Star Wars is beginning to get things right with Rey, six years after the sequel trilogy ended. As divisive as that new era of Star Wars was (and remains), it did bring a lot of great things to the franchise, and Rey should very much be considered among them. She’s an excellent new hero, with a very likable performance from Daisy Ridley, and while the story around her lineage became muddled with the Emperor Palpatine reveal – and before that, suffered from a little too much mystery boxing – she captured the essence of what a good saga lead should be: courageous, hopeful, relatable, powerful, and with internal struggles that enhanced her arc.
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker left Rey in an interesting position, having taken on the Skywalker name herself, and that came with the promise of more adventures. Even before that moment, it’d long felt like there was more to do with the character, because the sequel timeline is so short: Star Wars: The Last Jedi follows immediately on from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and then only a year passes between it and The Rise of Skywalker. Rey deserves more adventures, and that is what’s finally happening.
The character has returned in Cavan Scott’s The Jaws of Jakku, a new audiobook set on the desert planet she escaped from, which sees her return there in a story taking place shortly after The Last Jedi. Following that, another new book (titled Star Wars: Legacy) will feature Rey and Leia, also in the time period between Episodes 8 and 9, with the former continuing her training under the tutelage of the latter. This is a good start for expanding upon the Jedi and giving her more stories and development than the sequels did. That gap seems primed for further exploration as well, but it also leaves me wanting more.
What’s Going On With Rey’s Star Wars Movie?
Books about Rey are great, and if a movie starring Daisy Ridley hadn’t been announced, I’d be pretty happy with them. But, well, a movie was announced, with Ridley herself onstage, at Star Wars Celebration back in 2023. I was lucky enough to be in attendance then, and the atmosphere was electric when it was revealed, and yet it has never been properly followed up on. Rey’s New Jedi Order movie has passed through the hands of various writers and, two years later, with other Star Wars movies now confirmed for 2026 and 2027, there’s no sign of it coming to fruition.
Of course, good art should not be rushed, but given the long list of cancelled or stalled Star Wars movies, there’s a gnawing sense of skepticism about whether the project will ever actually happen. And if it doesn’t, that would be a real shame. Not only because the response to the news, and Ridley, shows that she deserves to come back even better than before, but because there’s plenty to do with Rey as a character.
The franchise has really only scratched the surface of her story: again, we’ve followed around one year of her development, and most of that was about uncovering her backstory and training as a Jedi. Now that she has a newfound sense of identity and purpose, it can essentially start to show us the real Rey and who she is as a person. How does she carry forward the Skywalker name? What does her New Jedi Order look like? What new threats and challenges will she deal with, and how will she do so?
“What comes next?” is the part of Star Wars we so often don’t get to see with the Jedi heroes, at least not in-depth and certainly not in movies, and so there’s a real chance to do that with Rey. It’s great that Lucasfilm is using the character, but hopefully there’ll be much, much more to come.
The next Star Wars movie in theaters will be The Mandalorian and Grogu, which releases on May 22nd, 2026. After that, it’ll be Star Wars: Starfighter on May 28th, 2027.
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Image courtesy of Stage 6 Films
