Daisy Ridley Says The Best Star Wars Character Was Supposed To Be Rey’s Father
Daisy Ridley confirms that Obi-Wan Kenobi was initially meant to be Rey's father.
Daisy Ridley has finally let the nexu (giant Star Wars cat for those that don’t speak nerd) out of the bag when it comes to Rey’s daddy. The Force Awakens star has confirmed that Rey’s father was originally supposed to be Obi-Wan Kenobi. According to CBR.com, the decision to make Rey a part of the Palpatine family wasn’t finalized until The Rise of Skywalker had already started production.
After Rey’s mysterious introduction in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, fans started speculating just who her parents might be. The most popular theories revolved around Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan. Then the Last Jedi came out and seemingly shot a giant hole in all of the fan theories.
Rian Johnson made the bold claim that Rey’s parents were nobodies. Drunks who sold their daughter for beer money and were buried in an unmarked grave on Jakku. Daisy Ridley has gone on record saying that no matter how much fans hoped it was a misdirection, Johnson’s buzzkill was intended to be canon.
That is until Disney faced the rage of the internet and brought back J.J. Abrams, handed him a pen and paper, and said, “Fix this somehow!” Abrams had the difficult task of making Rey the decedent of someone “important” without canceling what Rian Johnson did outright. Abrams infamously abandoned the Obi-Wan idea in favor of making Daisy Ridley as Rey, the granddaughter of Palpatine.
The problem with assigning blame to Rey’s complicated parentage is figuring out who to blame. The only one definitely not at fault was innocent bystander Daisy Ridley.
When The Last Jedi came out, it ripped the Star Wars fanbase apart worse than the Holdo Maneuver. Many fans blamed Johnson for taking the seeds J.J. had planted regarding Daisy Ridley and the Rey character, digging them up, burning them, and salting the earth so nothing else could ever grow there. And though it’s easy to get mad at Rian Johnson for making a movie that trolled half of the largest fandom on Earth, it wasn’t all his fault.
J.J. Abrams has a nasty habit of setting things up and leaving others to figure out the details. In The Force Awakens, Abrams goes to great lengths to make us suspect that Rey is somebody important in the Star Wars universe. She even hears Obi-Wan’s voice talk to her, lending credence to Daisy Ridley’s admission that Kenobi was once going to be her dad. Sadly, Abrams left it at that, expecting Rian to continue building the mythology he started setting up.
Johnson famously said, “Nah,” and tossed everything J.J. was trying to do over his shoulder, like Luke tossing a lightsaber for a gag. In Rian’s defense, it wasn’t fair for J.J. to hand him a bunch of ingredients and just expect him to make a delicious cake. So who’s to blame for the lack of cohesion in the Star Wars sequel trilogy? Thanks to Daisy Ridley, we now know who to blame: Disney.
The whole kerfuffle with Rey’s parents is Disney’s fault for not having a plan before they started the trilogy. How a multi-billion dollar corporation could start a project as big as Star Wars without a concrete plan in place is anyone’s guess. Luckily, Daisy Ridley and Lucasfilm are determined to turn the franchise around for the better. May the force be with them.
