Daisy Ridley’s Rey has become the talk of the Star Wars world following her debut in The Force Awakens. The fan theories about who she is and what she means are now flying all over the internet. Now it looks like that answer is going to turn out to be something big. Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow has become part of building the Star Wars universe and he adores Rey as a character. He also makes it clear that this new saga is really Rey’s story, he’s just telling it.
While the lead up to Star Wars: The Force Awakens gave us a greater focus on Finn, we learned when we actually saw the movie that it was really all about Rey. Colin Trevorrow was asked by ET Online about all the numerous theories about who Rey really was and the director said that he was familiar with all the theories. While he, of course, was not forthcoming with an answer, what he did say was that the answer would be worth it because Rey herself is vital.
Rey is a character that is important in this universe, not just in the context of The Force Awakens, but in the entire galaxy. She deserves it. We'll make sure that that answer is something that feels like it was something that happened a long time ago, far away, and we're just telling you what happened.
The interesting line here is that "she deserves it." What Colin Trevorrow is clearly saying is that Rey’s character isn’t important due to accident or coincidence; whatever her origin, it’s one that explains this importance. There’s also the strong implication here that Rey’s history is being built into the existing Star Wars mythology- it apparently won’t feel forced. For that to work, these plot points have to flow naturally from the information that we already have. This would also mean that one of existing theories may be correct, or at the very least, the truth can be found with the information we have.
The most alarming aspect of this revelation is that the information is coming from the director of Episode IX; if he is so intimately involved in molding Rey’s future, does that mean that we’ll be waiting until the end of the trilogy for answers? There are a lot of outstanding questions about Rey but we expect to have most of them answered in Episode VIII. Then, we anticipate that movie to create new mysteries which will be answered in the final film.
Either way, we’re excited to see where Rey goes from here. Daisy Ridley has a lot of work to do, but if she does it well she may obtain a place in cinema history alongside Luke Skywalker. The summer of 2017 can’t come soon enough.
