Lucasfilm/Screenshot by Sean Keane/CNET
Papa Obi-Wan? Apparently, Rey wasn’t always going to be related to Emperor Palpatine as she was revealed to be in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. According to actor Daisy Ridley, her mysterious character was once linked to Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi.
During a chat with Josh Gad on Jimmy Kimmel Live on Tuesday, Ridley said that, at a point during the development of the Star Wars sequel trilogy films, Rey was in fact going to be a direct descendent to Obi-Wan Kenobi, not Palpatine.
“At the beginning, they were toying with an Obi-Wan connection,” Ridley said. “There were different versions and at one point she was no one… it kept changing.”
But in the end, the Lucasfilm Story Group scrapped the Obi-Wan idea. For the first two movies featuring Rey, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, her parentage was a mystery. It wasn’t until Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker that it was revealed that Rey was connected to Palpatine, instead of the Jedi Master.
The Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker novelization revealed that Rey’s father was a “not-quite-identical clone” of Palpatine, one of many born as the Sith Eternal cultists tried to create “a cradle for their god-consciousness.” The clone was “a useless, powerless failure” from Palpatine’s perspective but was allowed to live so he might continue the bloodline naturally. The novelization doesn’t reveal anything about Rey’s mother.
