So, What Did Rey Do After Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker's Ending?

Daisy Ridley looks into distance as Rey in desert background Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
(Image credit: Lucasfilm)

SPOILERS ahead from Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has only been out for one week, but there's already been a lot of debate about every angle. One thing fans were obviously left wondering about was the ending. Rey -- Rey Skywalker now, by her own choice -- and BB-8 ended the Saga on Luke Skywalker's home planet of Tatooine. The final image was a perfect callback to the first Star Wars movie, A New Hope, but it left fans asking "What did Rey do next?"

So, now fans are arguing over what Rey did after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Would she have stayed on Tatooine for a long time/forever? Or would she have quickly moved on to return to her friends, having further adventures with her new lightsaber? It's possible Rise of Skywalker director/co-writer J.J. Abrams will explain what Rey did after the events of the movie, but since it wasn't shown in the movie it's not really canon. That left the door open for fan speculation:

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Yeah, the idea of Rey being alone has become a point of debate.

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While some fans took issue with returning to Tatooine at all, others argued it made sense for Rey to bury the lightsabers there:

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One Star Wars fan pointed out that, per the official soundtrack, the track for Rey's scene on Tatooine is called "A New Home," which could be interpreted in many ways:

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Maybe Rey does stick around and train new Jedis there -- including Finn? There were hints that Finn was force-sensitive, and that's supposedly what Finn wanted to tell Rey in that lingering mystery. Or, you could consider "A New Home" to just be a nice bookend callback to "A New Hope," with the "Home" Rey chose being a Skywalker rather than a Palpatine.

Personally, I loved the ending with Rey on Tatooine. I appreciated seeing the Skywalker Saga come full circle like that. But I was one of the people who agreed with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's CinemaScore -- not as enthusiastic as the previous Saga movies but still quite positive.

Not everyone agrees, of course, with complaints ranging from WTF moments, to The Last Jedi and Rise of Skywalker not being on the same page, to the treatment of Rey & Kylo's story, to the sidelining of Rose, etc. Some people think it was a mistake to bring back J.J. Abrams after Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

There are a lot of opinions out there and, when it comes to pure opinion, no one is wrong. What do you imagine Rey did after Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker? If you're reading this, it's too late to say you don't care.

Gina Carbone

Gina grew up in Massachusetts and California in her own version of The Parent Trap. She went to three different middle schools, four high schools, and three universities -- including half a year in Perth, Western Australia. She currently lives in a small town in Maine, the kind Stephen King regularly sets terrible things in, so this may be the last you hear from her.