Almost three years after the Skywalker Saga concluded with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the movie remains a hot topic of debate. For many fans, that entire sequel trilogy is a period of storytelling they would like to forget, especially given the way the stories of the franchise's original leads, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, and Leia Organa, were handled by J.J. Abrams and Rian Johnson.
Not even Emperor Palpatine's return managed to satisfy those same fans after The Last Jedi's divisive take on Luke, and the fact that Rey turned out to be the villain's granddaughter was more of a perplexing reveal than an exciting one. The daughter of a Palpatine clone who escaped those Sith Loyalists, Rey's heritage may have better tied her to the wider Star Wars franchise, but there had been stronger theories.
Was Rey being Obi-Wan Kenobi's daughter one of them? For some, yes. During a Vanity Fair interview (via SFFGazette.com), Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy explained why she felt that simply wouldn't work.
"The bigger issue is talking about Obi-Wan as a Master Jedi, and the issue of attachment and selflessness. In order for Obi-Wan to have a child, you are really, really impacting the rules around the Jedi," she explained. "What does that mean? If that were explored - and certainly there were a lot of ideas being thrown around - but anything to do with Obi-Wan in that regard was pretty much off the table because it flies in the face of everything George created in the mythology."
"We’re not rigid about it. It’s certainly open for discussion all the time," she continued. "But that’s a pretty significant tenet in the mythology of the Jedi that we’d be reluctant to mess with."
We can't disagree with this assessment, and Obi-Wan suddenly having a child would have felt pretty forced...as did Palpatine having a granddaughter, to be fair. Unfortunately, love them or hate them, the Star Wars sequels contained a lot of messy elemnets, and that comes down to a lack of planning on Lucasfilm's part.
They're looking to make up for that now, of course, and we'll get to spend more time with "Ben" Kenobi when Obi-Wan Kenobi's first two episodes premiere on Disney+ on Friday, May 27.