Star Wars: Why Rey’s last name is ____________.

An argument on her origins with spoilers.

Spoiler Alert! This is loaded with spoilers and is 2000 words long. Only read it if you are nerding out as hard about The Force Awakens as I am.

Here are my theses. The first is this: Rey is Luke’s daughter, granddaughter of Vader and cousin of Kylo Ren. Here’s the second, and it depends on the first: the sequel trilogy is about Vader’s two grandchildren who each represent one side of him. Ben is Vader, the dark side in him, and Rey is Anakin, the good in him.

First we need to tie Rey to the Anakin Skywalker family. We will do this by using two pieces of information we knew before watching the movie: what Star Wars is at its core and the mystery surrounding her last name.

Evidence outside the movie

1. Star Wars is a multi-generational story.

Family generations are what the core of Star Wars has always been. Don’t believe me? Then maybe you’ll believe the creator himself, George Lucas: “It’s all about generations, and issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers. It’s a family soap opera.” So if you track along the trilogies, each one tells the story with one of the three generations at the forefront.

If you are into the Expanded Universe, you might recall how the third generation played out with Solo’s twins, Jacen and Jaina. Their story was told through novels because Lucas decided against making a sequel trilogy. The specifics of the Expanded Universe were discarded for the new trilogy, but the premise of dark and light side grandchildren is likely to remain in place to fit the overarching story of Star Wars.

So who are the third generation? Kylo Ren is already a revealed member of the family: the son of Han and Leia. He’s the dark side of the family, the Jacen. The only issue is he’s half the equation, and he’s not the protagonist. Either he becomes the main character, or there is another Skywalker.

2. The mystery of Rey’s last name.

The creators of the movie don’t want us to know Rey’s last name, which means her name is a deliberate secret. Why would they keep it a secret? Because her last name is central to the plot of the trilogy. In other words, her lineage is important. Poe Dameron has his last name because keeping it a secret means nothing to the story. The only other character with a mysteriously lacking last name is Finn and that was only because he didn’t even have a name to begin with.

Rey is the only one without a last name who needs one. Now let’s say her last name is revealed and it was something arbitrary to Star Wars, like Smith. This would be a letdown because the name doesn’t mean anything. To make it mean something they would have to spend a lot of screen time explaining why the Smiths are central to Star Wars. Or you could go the simple route and make her a Skywalker or Solo, which takes care of both of these issues. It makes the sequel trilogy about two grandchildren of Vader and it fits the mystery of her last name.

Therefore, because of the nature of Star Wars story and the secrecy of Rey’s last name, I suggest it is likely that she is one of Vader’s grandchildren. Now we will turn to the events of The Force Awakens to compile further evidence that she is Vader’s grandchild as well as Luke’s daughter.

Evidence inside the movie

1. She’s grows up on a desert planet.

This thematically fits the beginnings of the original and prequel trilogy. Tell me if this sounds familiar. A Skywalker is tied to a desert planet by family (a mother, uncle and auntie). This Skywalker is both gifted as a pilot and has innate force abilities. Said Skywalker is swept off the planet and into a cosmic battle between good and evil.

Rey fits both Luke and Vader’s stories perfectly. She’s left on Jakku, she’s gifted in the force and as a pilot, she stays on Jakku to await her family who left her there, and she is swept up into the events of the Force Awakens. Like grandfather, like father, like daughter.

If she’s left there, who left her, and why?

Option 1: Han and Leia?

• This is unlikely mainly because of a lack of evidence and the way Han and Leia interact with Rey. Han and Leia seem to know nothing about leaving their daughter alone on a desert planet. They don’t even slightly react to it. Seeing how they react to the loss of their son Ben, it would follow that they would be on the look-out for their ditched daughter.
• One rebuttal to this is that Luke took the baby away and force-wiped their memories. This is an option but an unlikely one. It makes more sense if Han and Leia don’t know who Rey is.
• But what about the Millenium Falcon conveniently being on Jakku? This is a loose tie at best, and is explained by Han as more a matter of happenstance (or Forcenstance?) than anything else.

Option 2: Luke left her.

• When Anakin’s lightsaber finds her, we see a series of images. Mixed into these images were her being left on Jakku and Luke. There is a connection between them.
• There is a mysterious old man named Lor San Tekka on Jakku who was entrusted with part of the map needed to find Luke. That means that Luke had been to Jakku or planned to hide his whereabouts on Jakku. But why is Tekka on Jakku? To hide? Or perhaps the old man was supposed to watch over Rey from afar, holding the key she needs to find her father should Luke be unable to find her.
• The Knights of Ren and Snoke. They are a force to be reckoned with and are on a mission to destroy the last of the Jedi. They already took care of one of Vader’s grandkids with the seduction of Ben, so Luke has good motive to hide his daughter from them. The timeline doesn’t fit Luke hiding Rey because of Kylo, but it works if he is hiding her from Snoke. Hey, if Luke had good reason to protect his daughter, why not do it the same way he was protected himself?

2. The Lightsaber.

She is called to Anakin’s lightsaber in the basement of that cantina. It calls her. Why does it call her? There are two possible reasons.

• She is really force sensitive. This could be the case, but to throw in a random force sensitive main character in a story about family doesn’t make sense, especially if the lightsaber is a family heirloom.
• It’s her grandfather’s lightsaber. I don’t think I need to explain this one, it just makes sense and nicely connects her to her family.

3. The Kylo interrogation.

During the scene where Kylo is drawing out information from Rey, he says she dreams about the water planet and an island. By the end of the movie it is clear what he was referring to: the planet Luke was hiding on. Rey could have known or dreamed about this place for a couple reasons.

Option 1: She had been there before. Before she was left on Jakku she could have lived with Luke on the planet. This helps explain some of her talents with the force because she would have lived and possibly trained with him. It doesn’t work fully though because you’d think she would remember training with Luke as a kid.

Option 2: She is having force dreams about a family member. This isn’t new to the Skywalkers. Anakin had nightmares about his mother’s death and about Padme’s as well. It’s possible that Rey has a connection with her father and it was coming out in her dreams.

Either way, she had a connection with Luke and the planet he was on, whether from memories or from force dreams.

4. R2D2 awakes.

R2 had the other part of the map needed to find Luke. The only issue according to C3P0 was that he wouldn’t wake up unless Master Luke was there. It is interesting that R2 finally wakes up to reveal the map the first time Rey is near him. Skywalker blood perhaps? The writers claim that BB8 woke him up by saying something, but I think they are using smoke and mirrors to hide Rey’s name.

Consider this. They man watching over Rey on Jakku has one half of the map, and R2D2, with Han and Leia, has the second half that will only activate when Rey gets there.

This rigs it so that the only person who can find Luke is Rey, and only when she gets off Jakku and meets up with Han and Leia (who have R2). Family matters.

5. The way she fights.

This piece of evidence is the most dismissed, but I think it’s legitimate.

Watch this video, starting at about the 3:15 mark. It shows the moment Luke attacks Vader in Return of the Jedi. He uses a distinct move where he holds the saber above his shoulder and thrusts. This is exactly how Rey attacks Ren. You might think this is nothing, but Star Wars fights are highly choreographed and no move is a mistake.

6. The conversation with Maz.

When Rey has her visions and finds the lightsaber, Maz says she must take it and move forward. Rey doesn’t want to because she doesn’t want to miss her family returning for her on Jakku. With lightsaber in hand, Maz says they aren’t coming back for her and the way to find them is to go forward. Who lies ahead?

Option 1: Unnamed mystery family? I want to bring up this theory again to shoot it down. It doesn’t fit the arc of Star Wars to conjure up a new significant family.

Option 2: Han and Leia? Maybe but she already met Han and she left Leia to find Luke, so it’s unlikely that they are the one’s Rey is looking for. It’s possible that it’s them, but then she isn’t looking for a person but the truth.

Option 3: Luke? Most likely, because of how the movie ends. She moves forward and comes face to face with Luke. This suggests (but isn’t conclusive) that Luke is the person who she was waiting for, or he holds the key to the truth.

7. Leia and Rey’s connection.

Leia’s force abilities hinge on her knowing things. Somehow she always knew she was Luke’s sister, she knows when Han dies, and I believe at the end when she hugs Rey, she knows Rey is her niece. The look on her face says she knows. She knows and Rey knows she knows. The only people who don’t know are us. Then she gives Rey a “May the force be with you” (originally said to Luke) and she’s off. This brings us to our last point.

8. She’s the one who is sent to find Luke.

Why is it her, and not Leia or Poe Dameron. Dameron is a great pilot and resistance leader, and Leia is Luke’s sister. Both are great options. Why send a force sensitive person you have no idea about to be the one to find Luke?

Option 1: Because she has the lightsaber. Sure, but why does she have the lightsaber in the first place? It is unlikely to me that the lightsaber alone is the only tie between Rey and Luke.

Option 2: Because she’s his daughter. The map was left on her planet, she was the missing link that booted R2, and she was the one who went to find him. She alone climbs the hill and the final scene works to tie up two parts of the story: the resistance has found Luke and Rey has found the one she was waiting for.

Conclusion

Yes, there are a lot of unanswered questions, but I believe that the evidence both outside and inside the movie point most convincingly to Rey being the daughter of Luke Skywalker, the cousin of Kylo Ren and the granddaughter of Darth Vader.

With this in mind, I believe that the trilogy is going to be the last chapter of a three generational story, in which the two grandchildren of Vader walk Vader’s two paths. When the movie ended Kylo Ren was training with Snoke and Rey was going to train with Luke. This, in my mind, sets up what will be an amazing story, worthy of the Star Wars name.