Who is Rey?

Do not read this if you haven’t yet seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens. There be spoilers here.

So here’s one theory.

I am convinced that Rey is, in fact, Luke Skywalker’s daughter. Here are my reasons.

• The first and most obvious hint is the series of visions that Rey has when she first touches Luke’s lightsaber. (The one he lost — along with his hand — during his confrontation with Darth Vader on Bespin.) She’s in a long lonely corridor. She tumbles sideways and sees Luke’s mechanical hand reaching out to R2-D2. Next, she sees Kylo Ren use his lightsaber to kill a silhoutted individual. The camera pulls back and we see Kylo and his Knights of Ren standing over a field of what appear to be corpses. And then Rey she sees herself as a young, screaming child, being pulled away by Unkar Plutt as she reaches, despairingly, toward a spaceship flying off in the distance. We flash back to the present and we hear a whisper that says: “These are the first steps.” This seems to hint that Rey might have been abandoned as a child to protect her from a great evil. Either Luke was worried about the Knights of Ren hunting her down or he was concerned that she too had too much Vader inside of her.
• Following those series of visions, Maz shows up and says to Rey: “This lightsaber was Luke’s. And his father’s before him. And now, it calls to you.” She goes on. “Dear child, I see it in your eyes. You already know the truth … Whoever you were waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back. But there’s someone who still can: Luke.” But it’s what Maz says after that’s most interesting when she tells Rey that the belonging she seeks lies not in her past but in her future. Was Maz referring to a sense of familial belonging?
• Threepio says in the movie that Artoo has been in low power mode ever since Luke disappeared. Towards the end of the movie, Artoo conveniently powers back up. This, however, only happens when Rey is on the planet and in close proximity. Which could mean that both Luke and Rey have some sort of force/familial link that causes Artoo to suddenly spring to life.
• In the second teaser trailer (linked below) there is a line narrated by Luke Skywalker that isn’t in the final film. (In fact, there are quite a few lines that were supposedly recorded specifically for the trailers.) It is a line that is repurposed from Return of the Jedi and it goes: “The Force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it. My sister has it. You have that power, too.” I’m assuming here that Luke is, in fact, speaking to Rey. (In case you were wondering, the original line in Return of the Jedi is: “The Force is strong in my family. My father has it. I have it and… My sister has it. Yes. It’s you, Leia.”)

• Finally, the Star Wars movies have always concerned themselves with the saga of the Skywalker family. The first six movies were essentially the story of Anakin Skywalker, his fall into the dark side, and eventual redemption by his son. These next three movies might just be the continuation of that storyline. (The redemption of Luke?) It would make sense given that the reason J.J. Abrams finally decided to take on Star Wars was to answer the question: Who is Luke Skywalker?