'Star Wars: Episode IX': Abrams DID Have a Different Plan for Rey's Parents
For those who think J.J. Abrams might retcon Rey’s drunk nobody parents in Star Wars: Episode IX, there’s some new evidence to back up that wild prediction. Turns out, the director’s original idea for Reys’ parents was different than what Rian Johnson came up with for The Last Jedi.
On Tuesday, speaking to the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Simon Pegg said that while he was briefly working on The Force Awakens, he was under the impression that J.J. Abrams had a different idea for Rey’s secret identity than what we ended up seeing on screen in The Last Jedi. Though his face wasn’t seen, Pegg played Unkar Plutt in The Force Awakens; otherwise known as the guy who gave Rey a bad deal for her junk trading and somehow managed to rip-off the Millennium Falcon. Pegg even joked that he thought Plutt was maybe Rey’s father. But…the stuff about Abrams having a different plan was serious.
Wait, WAS Luke Rey's dad in J.J.'s mind?
“Well I know what J.J. kind of intended, or at least what was sort of being chucked around. I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by [The Last Jedi]. I don’t know…There was some talk about, you know, a kind of relevant lineage for her. But I honestly don’t know, and I don’t know if anybody knows.”
It’s not shocking that J.J. Abrams had a different vision for Rey’s background than Rian Johnson. The script for The Force Awakens has Rey suggesting that her identity is a “big secret,” while The Last Jedi entreats the audience to consider that idea simply a coping mechanism for Rey’s depression. And if you watch the ending of Force Awakens intercut with Rey and Luke’s meeting in Last Jedi, it really does feel like two different storytelling styles were butting up against each other.
But, to Pegg’s point, no one outside of a select few have any idea what those plans actually were, or if we’ll learn anything new about Rey’s drunk parents in Episode IX.
Years from now, when there are scores of newer Star Wars films, the debate about Rey’s parents might be old enough to encourage Lucasfilm to declassify the alternate idea. But, for now, the myriad versions of Rey’s parents has to remain, safely, anonymous.
