Rey is Luke’s Clone

Star Wars loves clones. Bobba Fett was a clone, the Empire’s stormtroopers were clones, there’s a goddamn TV show called The Clone Wars, which was preceded by an animated film of the same name. Episode II was subtitled Attack of the Clones. Clones clones clones, everybody loves clones.

What do we know about cloning in Star Wars? Not much. Here is the entire Wookiepedia entry on clones:

Being a clone has got to be weird. I’ve only watched the first two episodes of Clone Wars, but in the second one a cloned stormtrooper bemoans the fact that nobody in the galaxy will rescue him because he is a pathetic clone. Much as is the case with droids it is highly unclear what rights, if any, clones have within the Star Wars universe. Clones are created to become weapons. Rey, a clone of Luke Skywalker, was created to become a weapon and something went wrong.

Who created her? There are two options: Luke or somebody else. Each of these options come with various options of their own about the decision was made. With Luke, maybe he saw the growing concern of the First Order and decided the Jedi needed their own weapon. Or maybe he fell prey to the same weakness of his father, the desire to start a family.

With somebody else, chances are this clone was created without Luke’s consent. That means it could be done by somebody like the Neimoidians, former masters of the galaxy through the defunct Trade Federation, trying to wheel and deal their way back on top with the Empire’s fallout. Or she could have been an early experiment of the First Order. This is the more likely option, and it’s because of Darth Vader’s helmet. Remember how it’s in Kylo Ren’s room in a weird shrine? Why does Kylo have that? How did the First Order get it? They stole it because Luke touched it when he removed his father’s helmet. They stole it to get Luke’s DNA.

Somehow, some way, the Rebels/Republic/the Light Side gets hold of Rey. Maybe she was Luke’s daughter who everyone begrudgingly accepted, maybe she was found in a situation similar to when Darth Vader discovered Galen “Starkiller” Marek. Either way, this incredibly Force-sensitive young girl was made a padawan at Luke’s Jedi training temple, along with Ben Skywalker.

We know that something terrible happened at the temple, but no details. Han says that Kylo Ren turned to the Dark side and killed everybody. But until late in the movie, the Kylo Ren we see hasn’t fully turned. He’s a confused kid. Well, everyone knows that Kylo Ren acted alone at the Jedi Temple. What this Medium posts presupposes is… maybe he didn’t.

You’ve got the two Skywalker kids, both very young but infinitely more powerful than any other padawan. They’re bound to get bored with your uncle/kinda-semi-clone-dad’s training and boredom leads to curiosity and curiosity leads to the Dark side. It’s like how you used to print out The Anarchist’s Cookbook in high school because you were so badass. They both get into it, but then Ben gets way too into it. People die, and Rey, while vocally opposed to it, lets it happen.

The First Order detects this rise in the Dark Side through Snoke, who leads an assault on the temple. Unable to save both Ben and Rey, who at this point both have both sides of the Force in them, he chooses his own child, letting Snoke grab Ben in the same way a militia grabs a child solider, the same way the First Order got Finn. An instant before that happens, though, to save whatever is left of the Jedi Order, Luke enters Ben’s mind with the technique we saw the latter use in Force Awakens and wipes his mind of memories of Rey. From his own experience, he knows that it is better if powerful relatives don’t know of each other.

That leaves his own cloned daughter, Rey. Possibly the daughter he always wanted, possibly the daughter he never wanted, but nonetheless the daughter he has in front of him, right now, as the First Order is gearing up for war. He knows they will come for her again. The only way he can keep her safe is to hide her, and the only way to hide her is to mask her sensitivity to the Force. And to put her on obscure desert planet, that worked out pretty well for him.

So he manipulates his clone daughter’s mind on a far grander scale than he did Ben’s. He wipes her mind of her origin, the temple, and her abilities. He implants a desire to never leave wherever he puts her, to continue waiting there for someone or something that doesn’t exist. He finds Jakku, plays the “I’m Luke Skywalker” card with Unkar Pluttu to get him to promise to take care of her and leaves. Utterly destroyed by his own actions, he retreats to a self-imposed prison.

But the Force, the Force finds a way. Think through Rey’s flashback scene. We see her with Pluttu as she is dropped off. Sure. But we also see what we can assume to be Kylo Ren’s massacre at the Temple. How would she have access to this memory? How would she have access to a memory of Bespin City, where Luke lost his hand? Why, after this sequence, does she call him “Luke”? How is she suddenly capable of next-level Force abilities? Why, at the end of the film, the best part, the part where Mark Hamill suddenly makes you like, that’s Luke Skywalker, do the two just stare at each other, in shock and tense anticipation?

It’s safe to assume, I think, that Rey was at the temple. It’s also safe to assume that Rey has had Force training, most probably administered by Luke, at the same time of the similarly-aged Kylo Ren. Through Finn, J.J. Abrams wanted to tell a story of a face in the crowd, to make personal one of the giant anonymous masses seen clomping around Star Wars: stormtroopers. He wants to do the same with Rey, but for clones.

UPDATE: On Twitter, I’ve gotten suggestions that Rey might be a clone of another member of the Skywalker family, either Leia or Anakin. I give more credence to the latter, because I’m unsure of how Leia would be cloned or why this would happen, given that she already had a biological child. With Anakin, the vast majority of my theory still holds: First Order grabs the mask, Luke has a desire to redeem his father through cloning. This would also give Luke and Rey a more complex relationship, to be sure. There’s also the theory that Rey is the clone of a yet-unknown Force-sensitive woman who Luke loved but didn’t want to fuck, etc. There are a lot of possibilities, but I still think the most likely option is that she is directly Luke’s clone, with the possibility of Anakin’s clone a close second.