Star Wars 9 Theory: Emperor Palpatine Created Rey (As An Anakin 'Clone')

6. What We Know About Rey & Her Parents

Rey's parentage was a huge talking point coming out of The Force Awakens, but mostly because no one in the film would really talk about them. We saw that she had, in the way she remembered it at least, been left by them on Jakku, and was determined to wait for them to return.

Maz Kanata told her that the belonging she sought lay ahead, not behind, with the path to Luke Skywalker. This spawned countless riffs on the theory that she was Rey's daughter but, with no surname and some most impressive Force powers, there were plenty of others to choose from as well, ranging from a Kenobi to a Solo to, yes, a Palpatine.

The Last Jedi cut through all of that, with Kylo Ren making Rey realise the truth she'd always known and buried deep within: her parents were nobodies. They were drunks who sold her off for gambling money, and are lying dead in an unmarked grave somewhere. Sure, he could be lying, but Abrams has suggested he won't be exactly retconning this reveal, which means we can take it as fact that her parents are nobodies.

In fact, what Abrams has said lends further credence to this theory. Speaking to ABC News, he said: "I don’t want to say that what happens in Episode 8 [didn’t happen]. We have honored that. But I will say that there’s more to the story than you’ve seen."

So rather than changing that reveal completely, what if, in a twist on semantics, they're literally nobody?