Star Wars: Yoda Predicted the Rise of Rey in The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is almost here and fans can’t stop speculating about what Rey’s journey will look like in the final film of this trilogy. One fan believes that Yoda called the arrival of Rey all the way back in Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back. Now, that’s a pretty bold claim, but it would be fun on a couple of levels. According to Cheekywanquer on Reddit, his theory treads upon something the Jedi master said to Obi-Wan Kenobi after they discussed Luke Skywalker as their “last hope.” Yoda calmly speculates that “No – there is another.” Now, many people in the comments under the post correctly gesture towards Leia as the “other” Skywalker and that interpretation certainly holds water as the two are siblings. But, if this theory intrigues you, consider that the implication here could be retconned by the coming film to include Rey…or even Kylo Ren with enough rhetorical twisting. This whole discussion got the comments section into quite a fervor.

There will be more than enough of that hotly-contested debate to go around as the film nears release. Rey is the center of this controversy at every step, as she has been for most of this current trilogy. Everyone wants to know what the deal with this young Force user is. That’s what made some very vocal corners of the fanbase so angry about Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Those concerns would seem to be coming to a head in The Rise of Skywalker. J.J. Abrams is pushing all his chips to the center of the table with this one. He recently told Rolling Stone that none of this was “an accident.”

Abrams began, “Yeah, spooky, right? [Smiles] It’s a fair point. It’s not an accident.” He would continue on to talk about how Rey’s story factors into the entire picture of the current trilogy.

“The idea was to tell a tale of a young woman who was innately powerful, innately moral, innately good, but also struggling with her place in the world and forced to fend for herself in every way,” Abrams described Rey’s journey. “As exciting as it was to get to play in the Star Wars universe, it was this young woman that I felt oddly compelled to get to know. Even at the very first meeting with [Lucasfilm president] Kathleen Kennedy, the idea came up about having a female at the center of it. There was an inherent sense of ‘We’ve seen the story before of the young hero,’ but we’d never seen it through the eyes of a woman like this, and that, to me, was the most exciting thing.”

Whatever the finale ends up bringing to the table, you can count on robust discussion being a core part of things to come as the Winter continues. The Skywalker Saga ends with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker on December 20th.