How Does Daisy Ridley Feel About Rey's Grandfather Reveal In Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker?
In one of the clunkiest lines of dialogue to emerge from a major studio motion picture in many a year, Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) announced at the beginning of J.J. Abrams' sci-fi thriller "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" that "Somehow, Palpatine returned." Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), as Starwoids will be able to tell you, was the evil Emperor who served a major role in the 1983 film "Return of the Jedi" and was revealed to be a manipulative rising tyrant throughout the events of the "Star Wars" prequel films released from 1999 to 2005. In terms of "Star Wars" chronology, Palpatine was last seen being thrown off of a catwalk, plummetting to his doom at the end of "Jedi."
The line "somehow, Palpatine returned" revealed how desperate the makers of "The Rise of Skywalker" were to excite audiences with little more than nostalgia imagery. The "somehow" even reveals that the screenwriters, Abrams and Chris Terrio, didn't want to invent a practical reason for Palpatine's resurrection. They simply wanted a familiar villain that, they clearly hoped, would get Starwoids to stand up and cheer. It didn't work.
Indeed, to compound the lack of creativity, it would be revealed that Rey (Daisy Ridley), the one-time salvager of scrap and latent user of the Force, was actually Palpatine's granddaughter. The "a hero and a villain are secretly related" plot twist from "The Empire Strikes Back" still echoes hollowly through the "Star Wars" series like the pathetic scream of a dying bat. It also contradicted the appealing assertion from 2017's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" that Rey was quite deliberately a nobody. Now she was a legacy character.
In January of 2023, Ridley spoke to Rolling Stone about Rey's lineage and gave her opinion on the matter. She was surprisingly diplomatic.
Somehow, Ridley is diplomatic
The first time audiences saw the character of Rey, she was gathering scraps on her desert home planet of Jakku. She lived alone and would later mention that her parents had merely abandoned her on that planet many years before. She was essentially a nobody who would soon become embroiled in a larger wartime plot she couldn't ever have predicted. This setup parallels that of Luke Skywalker. He, too, lived largely alone on a desert planet. He, too, would become embroiled in a larger wartime plot he couldn't ever have predicted. This allowed the nobodies in the audience to imagine themselves in a similar position. Maybe someday, you too will get involved in an exciting space battle against a fascist empire.
In both cases, however, it was eventually revealed that the protagonists' involvement in the war was destined through birthright. Many fans found the repeated twist to be tiresome. Ridley, however, was less concerned with the pandering nature of the twist and more with how it reflected on her character. Yes, Rey found she was part of a dark legacy, but that only made her personal choices that much more important. Ridley said:
"What was interesting about the last one, for me, was that you can be a hero and not come from anywhere or you can be a hero and come from literally the worst person in the universe. [...] You're not your parents, you're not your grandparents, you're not your bloodline and you're not the generations before you."
Rey may have inherited her powers and may have been the granddaughter of a supervillain, but her impulses and positivity drove her toward heroism. Hence her eventual claiming of the name "Skywalker." She had more in common with that name than "Palpatine."