Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker brought the Skywalker saga to a close. It also completes the arc of Rey, the young scavenger girl from Jakku introduced in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Throughout the Star Wars sequel trilogy, Rey has been searching for her identity. Abandoned by her parents and, at first, rejected by Luke Skywalker, whom she hoped would train her in the ways of the Jedi, Rey had to forge her path. By the end of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey finds her way. Her new weapon symbolizes this new unity of self by tying her past and future together. SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker follow.
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The Rise of Skywalker reveals that Rey did receive Jedi training. Rather than getting it from Luke, Luke’s sister, Leia, trained Rey in the ways of the Jedi. The film later reveals that Leia received training as a Jedi from Luke for a time, but she gave it up in the hopes of saving her son, Ben Solo, from a dark fate. When Rey returns to Ahch-To, she’s visited by Luke in the form of a Force Ghost. He reveals to Rey that Leia had built a lightsaber during her Jedi training. Luke shows Rey where to find the lightsaber and she takes it to Exogol to face the Emperor.
After defeating the Emperor, Rey travels to Tatooine. She visits the moisture farm where Luke grew up with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. There, she buries both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers side-by-side.
Rey then ignites a new lightsaber of her own. The first thing fans will notice is that the lightsaber has a yellow blade rather than the typical blue or green wielded by Jedi. Looking closer reveals that Rey repurposed pieces of her old staff to build her lightsaber’s hilt. Rey building a new lightsaber out of her old staff symbolizes how she has come to accept both her past as a scavenger and future as a Jedi.
While the yellow lightsaber blade is rare, Star Wars have seen them before. The Jedi Temple Guard from Star Wars: The Clone Wars and Star Wars: Rebels wielded lightsaber pikes. Those dual-bladed lightsabers had the same yellow blades. It is possible that Rey’s new weapon is also a lightsaber pike. This would reinforce how she’s merged her past to her present by making her lightsaber fighting style an extension of her first choice of weapon.
The callback to the Jedi Temple Guard is also symbolic of Rey’s new role in the universe. In The Rise of Skywalker, Luke tells Rey that a thousand generations live in her. By the end of the film, she’s communed with all the Jedi. In a way, she is now the embodiment of what the Jedi Temple once was. She’s the living repository of all the knowledge and tradition the Jedi Order accrued in its generations of service to the Republic.
What do you think of Rey’s new lightsaber? Let us know in the comments. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now playing in theaters.
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Image courtesy of Disney+
