn tries once again to sacrifice himself despite what Rose said to him after he tried to do that in TLJ. (While I don’t think it was necessary, Ben’s death was in keeping with her words because he died to save what he loved.)

~ We finally got a Reylo music theme! If I’m not mistaken, it had the Force theme sort of underlying it but there were other things going on too. I look forward to hearing the What the Force podcast’s discussion on this.

~ Rose was right that they would win by “Not fighting what we hate. Saving what we love.” Rey refused to even hate Palpatine. Ben came to save Rey and that enabled her to save everyone else.

~ My favorite moments of each sequel involve Rey, Ben, and a light saber passing between them.

~ Everything that was said to Rey and Ben about home, family, coming home, coming back ... it was all leading up to their teaming up. Palpatine was wrong when he said he was Rey’s only family. Ben became her family, and that was part of the reason why she took his family name. Whoever wrote the caption “The belonging you seek is in Ben Solo’s arms” was right.

~ We still don’t know what, if any, ideology Ben held, how he felt about political power and different forms of government. That pretty much reinforces my belief that for him this has never been about politics, it’s all been personal for him.

~ Ben’s death is problematic if he is supposed to represent people who have been abused and made poor life choices. It’s a beautiful sacrifice, but did Rey really have to die and necessitate it? She could have been mortally wounded, and he could have healed her without dying himself.

~ If passing his life force to Rey cost his life, Ben should have died before Rey kissed him.

~ Ben’s death is tragic, but not technically a tragedy in the literary sense, because it’s not about learning how to avoid making mistakes like his. For all his faults (narcissism, anger that manifests in violence), Ben didn’t have a particular fatal flaw. He fell because he was a victim of circumstances and forces beyond his control. He died saving the woman he loved, which sounds like a good thing.

~ I’m surprised the Lars homestead was still standing after it seemed to have burned to ash in A New Hope, and I find it difficult to believe that on a planet like Tatooine someone else would not have claimed it.

~ The title refers to both Ben and Rey, since Rey becomes a Skywalker

~ From a certain point of view, Reylos and Rey Skywalkers were both right, and both wrong.

~ Why didn’t Ben become a Force ghost like Luke and Leia? Can he become one in the future? I find the matter of whether a Jedi/Force-user leaves behind their physical body or fades away to become one with the Force, and whether they become capable of manifesting as a ghost, sketchy and inconsistent.

~ What is Rey going to do now? Was she moving into the Lars homestead? Will she raise a family of her own? I think it unlikely that she would fall in love with anyone as deeply as she did with Kylo, and I think she might be hesitant to have biological children who would inherit her (Palpatine) Force abilities, but I can picture her adopting and/or mentoring children.

~ The theme of IX seems to be “You’re not alone,” the way 8’s was “Failure is the greatest teacher.” It is the lesson Rey, Finn, Poe, and Ben each learn. But in the end Rey does seem alone.

~ Rey’s greatest fears were being alone and being insignificant. Is the takeaway supposed to be that she is okay with being alone? That would go against the movie’s overarching theme. Similarly, Star Wars is about family, and while that theme definitely comes through, it would have been so well punctuated if the story ended with the main characters starting families.

~ Nothing was resolved regarding the government(s) of the galaxy. Is it in a state of anarchy now? Were they able to learn from the mistakes of the past two republics?

~ Did Rey, Ben, the Jedi, and/or the Resistance bring balance to the Force? Is the corresponding rise and fall of the light and dark finally over? Will this peace last? Will Rey be the last Jedi or will she pass on their legacy?

~ What was the point of this trilogy as a whole? What message are we supposed to take away from it? Is it still a Prodigal Son type of story?

Now I’m going to spend time thinking about how this will impact my fan fiction and my essays on the Christian themes of the Star Wars sequel trilogy. I will look forward to reading the (apparently expanded edition) novelization and having good quality screenshots and one more Shakespearean parody by Ian Doescher.

#The Rise of Skywalker spoilers

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