SPOILERS AHEAD: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you want to read our spoiler-free review, click here. The rest of you, read on… but know that you have been warned.
You may have recognized the voice, or possibly the arm, but since that was all we saw of the person with Rey in her lightsaber induced vision, it’s difficult to tell who she was left with when her family dropped her off on Jakku. Now we have confirmation of who it was, but that, of course, raises several other questions.
When Rey is left on Jakku as a child, she’s left in the care of Unkar Plutt, the junk dealer who’s in possession of the Millennium Falcon at the beginning of The Force Awakens. The confirmation comes courtesy of Slashfilm who has seen a complete version of the film’s final script. All we see in Rey’s vision/memory is a large hand and the voice of a man saying "Quiet, Girl!" If you’ve seen the film more than once and were paying attention to that voice on a second viewing, like...somebody...might...do, then you likely recognized it as the voice of the character who gives Rey food in exchange for salvage.
The revelation isn’t huge. Plutt is practically the only other resident of Jakku we really meet. The confirmation is still important, however, as it allows us to focus on the larger questions, like, why? The interactions we see between Rey and Plutt are strictly business. He obviously doesn’t care for her in any way. We’re told in one scene that he’s giving her significantly less food now than he was previously. He has her jumped in order to get his hands on BB-8. What parents would leave their daughter with this piece of work? Maybe Rey’s parents weren’t particularly nice people. Maybe Plutt got the girl because he made the best deal. We know just short of nothing about Rey’s parents at this point so really anything is possible.
It’s not clear how much of this Rey even remembers. Whether or not she even knows she was left with Unkar Plutt is not explained, she was young enough that she may not have very clear memories of when she was left behind. Although, it’s fair to say she’s aware of the situation following the vision, even if she wasn’t before.
What do you think the deal is with Rey and Unkar Plutt? Is there more to him than we realize. How dire could the situation possibly have been for Rey’s parents to justify leaving their daughter with a guy like that?
