During The Force Awakens, the origins of Daisy Ridley’s Rey were shrouded in mystery, as the young woman had no idea where her family had gone to or why she’d been left on Jakku. In The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren informed her that her parents were “filthy junk traders” who’d sold her off for drinking money, and that they were long dead. Then The Rise of Skywalker came along, revealing that Rey was actually the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, as her father, Dathan, was one of the Sith Lord’s failed clones. A little over three years after the release of the Skywalker Saga’s final chapter, Ridley has shared her thoughts on the Rey/Palpatine twist.
While chatting with Rolling Stone at the Sundance Film Festival about her new movie Sometimes I Think About Dying, Daisy Ridley was asked by the news outlet how she felt about how Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ended, with the interviewer saying that Episode IX “retconned almost all of what transpired in The Last Jedi” in regards to the middle entry of the Sequel Trilogy passing along the message that “anyone can be extraordinary.” The actress answered:
Well, J.J. [Abrams] was the one who was like, she is of no one, so it wasn’t just The Last Jedi where that was the message. What was interesting about the last one, for me, was that you can be a hero and not come from anywhere or you can be a hero and come from literally the worst person in the universe. You’re not your parents, you’re not your grandparents, you’re not your bloodline and you’re not the generations before you. So, I always was like, sure. But it’s beyond my pay grade. I say the words, do the thing. I do love the version of, you can be anyone you want to be, but I also love the version where you can rectify wrongs and can’t help what you’re born into.
So Daisy Ridley has never been so much concerned with where Rey comes from, i.e. her parents being nobodies vs. being the latest in the Palpatine bloodline, but more about what the heroine chooses to do with her life. On that front, Rey did quite well for herself by the time the Sequel Trilogy was over, as she chose not to follow in the footsteps of her malevolent grandfather, despite seeing a vision of herself having turned to the Dark Side. Maybe Ridley might have taken Rey down a different narrative path had she been part of that “pay grade,”but it sounds like she’s pleased with the final destination where her character ended up.
The Rise of Skywalker was one of the more polarizing Star Wars movies, with one of the common complaints being that it retconned much of what The Last Jedi set up, though there’s also a segment of the fanbase that feels these two movies work really well together. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, The Rise of Skywalker marked the end of the long-running Skywalker Saga that kicked off in 1977 with A New Hope. Whether or not Daisy Ridley ever reprises Rey remains to be seen, as contrary to popular belief, her Lucasfilm social media post from last December was not a tease that she was returning to the franchise set in a galaxy far, far away.
Break out your Disney+ subscription if you’d like to revisit The Rise of Skywalker while streaming the Star Wars movies in order. Sometimes I Think About Dying doesn’t have a wide release date set yet, but it’s one of four movies Daisy Ridley has coming out this year, the other three being The Inventor, The Marsh King’s Daughter and Young Woman and the Sea.
