Guys, this is so awesome and will get you in the mood for Star Wars (if you're not in it already)! Rey's Origin Story: a fan film https://youtu.be/8zRGaVi59bs
There were three moments that stood out for me on a second viewing of the new Star Wars, and they hint at Rey’s origins. In her destroyed AT-AT home on Jakku, Rey has a homemade doll wearing an X-wing pilot outfit. In the flashback at Maz’s bar, we see a very young Rey holding an adult’s hand while a shuttle holding her “family” flies away. The adult’s voice sounded like Max von Sydow to me, but I’m not 100% on that. (Edit: a bunch of people have told me that the adult holding her hand is Unkarr Plutt, the guy she sells junk to on Jakku. I think Sydow being near still counts as watching over her though.) Finally, when Han is explaining why Luke disappeared, he says that Luke was trying to train more Jedi (plural), but one went rogue.
The easiest explanation of her origin is that when Ben Solo turned to the dark side, he carried on the old family tradition, of killing all the kids at the Jedi academy. That explains why there aren’t any other student Jedi in TFA, and explains why Luke would go into exile rather than trying again with more recruits. Maybe Luke was even returning from the trip where he recruited Rey to find that everything had gone to shit. He decided to go into exile, stopping only to drop Rey off on a backwater planet (Jakku), where Luke had an ally who could watch over her (Sydow), and she would be able to live without discovering the Force, or worse, being discovered and recruited by Snoak/Kylo Ren. The Rey we saw in the flashback was young enough that she’d have only hazy memories of the people that dumped her there, hence the X-wing pilot doll.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Poe Damron was also a survivor of Luke’s first Jedi academy class, given his seemingly impossible prowess in a cockpit. Maybe Finn too, but that feels less likely to me.
I was surprised that I liked The Force Awakens more on a second viewing. Rey is one of the best developed characters in Star Wars and is exactly what the prequels lacked: she’s as cool/stone cold as Han Solo but also has the Force and the laser sword business that Luke Skywalker brought. If we aren’t counting robots, she’s already my favorite Star Wars character. Hopefully, Rian Johnson won’t fuck her up.
