absolxguardian:

Now the problem with a lot of Rey parentage theories is they can’t present a good reason why she would be on Jakku of all places. You know, the site of a battle and really just a really bad dead-end planet, worse than Tatooine, and even then Luke was left in the care of his aunt and uncle, not a scrapper like Unkar.

Well, there is one theory that answers that, and even hinges on it. Rey Palpatine. All because of Palpatine’s contingency plan.

So for those of you who don’t know Palpatine’s contingency plan, it is in the case of his and Vader’s death:

However, one thing is off about this plan. Palpatine believed in a Sith Empire as much as he believed in a Galactic Empire and well, Rax wasn’t force sensitive.

A scorched earth policy on several planets, called operation Cinder(you might know that from Battlefront 2)

A series of tests to gather the best and most loyal remaining members of empire led by an orphan on Jakku Palpatine groomed named Gallius Rax.

After choosing who is worthy out of the empire that failed their emperor, as much of the empire as possible should make a final stand on Jakku, an out of the way planet with a building called The Observatory on it. (There were several, but this one was important for the contingency)  This building contained information about paths through the unknown regions and presumably instructions for creating the first order.

However, one thing is off about this plan. Palpatine believed in a Sith Empire as much as he believed in a Galactic Empire and well, Rax wasn’t force sensitive.

But what if there was a reason? What if Rax wasn’t his only heir? What if the Jakku Observatory contained more than unknown regions maps, a replica of the emperor’s yacht, and a Sith thingie to blow up Jakku. A child, created by the force, to be the heir of the Sith Empire.

The thing is, the contingency plan didn’t fully work. Rax was killed by Rae Sloane and she was the one who led the first order. And she didn’t know the whole plan. What if part of the plan was that there was a child, grown part through cloning tech, genetic manipulation, and force/Sith magic? Galius has hidden information in his POV before, so it makes sense to hide the existence of a Sith heir from the reader.

But how did Rey come into the possession of Unkar? Well, there were most likely many or at least a few stormtroopers and other low ranking imperials who survived Jakku and stopped fighting. Not every imperial was a zealot. We already saw this in the Poe Dameron comic with Terex and Corlac. And with both Ciena and Admiral Veriso calling an evacuation of their ships before crashing it, many escape pods could have landed all over Jakku. And that’s only counting the ships we know had time for people to get to.

And that’s who Rey’s “parents” are. They could have come from the Inflictor somewhere else, been stormtroopers or officers. That part doesn’t matter. What matters is that they shed their allegiance to the empire, were desperate, and were left on Jakku after the battle. Or they could have even been people who were already stranded on Jakku. Whomever they are, all that matters, is that years after the battle they found the Observatory.

And there they found Rey in stasis. They released her and since the child had no memories but a blank developed mind, she naturally bonded to her rescuers. Eventually, they reached Niima outpost and met Unkar. Desperate to get off planet, they traded their “child” and possibly some relics from the observatory to get off planet.*

Sounds a bit far-fetched? Well, if we use the criteria from MatPat’s Rey parents theory, I can answer each of them, most importantly the left on Jakku part. Those criteria were:

1. British/Core World accent
2. Strong connection to the force
3. Luke/Anakin’s lightsaber calling to her
4. Good piloting skills
5. Left on Jakku as a child
6. Thematic meaning/“It’s like poetry, it rhymes”
In addition, I will also apply my theory to a few key scenes:

Kylo’s reaction when he first hears of her
Rey’s flashback
Kylo’s “you still want to kill me?” line
Rey’s ability to use a mind trick untrained
The Leia-Rey hug
Some lines from trailers
The Chosen One Prophecy 

So let’s begin.

First the core world accent. A lot of people have used this as evidence for Rey Kenobi, however, accents are barely genetic. And a lot of people including Phasma and probably Tarkin changed their accents to seem more respected and from a core world(rather than post-apocalyptic and outer rim)

MatPat’s point about her picking it up from Unkar stands, but if the first words Rey heard were imperials, who odds are adopted core accents, that could also explain how she picked it up.

And strong connection to the force? Palpatine would have made his clone-child extremely powerful with the force, as powerful as he could make her. So that’s pretty much covered. Also, her main displays of force powers were from the dark side. The pushing back on Kylo’s mental connection and use of a mind trick were both motivated by fear. Being able to hold her own against Kylo could be the force assisting her via the dark side. And as we saw from Ezra in season 1 of Rebels, the dark side is much easier to call on than the light.

As for Anakin’s lightsaber calling for her, that doesn’t even have to do with familiar relation. The inquisitor’s kybers called to Ashoka and they most certainly aren’t related. And a green kyber crystal called to a random Tusken Raider when she was asked to steal it from the Jawa’s that sold R2. That was a really weird story and I wonder if it was setting something up, but it doesn’t matter. It’s canon. The kyber crystal in the saber or the force in general was calling Rey. Because it chose her. Because kyber crystals are basically wands from Harry Potter.

And her piloting skills? That could easily be explained by a combination of force boosted instincts/reaction time and well, practice. She did know all of that stuff from using an old flight simulator. And the point about piloting skills could be used just as well to make her the child of Thane as it points to Han or Luke on its own. There’s a lot of really exceptional pilots in the galaxy.

As for being left on Jakku, I guess I should explain the timeline better. According to the TFA script, she is 19 in 34 ABY(when the movie takes place). And she looks to be about 4 during the flashback scene of her being left with Unkar. At first, that doesn’t seem to add up, but Palpatine would have set his child into a non-aging stasis after they reached a reasonable age for starting dark side training and feeling into the Unknown Regions. If the Empire survived much longer than it did, the contingency plan using an adult with no memories would be weird. Heck, after reaching 4, she could have been moved to carbonite (do people age in carbonite? I’m not sure if that’s been answered. It’s not important). Terex and Corlac seem to have been on Jakku for a while, so Rey’s “parents” could also have, surviving as scavengers before finding the Observatory. This would also give enough time for the scavenging economy to get properly set up, as Niima Outpost was only founded after the battle of Jakku. 11 years would have been enough time that a low-quality ship from Unkar could actually be purchased.

And for thematic meaning. Well, we got that down. We got Kylo, the child of two rebellion war heroes, trained as a Jedi having turned to the dark side. And we have a child, who grew up in a situation even worse than Anakin, who was literally created to be the next emperor who chose the light. This would fit with Star War’s strong themes of personal choice and growing beyond heritage. It would also fit with the newer themes of the force not being so black and white.

And without the Aftermath series, Rey’s parentage could easily be explained as “Palpatine had a contingency plan that ended with a final battle on Jakku. The man the emperor choose to lead the soon to be first order died on Jakku and so the plan couldn’t probably be carried out. That including retreating to the unknown regions with a clone-child created by the force who would be raised to be the next emperor.”

And for readers of Aftermath, it would strengthen already existing parallels. Those between Rey and Gallius Rax. We got Rax, who even before being groomed by Palpatine was very cruel and did what he had to for survival on Jakku. And then Rey, who is basically the child of evil, who remained kind in a cruel environment. And then both of them ended up on ships off Jakku and were found by their original owners (Han and Palpatine). Upon finding the orphans, both owners preformed mentor like roles. The ships also brought them into the organization they would become a vital member of. Rey also didn’t want to leave Jakku, while that was one of Rax’s only wishes. And for Rax, well the desert planet became his grave.

Now that we got all of those points squared away, what about those scenes I promised to explain?

Alright, let’s start with when Kylo first finds out about Rey. As MatPat pointed out, his reaction is much too violent for having never heard of Rey. Well since Palpatine was in magic sith force communication to what we can assume to be Snoke, it is possible Snoke knew of the contingency plan, including of Rey.

Later when Kylo joined the First Order, he would have been informed of the failure to properly carry out the plan. Of course as far as they knew, Rey would still be stuck in the Observatory in stasis and not worth extracting.

As for Rey’s flashback, a lot of the scenes she saw would have came from the force or from reading the history of the object, but even that is indicative of powerful force abilities. However, the scene we know is either memory brought to the surface or unlocked by the sequence is when Rey has just been sold to Unkar in exchange for a ship, the very one we see flying off. The imperials would have been the only humanoids and comfort she would have known at this point, explaining her reaction to being abandoned even if they were ambivalent to her. The reason Rey thinks they are her parents is because that was probably the lie they told Unkar to explain where they obtained a literal child, or what Unkar told her. To the scrapper, they seemed as people so desperate to leave after the battle, they would sell their child.  

As for Kylo’s line “you still want to kill me” witch MatPat took to mean Kylo knew Rey from before, there’s another way to read this line that supports my theory. The “still” part refers to their encounter on Takodona, when Rey tried to shoot him. Because he knows or suspects Rey is Palpatine’s heir he expects it to be easy to turn her to the dark side. This is also why he says she needs a teacher, because he sees her as similar to him, the descendant of a Sith Lord.

As for the mind trick, my other points about Rey’s artificially created power stands, but I feel like I should specifically address this. Palpatine was extremely adept with mind tricks. In Lords of the Sith, he manages to control a Twi’lek child so well she would stand there as Palpatine and Vader argued over killing her, their lightsabers in front of her face. This pales in comparison to the suggestion Rey manages to pull of in a moment of extreme stress and fear. And since Rey was only supposed to be awakened after his death, the emperor wouldn’t mind making her more powerful than him if she was fully trained.

As for the Rey Leia hug, I don’t have that good of an explanation, but neither do Rey Solo-Organa theorists. You’re not going to be able to recognize someone you only knew as a child a minimum of 20 years ago as a child. All I could think of is that since Leia’s untrained force skill (Ashoka book tells us every untrained force sensitive has one skill their sensitivity manifests as) is sensing (sensed Luke hanging from cloud city and Han’s death) is that she could sense the dark side coming off of Rey and from knowing Chewie isn’t a fan of being comforted, she decided that Rey was the one who need comforting. And the aura of darkness coming from Rey would be part her predisposition and part the anger and rage towards Kylo for killing Han and possibly Finn.

Ok now how about some lines from the trailers? Well first we got Luke’s “I’ve see this raw strength only once before” line is most likely about Kylo, however it is referring to Rey because she’s so damn strong with the force. Don’t forget the trailer has a scene where she cracks open the ground, to Luke’s shock and horror. As for Snoke saying “Fulfil your destiny” that’s probably to Rey, and under this theory, it’s because he still sees her as meant to join the dark side, because that’s what she was created for.

Alright, now for chosen one stuff. Well we know 2 things about the prophecy: 1. The chosen one is created through the force (technically midichlorians but it’s better if we all forget those exist) and 2. Will bring balance to the force. Now with the new narrative angle about the balance of the force being much more literal, with things like Bendu, Rey reaching out for “something else” may signify she is the chosen one. Of course that’s if the prophecy is real. And if you follow the theory that it was by force magic that Anakin was created by Palpatine, it just means it’s possible for Palpatine to make another force child. And with an increase access to lore after becoming emperor it’s reasonable he could create a force child with no human parent at all.

I hope this theory actually makes internal sense and there’s no thing from the eu that could ruin this theory. Or maybe there’s something that could enhance it. All I could think that I haven’t read that could apply is Rey’s Survival Guide, the full tfa novelization, and the visual dictionary for Tfa. Thanks to @lj-writes for checking this theory before I posted it and pointing out the script says Rey is 19. I guess we’ll find out if this works or not on the 15th

*@lj-writes also states that it might not be possible for a ship to be purchased with a child and some scrap, especially since Unkar wouldn’t see the value of sith artifacts. She states that it is possible that the “parents” sold Rey as “look at this child we found in the observatory, she’s probably magic or something.” And then when Rey didn’t show an obvious signs of power, she was put to work as a scavenger. Unkar simply hasn’t told Rey because he’s too embarrassed at seemingly being conned, so Rey simply thinks they’re her biological parents and left her.