Rey’s Choice Of Last Name In THE RISE OF SKYWALKER Is Good And Correct, Fight Me
WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER BEYOND THIS POINT, DUH
In the weeks and months leading up to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker there was a lot of chatter about what the title could possibly mean. A quick Google search of “Skywalker Jedi Title” shows there was a lot — and I mean A LOT — of think pieces dedicated to the theory that Skywalker would go from a family surname to a title replacement or supplement to Jedi.
Then the final moments of The Rise of Skywalker did just that and now those same people are calling Rey an identity thief for telling the random Tatooine denizen that her name is Rey Skywalker.
There’s just no pleasing some people.
The entire arc of Rey’s narrative now, from The Force Awakens to The Last Jedi to The Rise of Skywalker, is that family isn’t the blood you’re born into, but the people who love you. She begins the saga as an abandoned orphan longing for her parents to return, to ground her and give her an identity in the galaxy. The Last Jedi pushes her towards accepting love from non-blood relatives, to let the past go and become a whole person without the need for ancestral ties. The Rise of Skywalker then becomes the proverbial genie wish: Rey finally discovers her heritage, only to be horrified by it, as Leia Organa was before her. (It’s like poetry, it rhymes). But now, buoyed by the love of her Jedi Master, whom she has spent a year with being trained in the ways of the Force, and the found family Rey has in Finn, Poe, Chewbacca, and the droids, Rey is able to AGAIN let the past die. She even kills it, because she has to. Not by fighting the thing she hates, but by saving the people she loves.
Rey discovering she is a Palpatine pulls the rug out from under her as surely as Vader’s reveal that is he is Luke Skywalker’s long-lost father in Empire Strikes Back does. Just for narratively different reasons. Luke discovers the man he thought killed his father IS his father, upsetting the apple cart mythology that Anakin Skywalker was a heroic Jedi who died serving the Galactic Republic. It is a moment that strips Luke of his identity and throws everything he thought to be good and true about his history into the trash compactor.
At the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey may have been living in fear of herself, of her power, of the inevitability of fate at being called to the darkness. But she was at peace with her found family, beginning to heal from her abandonment trauma, and had found a modicum of happiness after a lifetime of isolating despair. Then here comes a piece of shit biological grandpa demanding the same amount of love and respect as Rey’s adopted grandma, Jedi Master Leia, despite being toxic trash. A narrative that is familiar to anyone who has ever had a poisonous branch of their family tree attempt to come slithering back in when it is advantageous to them.
But whereas the nature of Luke’s arc meant he needed the year between the events of Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi to recalibrate his internal sense of self, Rey already did that legwork after The Last Jedi. If Palpatine had revealed himself to her in The Force Awakens, when Rey was lonely and desperate for family connection, any family connection, her meeting with Darth Sidious would have undoubtedly taken a different turn. Instead, Rey can turn aside the siren song of belonging that would have appealed to her younger self: she rejects her blood as a Palpatine. She has no connection to this man or his long-gestating plans of galactic domination, despite a shared genetic code.
Instead, she takes the lessons learned from Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa (Skywalker). She is strengthened and surrounded by the voices of the Jedi before her, including Anakin Skywalker. Using their teaching, she defeats her grandfather (at least for a time, can this semi-immortal Sith truly die?). Of course, OF COURSE, it makes sense for Rey to adopt the surname of the people who gave her the first sense of family and safe harbor in her life. Luke and Leia trained her, guided her, loved her unconditionally despite apparently being aware of who her grandfather was.
That is family.
To say Rey is an identity thief is to shit on adopted children everywhere. To say that unless you have blood ties to the surname you are using, you don’t count. That Rey isn’t good enough to be a Skywalker. All of which are the antithesis of themes of the sequel trilogy, which go out of their way to say your bloodline doesn’t predetermine your goodness or badness. As the mother of a blended family, I am ready to throw hands. Rey is a Skywalker. Full fucking stop.
And if that’s still not enough for you, take solace in the fact that the Skywalker name is probably made up bullshit. In the original draft of The Phantom Menace, Shmi was not a Skywalker but a Warka. We know next to nothing about Shmi’s life prior to the arrival of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi on that fateful Tatooine day. Only that she was enslaved at a young age. It’s entirely possible this plot point will show up again, with Skywalker being the name Shmi chose as a beacon of hope that one day she (or her son) would be free to roam the skies. If so, it’ll mean Skywalker has been a title this entire time. But even if that narrative twist never arrives, it still doesn’t take away from Rey choosing the last name of the first family to ever show her safety and love in honor of their memory.
Long live Rey Skywalker, First of Her Name.
