Originally Posted by
godisawesome
Okay, that’s much more of a convincing answer to me. If you made the entire point of the ST be about rejecting the dramatic advantage of a biological family bond for a found family one, and exploited the hell out of Kylo as a counter-example with no redeeming features, then I think Rey Random could actually pull something off for her as a character, *and* make sure the Skywalker’s aren’t completely screwed over into being screwed up with a sad ending. And I genuinely like this idea better than any non-Solo/Skywalker parentage she could have, including Palpatine and Kenobi.
I’ll confess that I know a lot of my issue with the idea of Rey Random comes down to The Last Jedi being, in my opinion, the worst way to ever present the idea, and one that highlights all of its weaknesses - and no, I genuinely don’t believe it did anything for Rey except hurt her as a character and asset, and that sadly, as groan-worthy as the Rey Palpatine retcon in TROS was, it still helped her out after TLJ almost totally torpedoed her. And if you ask me, the ST can never really have as great of an impact as it could because of how TLJ handled her and the Skywalker family story - both she and the Skywalkers are better off having adventures that don’t tie back into the ST much at all.
...And yeah, I’d argue that, to me, Rey Skywalker would still ultimately be a better choice... but that would depend more on how it was executed, and on how well you exploited it’s “aftershocks” elsewhere.
To me, Rey actually was a pretty compelling character in TFA given the context - she was getting Part 1/3 there, so you’re exchanging the pace of developing her like Jyn Erso for hopefully deeper development over a longer period of time... and because, to be blunt, I think people often ignore how much personality The Last Jedi removed from her. And while I can see the way that Rey Random *could* work, if you fully embraced a found family theme and were willing to use Kylo the way he almost has to be used to pull it off... I think there’d still be more dramatic payoff in “inverting” Rey’s journey to Luke’s: have her contrast his arc of discovering his father is a villain but that drawing them closer together to solve the conflict by having Rey discover a heroic father but struggle with abandonment issues that eventually make that *particular* relationship unable to solve the conflict.
While I think Rey as Luke's surrogate daughter is a good idea, I think Rey as Luke’s traumatized daughter whose issues mean she can’t both reconcile with him as a father and be his student is more dramatically delicious... and leaves a way for Leia being her teacher (even if just in terms of emotional maturity and wisdom) to have extra resonance.
But!
...Bigger than that, I think there are some natural limitations that Rey Random puts on the story elsewhere that Rey Skywalker would have. I mean, Kylo hadto die if Rey wasn’t a Skywalker. Flat out. Leave him alive, and inevitably, someone would pull a Rian Johnson and overshadow Rey with him, and even if they didn’t mean to, heks have the easier pitch to sell to new audiences for all time. Evil or good. And on top of that, the Skywalker family story would always have some extra element of depression and disappointment. It’d be constant struggle to reinforce the found family meaning of the ST against people who would simply always be depressed that the blood family ended on a grid of a human being.
But, well... it’s easier to sell a happy ending for the family with a blood continuation. Not right, but easier. And Ben Solo can survive the ST if Rey’s a Skywalker; no one would doubt she was more important than him, and he could have some long, drawn out redemption story or found a new dark side order, whatever. And, well... I’m sorry, but the smarter way to handle Luke’s story between the OT and ST would be to have a Mara Jade-esque love interest who’s Rey’s mom enter the picture, so you can milk that time period for stories and cash... and you could even pull a Zuko and have Rey go on a post-ST odyssey to find her mother.
To me, Rey Random only works if you go full bore on found family, and would still be weaker than Rey Skywalker... but The Last Jedi will always be the reason it couldn’t work in the actual ST.