10 Dumb Decisions In Star Wars We Can't Forgive
8. Episode IX - Rey Was A Palpatine All Along
Whether you expected Rey to be secretly a Skywalker, a Solo, a Hutt (at this point, who cares?), or just some nobody, the reveal was never going to satisfy everyone.
Rey had potential for one of the best arcs in the new trilogy; an abandoned teenager who was desperate to learn where she came from is told (during Episode VIII) that her parentage doesn't matter, and that she can make her own future. The Last Jedi gave the character an opportunity to forge her own agency and not follow a destiny like the previous films' heroes. But of course J.J Abrams couldn't resist the simpler route, and shoehorned in the laziest twist in Star Wars history.
Dirty jokes about Sheev Palpatine firing up his lightsaber aside, the dumbest part of this reveal is that at this point in the trilogy, it didn't matter where she came from and it made no difference to the plot when it was revealed. Rey's heritage as a secret Palpatine wasn't alluded to in the previous films, and her "internal struggle" with the Dark Side only ever came up when characters suggested it.
Had she stayed a nobody, fans would have probably been much more forgiving of Episode IX overall.