'Star Wars 9' Leak May Confirm a Shocking Rey-Palpatine Rumor

There are two things we know about Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker: 1) The Emperor is back and 2) Rey’s true backstory will probably be revealed. But what if those two details are more connected than we thought? Plenty of fans have theorized that Rey could be connected to Palpatine in some way, but a fresh leak claims to confirm just how close the two characters turn out to be in Episode IX.

Warning! Potentially huge spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker below.

The latest Rise of Skywalker leak comes from Making Star Wars, which has become a regular source for Episode IX scoops. We’ll see how reliable the fan-site really is when the movie comes out later this year, but in the meantime, the latest video from MSW drops a bombshell

“She’s a Palpatine by blood a Skywalker by choice,” MSW editor Jason Ward says of Rey in The Rise of Skywalker.

Wow! We’d heard rumors before that Sheev Palpatine was Rey’s grandpa, but we didn’t really believe it. I mean, Rey as a clone of the Emperor? Totally. Rey as the product of Sheev’s Force-powered immaculate conception? Sure, I guess. But Pappy Palps? It just seems … ridiculous.

That said, Making Star Wars isn’t the first to report on this rumor. Jedi_Paxis, a moderator on the popular Star Wars Leaks subreddit, reported something similar earlier this month. So, like it or not, the evidence is starting to stack up.

Thankfully, despite that clip of “Dark Rey” that Disney teased last month, it sounds like Rey won’t succumb to the Dark side. At the end of Episode IX, she’ll apparently take the name Skywalker instead, which also lines up with previous Rise of Skywalker leaks about the movie’s ending.

Elsewhere in its report, MSW claims to reveal the first scene of Rise of Skywalker, which could be a flashback that sets up a key dynamic between Leia and Rey in Episode IX:

After the opening crawl we pan from space. The camera moves towards the planet covered in trees. We see a blue and green lightsaber dueling one another. Both of the lightsabers are held in hand by two Jedi with helmets with visors covering their faces so we cannot immediately recognize if this Rey with someone new. The two Jedi break from their duel and remove their helmets to reveal Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa looking exactly the age they did in Return of the Jedi on the Endor’s moon.

That sounds pretty awesome and it could help explain how Leia learned that Force trick from The Last Jedi and was able to complete Rey’s training in the time gap in between that movie and The Rise of Skywalker. That said, we’re a little concerned that this could mean even more CGI’d young Leia, which didn’t look particularly good in Rogue One and feels a little insensitive to Carrie Fisher’s legacy at this point.

Then again, if Palpatine really is Rey’s grandpa, then a little CGI is the least of our worries.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters on December 20.