10 Fascinating Theories About Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was riddled with mysteries, with whole chunks of plot left unresolved and unexplained like threads dangling provocatively in the wind. Characters like Snoke and Maz Kanata, plot details like Rey’s family, and just what Luke Skywalker has been getting up to during his island sojourn, act more like teasers for the next film in the series than parts of The Force Awakens.

So are we to expect The Last Jedi to answer these tantalising questions? In short, it had bloody better. Legions of lightsaber-wielding fans are primed to take to the streets if it doesn’t.

If The Force Awakens follows the pattern of A New Hope, then The Last Jedi is set to follow The Empire Strikes Back. That movie finished with one of cinema’s greatest, most spoilable plot twists, so to stay true to the formula The Last Jedi needs a fan-befuddling twist of its own. And it's going to have to pull something impressive out of the bag to equal Empire's parental revelations.

With The Last Jedi due to force-somersault into cinemas in December, there’s almost half a year of hyperactive speculation about that seemingly inevitable, Shyamalanian twist. Some theories being suggested make an awful lot of sense.

Some really don’t...

Rey’s family is a mystery planted in The Force Awakens, presumably to be paid off later.

She is extremely strong in the Force, which first manifests itself long after childhood. In this respect Rey is rather similar to one Luke Skywalker, and given how the Force is as hereditary as the Hapsburg Lip it makes perfect sense that Rey inherited her powers from Luke.

Abandoned on Jakku as a child, Rey has spent the intervening time waiting for them to return. This theory assumes Luke left her there to protect her, to keep her from realising her powers, or to toughen her up with a miserable childhood consisting of machine scavenging and quarter-portions.

And of course, rather intriguingly, for Luke to be her father there has to be a mother out there somewhere (unless Rey is a clone of Luke, a related theory), whose identity could be revealed in The Last Jedi.