Rey’s lightsaber practice and the showdown on Crait; or, that time that Luke recognized that Rey was using Ben’s fighting style
I don’t have the patience or fortitude for a long meta, but I watched TLJ again today (the first time since the last time I saw it in the cinema), and something occurred to me that seems really obvious but that I hadn’t noticed before and that I haven’t seen others mention (apologies if I have missed meta that talk about this). It’s the scene on Ahch-To when Rey is practicing with the lightsaber. Luke is watching her practice, and he gets this look on his face.
I’d noticed it before and hadn’t thought much of it, but this time it struck me that he probably recognizes her fighting style, because it’s Ben’s. We’re all familiar with this idea - that during their showdown on Starkiller Base Rey dipped into Kylo’s mind and borrowed his fighting knowledge - and I think this reaction from Luke is further proof of this.
I went looking for parallel examples of Ben’s lightsaber technique to back this up, and I found it in an interesting place: his showdown with Luke on Crait. (My gifs are a little slow, but I think that’s okay since it makes their movements a bit easier to see.)
First, Rey opens her practice by holding her lightsaber straight ahead.
Then she moves into some backhand swings.
So does Ben. (Note that Luke anticipates his move - Luke trained him, so presumably he knows what he’s going to do.)
Rey follows up the backhand swings with a bunch of two-handed swingy chops. She’s pretty intense. (It’s after this that Luke makes the face in the gif up top.) (And check out her face, she’s all GRRRR, I love it.)
Ben: SWING CHOP CHOP (two hands!)
Finally, Rey gets a little too into it and slices through the stone outcropping.
And what is it that Ben does? Uh huh.
So I started this wanting to prove that Luke recognizes Ben’s fighting style in Rey, and I think that is definitely the case, but at the same time I think I’ve also shown that Rey’s lightsaber practice is a foreshadowing of the showdown between Luke and Ben on Crait. If that isn’t very cool, I don’t know what is.
I really, really, really love this movie.
(If there are other analyses along these lines please tag me on them, because I haven’t seen them but I don’t read a lot of meta. Oversights are my own and are accidental.)
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