For instance, Rey was able to lift dozens of heavy boulders with the force and take on Commander Snoke's elite guards without any real Jedi training. After all, Luke spent most of the narrative denying Rey her requests for training, and he never really caved to her demands to the very end. Even The Force Awakens at least provided some kind of context to explain Rey's abilities. In the interrogation scene, Kylo was peering into Rey's mind with the force, and she could have theoretically picked up on how he was doing it because of that, so she was able to use a mind trick against the guard to escape. And likewise when she was battling Kylo at Starkiller Base, he had been previously wounded by a Wookiee Bowcaster, which had already been shown to be a deadly one-shot kill weapon, so it gave Rey a fighting chance. Yet in The Last Jedi she seemed to have special abilities just because. These are the sorts of things that Luke couldn't do until spending an entire film training with Master Yoda. This is where many criticisms come from when they talk about Rey being a "Mary Sue" character who is just good at everything for no real reason.
But an idea dawned on me as I was watching trailers for Rise of Skywalker. It may be too late for The Last Jedi to explain away these plot holes, but Episode IX still has an opportunity to address them, and in ways that could really make the plot interesting.
Consider the first trailer for Rise of Skywalker that was released. In this trailer we see a brief glimpse of Rey in Dark Jedi robes wielding a red lightsaber. Now the most obvious interpretation of this is that Disney wants you to speculate that Rey could turn to the dark side in this chapter. Another possible take is that this is just a premonition or vision of what may become if Rey makes the wrong choices, but it doesn't necessarily happen by the end of the film, so it's really just a bait and switch to get audiences intrigued. However, my take on this is something entirely different.
Let's consider one of the later trailers. In this trailer, Rey remarks, "People keep telling me they know me. No ones does." And then Kylo responds, "But I do."
What if Kylo really does know? What if he knows that she was a former student of the academy as well? What if the shot of Rey in Sith robes isn't a glimpse of what may come to pass, but what already happened? Rey once turned to the dark side with him.
Let's get even crazier with this theory now. What if Rey actually learned the secret ability of Darth Plagueis the Wise that Palpatine spoke of to Anakin? She then used it to resurrect ancient dark side force users known as the Knights of Ren. Now with the help of the Knights of Ren, and with Kylo and Rey joining their ranks, they ransacked the academy and turned on Luke.
But afterward Rey wasn't satisfied. She still wanted to learn more about the potential of the dark side, so she sought out Palpatine's resting place and began resurrecting the Emperor himself. But as she was in the process of doing this, Luke finally caught up with her and defeated her in a duel before she could complete the resurrection. Rather than killing her though, he decided to spare her life and wipe her memories with the force. It was the only thing he could do to spare her because to allow her to live with such a dangerous power that she's already done so much damage with was too much of a risk, but he also couldn't bring himself to kill his own student that he failed to train and guide away from the dark side.
Now Palpatine exists in some half-resurrected state and is still trying to manipulate Rey through the force to complete her destiny and make the Emperor reborn. This is where Rise of Skywalker picks up.
All of this could add so much contextualization for why Luke felt like such a failure. It wasn't just that he lost Ben, but Rey too. And she already wreaked so much damage from resurrecting the Knights of Ren, destroying the academy, and nearly bringing back the Emperor. I think much of the problem with why Luke's characterization didn't work with everyone is because it didn't show much of what really happened the day the academy fell. I think if Rise of Skywalker really showed the scale of the loss; the students getting murdered en masse, and the whole thing being orchestrated by two of his own most promising students, that would have weighed heavily on him. So much that it could have made him doubt that the Jedi teachings are even the right way anymore if this is what they can potentially lead to.
This theory also fixes Rey being a Mary Sue because she's already been shown to be capable of falling to the dark side. It explains why she just has incredibly gifted force powers despite never having any proper training. It also further deepens the connection between Kylo and Rey. Their history goes much further back than their first encounter in The Force Awakens. Kylo and Rey once had a close relationship at the academy, which was what led to Rey siding with him once she learned what happened between Ben and Luke. It further explains the origins of the Knights of Ren, why Rey has amnesia about her past, and how she arrived on Jakku.
And to top it off, this theory also provides a clear narrative path for how the Emperor can return for Episode IX without invalidating Vader's sacrifice and triumph over the Emperor in Return of the Jedi. Instead of having some cheap plot contrivance like Palpatine somehow surviving the fall or it was just a clone all along, he still truly died in that moment. It's just that now Rey is going to bring him back.
He could still play on Rey's insecurities about her past and her longing for meeting her parents, so maybe he manifests as the fake voice of her father, urging her to bring him back. The early parts of the film could focus on Rey rediscovering her lost power, which provides yet another opportunity to fix another problem with The Last Jedi. Rey can use her power to bring back Luke as well.
I always felt that Luke's death in The Last Jedi was a little out of place and unnecessary. His story arc seemed incomplete, and he didn't have much of a chance to do anything meaningful in the film. I was frankly OK with Luke starting out as a grumpy old curmudgeon at the beginning of the film, but then you're supposed to follow a natural character arc where Luke warms up to Rey, rediscovers his youthful optimism, and finally goes out to do heroic Jedi things again, but we never really saw much of that. With Rey's power restored in Rise of Skywalker, this can be an opportunity to bring Luke back as more than just a force ghost.
I imagine a final battle where after Rey realizes she's been tricked into bringing back the Emperor, she has to team up with Luke in one last showdown against him. It could end with Luke being heavily wounded in the fight, so as a final ditch effort, he channels the rest of his force power into Rey, giving her the combined strength to strike the Emperor down. With the battle finally over, Rey tells Luke that he wasn't a failure. He gave them hope and she had a second chance to follow the path of the light because of him. So Luke can finally pass away with the dignity he deserves.
And that's how you conclude Rise of Skywalker. Now there are a couple of last points that should probably be addressed in order for this theory to work. Firstly, one would naturally beg the question why Kylo didn't bring up this past between them before. To answer that, consider the context in which they reunited. Rey was being held captive by the First Order and a big scary Sith guy in a mask was intrusively prodding into her mind to extract information from her. From her perspective, this guy wasn't to be trusted, so even if he had mentioned it, she wouldn't have believed him anyway. And Kylo probably already concluded the same once he peered into her mind and saw that her memories were gone. He knew that he had to start from scratch if he was going to have any credibility with her.
The second problem is that having the ability to resurrect people is pretty broken and some restrictions would have to apply in order for it to not be too overpowered. Maybe because resurrecting someone disrupts the natural order of life and death, it might twist you more towards the dark side each time you use it, or it weakens your connection to the force until it cuts you off entirely, or maybe it runs the risk of flat out killing the user as well. Whatever the case, some limitations should be established so Rey can't just keep using it indefinitely.
As a final touch, I also think it would be pertinent to include some scene showing Snoke's initial manipulations of Ben; demonstrating that he didn't turn to the dark side solely because of Luke's actions, but because Snoke played on his insecurities toward Master Luke. Furthermore, I think a scene that fully contextualizes Luke's own lapse in judgment toward Ben would be helpful as well. If we could see what Luke saw when he peered into Ben's mind; maybe even see a premonition of Han Solo's death by his son's own hand; then it would be much easier to see why Luke lost it so suddenly in the moment before regaining his composure. With this added context, I think Luke's character could be fully justified while still allowing for the moral ambiguity in the story that Rian Johnson was going for.
And with that, you have fixed The Last Jedi. Mostly. Not really. But at least some of it, and it makes for a pretty entertaining movie to boot. Would JJ actually go for this theory though? Probably not. I don't think the current team behind Rise of Skywalker would be this creative or concerned with tying up loose ends in the lore, but we can still dream. In any case, we'll soon find out one way or another as Rise of Skywalker hits theaters tomorrow.
