With the release of
Star Wars: The Force Awakens, one of the common refrains from reviews is that this movie creates more questions than it answers. Indeed, this movie relishes in introducing new questions and they’ve dominated discussion boards and fansites the past weeks. Who is Rey/who are her parents? Who is Supreme Leader Snoke? How did Kylo Ren get Vader’s helmet, seemingly left in an ash pile on the Forest Moon of Endor? These along with many, many other questions remain. This theory will attempt to begin to answer these questions. If this theory proves to be true, then MAJOR SPOILERS ahead.
Who is Rey? Who are her parents?
The Star Wars epic is about the Skywalker family. No matter how much you want to forget Episode 1, from first to last, this story has followed the Skywalker family. I’ve seen the many theories about Rey as an offspring of Obi-Wan, but the problem is such a solution doesn’t fit the narrative arc. If such was the case, while there may be continuity between Episode 1-3 and 6-9 of the Kenobi story, there is a gaping hole in Episodes 4-6, the very heart of this epic. Yes, Obi-Wan’s voice was heard in her Force vision whispering to her…and so was Yoda’s. Similarly, yes, Daisy Ridley has intentionally kept her British accent and this seems intentional on the part of the writers/directors. But the funny thing about accents is that they aren’t genetic; they’re regional. Her accent may be that of someone from a Core system but she could have picked that up from her parent(s), as well as other sources, even indeed living on Jakku.
No, Rey is not a Kenobi. She is a Skywalker. Well, a “Skywalker.” I think much like Anakin, she is a force baby, one who has been born of the force and indeed the one spoken about in the prophecy. She will bring balance to the Force, something that cannot really be said of Anakin/Darth Vader. What this ‘balance’ is we have yet to see, but I doubt it involves the veritable extinction of Light or Dark practitioners as we have seen in the past. This will be the culmination of story that we were introduced to in Episode 1. In this way she will become the chosen one Anakin failed to be; this also still puts her firmly in the "Skywalker" lineage, as a "sibling" of Anakin.
About Rey’s identity and her parentage, Colin Trevorrow, Episode IX’s director, said
here:
“I’ve seen all of the theories… What I do know is that we’re going to make sure that that answer is deeply and profoundly satisfying, because Rey is a character that is important in this universe,
not just in the context of The Force Awakens but in the entire galaxy, and she deserves it. So we’ll make sure that that answer is something that feels like it was—it’s something that happened a long time ago [in a galaxy] far, far away, we’re just telling you what happened.”(
emphasis added)
He describes her as important not only to this movie but to "the entire galaxy." To me, I'm not sure it could be clearer: She is the fulfillment of the prophecy. In the article, Trevorrow talks about how he views Episode IX as not only the conclusion to the final 3 episodes, or the final 6 episodes, but indeed the entire 9. We learned of the prophecy in Episode 1 and it was the impetus to train Anakin from the start. I think we're on solid ground to suggest that the fulfillment of the prophecy is the culmination of the total story arc, whatever that fulfillment looks like.
I think this will add an additional personal element to the conflict between Rey and Kylo in the movies to come, particularly when Kylo recognizes she is the true chosen one that was prophesied to bring balance to the force. Kylo, as we saw in
TFA, is consumed with fulfilling Vader’s legacy, which arguably is “bringing balance to the Force.” Queue Obi-Wan’s requiem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_YozYt8l-g
Kylo will see this, and he will likely take their conflict even more personally than he has up until this point, as he will perceive that she has stolen his destiny, his calling. This will create a true personal conflict between the protagonist and her immediate antagonist that is deep, emotional, and tragic, not a superficial "good vs. evil" story.
So, if Rey is also our ultimate protagonist, the true chosen one born of the Force, who is our ultimate, epic narrative-spanning antagonist?
Who is Supreme Leader Snoke?
It seems pretty clear to me that Supreme Leader Snoke is Darth Plagueis or what is left of him. People have pointed out the many significant parallels, which I’ll only briefly retread here.
Some have noted that he certainly resembles Plagueis, although I think this is misplaced (as I’ll discuss below). For me the strongest piece of evidence is the contextual clue of the similarity of the musical score between Darth Plagueis and Snoke. Check out the evidence
here. There are other circumstantial clues like the reference that “The Supreme Leader is wise,” which we know that Plagueis was known as Darth Plagueis the Wise from Palpatine's monologue. Additionally, supporting lore suggests that part of Plagueis’ seduction of Palpatine was manipulating Palpatine to kill his own father. Seeing a similar tactic deployed on Ben Solo would not be surprising.
We know from the prequels that Plagueis could use the force to create life and could even “keep the ones he cared about from dying.” Some from within the community have long suspected that one of the subplots running through the prequels was that Darth Plagueis (or possibly Sidious) created Anakin. I suspect that we'll likely learn that he tried to forfeit the prophecy with Anakin (since we knew he could quote "create life" with the force) and Anakin was effectively a false messiah with a very high midi-chlorian count. In this way Snoke (Plagueis) and his machinations are present from the very beginning of the epic.
But didn’t he die? That is what Palpatine narrates in Episode III with a sardonic smile and a note to the irony, given Plagueis’ power. Palpatine smugly recounts how “while he slept” he was murdered by his apprentice. Haven’t we seen some other instance where a Force user in a meditative state was struck down by a lightsaber…? Oh wait:
https://youtu.be/sq51w34Hg9I?t=2m12s
The only instance we’ve seen of life-after-death for the Force users (in current canon) are individuals as Force-ghosts, and these have only been Jedi. My question would be: what does the Dark Side version of this ascendency look like? Here is where we all need to put on our tin-foil hats, and finish travelling the rest of the way down the rabbit hole.
While Dark Side ascendency may look like their Light Side brethren, I suspect not. Maybe, for the Dark Side, cheating death as a force ghost can (or must) involve possessing a body. Which leads me to my final data point to consider:
Someone astutely observed that Snoke’s image and that of old man Anakin look remarkably similar, although they wrongly concluded that Snoke is Anakin/Vader. Narratively, both within the micro and macro narrative, there are so many problems with this. Just see
here.
But what if Snoke stepped into Anakin's body after Anakin died, maybe because of the high midi-chlorion count of Anakin’s body? This would explain the physical resemblance between Snoke and unmasked Vader that has been observed. Anakin’s skin had already been burned at the end of Episode III (see the linked Obi-Wan clip above) but it was fairly smooth and hairless come Vader’s unmasking in Episode VI (see photo above). If Snoke/Plagueis really is as powerful as he was said to be, maybe he could regenerate the limbs of Vader.
This would also help explain some ancillary mysteries introduced in
TFA like how Kylo got the melted Vader mask, as no one but Luke would know about where Vader's corpse was post-destruction of the second Death Star. Kylo got it from Snoke, who had it on him after Snoke's resurrection/reincarnation in Vader’s body.
If this is indeed the case (and it certainly is a big ‘if’), the shape of Episodes VIII and IX come into focus. As
TFA was to
A New Hope, so too will Episode VIII be to
Empire Strikes Back. We will have a huge reveal and a significant loss (as appropriate for Act II’s). We will likely see a dual showdown between Snoke and Luke and Kylo and Rey. Leading into or as part of this fight, the reveal will be Snoke’s true identity, that of Darth Plagueis, who spawned the false messiah that brought down the Old Republic and now inhabits Vader’s corpse/body. In this way, Darth Vader will return, even if it isn’t Anakin behind the mask. Luke will again find out that he is facing his Father, but in a different way this time as Episode VIII parallels
Empire. The impending fight between Luke and Snoke is now infinitely more personal and tragic – Luke will face off against the possessed, reanimated corpse of his Father and probably die in this fight.
This could have the potential of either further fueling Kylo’s hero worship, or it could alternatively be the impetus to redeem Kylo in some manner. This clears the way for Rey, the true protagonist and prophesied one, to face down the one who would abuse the force and manipulate the prophecy, Snoke/Plagueis, and ultimately bring balance to the Force, thus completing the epic narrative which began in Episode 1.
There it is. You can thank me for spoiling Episodes VIII and IX in a couple years.