Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Confirms Who Was Speaking to Rey in The Force Awakens Visions

There are a ton of moments that fans will carry with them for a long time in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. One of the biggest moments in the movie is when Rey faces her final challenge. Staring down Palpatine she hears a bunch of Jedi voices that spur her on to make a stand, but one voice actually closes the loop started in The Force Awakens. In that film, Rey gets some lightsaber visions from Luke Skywalker's weapon, a voice tells her, "These are your first steps…" Well, in The Rise of Skywalker, it is revealed that the initial voice was Obi-Wan. The Jedi Master tells her "These are your final steps," when the time comes to put her grandfather to bed once and for all. This is something that may have slipped some fans' minds in the time between The Force Awakens and the latest movie. In fact, all of those previous heroes talking to her in that crucial moments is a widely discussed piece of the finale to this sequel trilogy.

Before the film released, J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio had some lengthy discussions to determine which of the thousand generations of unseen Jedi would make their presence felt to Rey during that moment where everything felt like it was lost. Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson), Mace Windu (Samuel L. Jackson), and Anakin were just some of the voices present on Exegol, before Rey declared herself "all the Jedi" in a stand up and cheer moments for audiences across the world.

"While you only see the twins in that moment, we thought that would give Leia more centrality, and you would really feel the strength of seeing Leia in the Jedi afterlife for the first time," Terrio explained. "Spiritually, it's not a crazy idea that all the Jedi would be standing with them, but it might've been a bit of a visual shock to see all these new characters on Tatooine who weren't part of the story of Leia, Luke and Rey."

He added, "It's a fair question from fans because it's a question that we debated endlessly — about what the final shot of Force ghosts would be. We spent hours and hours talking about this and debating it, and we decided that the moment when the Jedi have to be there for Rey, when it dramatically counts, is when she hears their voices. So, seeing them all at the end would be a lovely grace note, but we thought that Rey seeing her two masters, two Skywalkers, was stronger. Rey was in the unique position of having been trained by two Skywalkers, which is what's going on in the moment where she destroys the Emperor. It's her, Luke and Leia standing together because she's got the two Skywalker sabers in her hands."

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is still playing in theaters.