Alright I know that probably everything that can be said about this has been said, but it has really been nagging at me to just get it written down. I think one of the most disappointing choices made in ROTS was to completely retcon Rey’s family. It made absolutely no sense to do this and I know they did it just to please everyone who called her a Mary Sue or whatever, but if you cared about the story at all it wouldn’t have happened. This got longer than expected so, TL;DR at the bottom.
In the Force Awakens, Rey’s struggle was with the fact that she believed it was a mistake that she had been left behind and that her parents would one day come back for her. Throughout the movie, she is bent on the fact that she has to get back to Jakku in order to be there when her parents arrive. Thanks to Maz, she comes face to face with her fears that her parents are not coming back for her for whatever reason, either they just won’t or they are dead. At this point Rey doesn’t know, but she just has to accept the fact that they won’t which she does.
So, you have 1. Rey realizes that her parents aren’t coming back.
In the Last Jedi, her struggle is with the fact that she knows nothing about where she comes from or who her parents were. She is able to finally go to Ahch-to because she accepts Fact 1, but she still hasn’t fully let them go. She is also looking for some sort of parental figure to cling to. Kylo points this out in both TFA and TLJ with Han Solo and Luke Skywalker respectively. He is the one who puts things in perspective when he gives her the truth about her parents. That they weren’t good people and that they sold her off for drinking money. I love that Rian used her hair as a way to show that she was moving past wondering about them. She had her hair up in the buns so that her parents would recognize her if they ever came back. When she realized, 1: that they weren’t coming back and 2: accepted that they weren’t coming back, her hair stayed down.
At the end of TLJ, you have 2. Rey realizes that her parents never wanted her in the first place.
Then you could have had this next piece in ROTS. After clinging onto the hope that your parents would come back for you and finding out Fact 2, Rey should have had to reconcile with that fact instead of things being magically fixed for her and just breezing by it. The way it should have happened was that she should have realized that she didn’t even need them in the first place. The only reason she grew up to be the person she was, was all due to herself. She raised herself to be hopeful and kind and compassionate when anyone else would have grown up bitter and rude. I think it is safe to say that pretty much everyone on Jakku are only out for their own interests. She did not grow up in a kind place, yet she turned out to be the sunshine that we came to know. She did that. No one else.
Then to continue, she found this group of people who cared about her and valued her. She created a family for herself. She had a group of friends, mentors, and she found her soulmate (despite the fact that he DIED, but I digress). She made a family for herself and that should have been the focus. It would have completed the trajectory of this plot line and it is extremely disappointing that it didn’t.
So, at the end of whatever movie this would be, you would have 3. Rey realizes that she didn’t need her parents, that she raised herself to be who she is today, and to focus on the family in front of her instead of the ones that left her behind.
EDIT: I meant to add this in before, but I forgot. You don’t send a child to a dusty deserted planet in the hopes that they will have a good life, much less sell them off to slavery. You leave a child in a place like that to die and be forgotten. “They sold you to protect you”, my ass.
I know that this was really long, but it feels good to finally have this written down and off my chest.
TL;DR: Rey’s family’s plot line should have been as followed: 1. Rey realizes that her parents aren’t coming back, 2. Rey realizes that her parents never wanted her in the first place, and 3. Rey realizes that she didn’t need her parents, that she raised herself to be who she is today, and to focus on the family in front of her instead of the ones that left her behind.
