WMG / The Force Awakens – Post-Release

Post-release theories - Part 1

Rey will receive a lightsaber more appropriate to her fighting style

Rey prefers to fight with a staff, that much is obvious, and she's damn good at it. In the finale Rey is making a lot of lousy strikes towards Kylo, in some cases, she's using Anakin's lightsaber as if it were a staff. Maybe in the next movie, she will construct a staff-like saber, ala Darth Maul, or a saber-on-a-stick weapon, like the electric staff that General Grievous' Magna Guards used.

• Specifically, it will be a long-handled dual-bladed lightsaber; resembling something like this: [1]◊
  • Jossed.

Rey is an amnesiac, fully trained Jedi child

Being dumped on Jakku was particularly traumatic for her. Either that or, she repressed it after a while. Mostly because I want to justify her learning to adapt her force abilities so quickly.

• A distinct possibility, since when she touches Anakin's lightsaber, she experiences a series of flashbacks, including one showing the Knights of Ren standing over a field of slain bodies, presumably Luke's Jedi trainees. In addition, when he tries to read Rey's mind, he sees a vision of place that sounds exactly like the first Jedi temple Luke is hiding out in, implying Rey had already been there.
• Another bit to lend credence to this theory: look at Luke's reaction to seeing her. At first it looks like shock at being found—unlikely, as he intentionally left behind pieces of a map that leads back to him. The next logical observation would be that he is shocked at seeing his father's old lightsaber again, after having lost it decades ago. Except he barely registers the lightsaber Rey is offering him. He's looking at her, shocked that she's standing right there in the same space as him. Almost as though he wasn't expecting Rey to suddenly pop up on the island, again, after she was left on Jakku years ago. As if she really shouldn't be there...
• She's able to reverse Ren's attempt to read her mind, which seems to open up her other abilities and with only a little effort seems able to access them.
• Jossed.

Finn is Force sensitive

He's just nowhere near as strong as Rey is in the force.

• I submit that if he is, it'll take some kind of huge moment of anger/emotion to activate it. More so than him defending Rey from Kylo Ren. And his first contact with the Force will be the Dark Side, severely shaking him and creating a rift between the two of them.
  • It's entirely possible that Finn felt his friend's death through the Force, and this is what allowed him to break his conditioning.
  • There's actually good evidence for Finn's latent Force sensitivity if they decide to go that route in future films. First: There's his freakout in the village at the death of his friend and the carnage around him despite his previous spotless record. Second: After his stolen TIE Fighter crashes he walks across the desert seemingly at random only to end up in the exact same town Rey and BB are in. Later on Starkiller Base he leads the rescue team to the corridor right across from an escaping Rey, despite not knowing she escaped. Third: with no training whatsoever he's still pretty good with a lightsaber and even manages to score a hit on the much better trained (though admittedly wounded) Kylo Ren. Maz Kanata herself even encourages him to use it.
    • Finn's remark at Poe's piloting skills could have also been him sensing the presence of his friend.
    • Further, when the Starkiller Weapon is fired and everyone is staring at it in horror, when we cut to Finn's POV, we hear screaming that isn't heard elsewhere. A billion voices crying out in terror, perhaps?
    • And then there's the scene where Kylo Ren briefly pauses to stare at Finn after the village raid. Maybe it's because he felt Finn's confusion and fear, or maybe it's because he thought he felt a bit of Force potential within him.
    • Which would also explain why Kylo's greatest emotional reaction in the entire film is to Finn's desertion (even moreso than seeing Han again), practically screaming "TRAITOR!!!" every time they meet. A common stormtrooper deserting wouldn't warrant such a reaction, but Finn could have already been selected to be a new apprentice prior to leaving.
    • This Troper actually believed Finn was Force sensitive at the start of the movie, for this reason, among those listed above: our first glimpse at Snoke is a discussion regarding what happened on Jakku regarding the village and the map. When Hux leaves the room, Snoke addresses Ren regarding, "an awakening in the Force." They couldn't have been talking about Rey, because she hadn't even been introduced yet and doesn't awaken until much later. But the staging of the scene leading up to that discussion frames Finn as the one who just awakened: Kylo looks straight at Finn when he refused to execute the order to massacre the survivors. Which leads to the obsession as stated above.
  • This will fuel their development: Rey, like Anakin is a "natural" in the Force whose easy power and emotional issues leaves her open to the Dark Side, Finn has to work hard at it and develops greater focus which helps anchor him in the Light.
• Confirmed according to The Rise of Skywalker.

Poe is Force Sensitive

He is a damn good pilot! Maybe the best fighter pilot seen in any of the films so far.

• I don't buy this one. You don't have to be force-sensitive to be good at something in the Star Wars universe; Han Solo was one hell of a pilot too, and General Grievous was deadlier in combat than many Jedi and Sith. Also, while the force certainly helped Luke and Anakin's piloting skills, they also had years of experience before we saw their skills in the films.
• Anakin's piloting skills, even as a 9 year old, were explicitly due to his Force-sensitivity ("He can see things before they happen. That's why he appears to have such quick reflexes. It's a Jedi trait"). The same is implied with Luke. During the battle on Takodana, Poe seems to have an incredible awareness of everything going on around him, allowing him to swoop around blasting one TIE fighter after another, all while dodging fire himself and firing the occasional shot at the Stormtroopers on the ground! While it is certainly possible that he is just a really Badass Normal, his onscreen fighter piloting skills are well beyond those of any other pilot in the Resistance, and arguably even better than people like Luke, Han and Wedge.
  • In the comics, it's shown that Poe's parents fought alongside Luke, Han, and Leia. In particular, Poe's mother helped Luke retrieve a pair of trees imbued with the Force and had grown at the original Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Luke takes one tree for himself and gifts the other to Poe's mother, who plants it outside her home. Perhaps this tree is the source of or helped awaken Poe's Force powers?
• It's never stated either way.

Rey is the secret love-child of Luke Skywalker and Captain Phasma

Okay, I know it sounds silly as hell there's a certain sense to it. The logical connection to Luke is apparent: She had a massive reaction to his and Anakin's Lightsaber, she's incredibly strong in the Force, she's an ace pilot and mechanic and her pre-Jedi life is remarkably similar to both Anakin's and Luke's. There's a reason "Luke is Rey's father" is the obvious idea.

But that wouldn't explain why Rey's alone on Jakku. After all, Luke's not the sort to abandon his kid, and if he was going to give her up, he has a few thousand options better than "abandoned alone on a desert wasteland", such as asking his sister to look after her niece.

During Rey's vision, we see her abandonment on Jakku. The departing ship looks an awful lot like a transport. Its entirely possible that she was left there so that she didn't become like Finn: Torn away from her family and mentally conditioned into an expendable soldier.

As for why Captain Phasma? Because... she's named. Also, she's in charge of the troopers, so presumably she's more veteran, and the actress has a certain resemblance towards Rey. Cynical, but it wouldn't be the first time an obvious twist (Ren's parentage) was used to hide a better twist (Rey with the Lightsaber).

Notably, this would parallel the Legacy comics, which had a protagonist that was the son of an Imperial agent and a Jedi Master from the Skywalker family.

Eh. Doubtful, since Captain Phasma being female was actually them last-minute gender flipping a character they were going to cast with a man at first. [2]

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Anakin is helping from the netherworld of the Force

Nothing so cliche as appearing as a ghost and handing out ambiguous advice, something he himself would have found annoying in life. But he might be guiding Rey subtly from within the Force. That would account for why she is suddenly inspired to attempt various feats of Force power. Also, it would explain why Anakin's lightsaber goes to her rather than to Kylo when they simultaneously attempt to Summon to Hand — Anakin approves of her more than Kylo, who is making the same mistakes he made. Also of note, Kylo claims that the Light is calling to him, and he is actively resisting its pull. That could also be Anakin trying to guide his grandson away from the Dark path he has chosen.

• There is a very good possibility of Anakin appearing as a Force ghost, if the rumors of Hayden Christensen being flown in for filming when Episode VIII starts prove true.
• He only makes a vocal cameo in The Rise of Skywalker.

Phasma is being set up as Finn's nemesis for the rest of the trilogy.

They have a history, as seen in Before the Awakening, and there's no way she'll take being literally thrown in the garbage by her former subordinate sitting down. And with Rey revealed as the real Jedi, Kylo Ren is out of his league, so it makes sense that the second-tier villain would be his rival. Outside of that, they're both Stormtroopers, and you would imagine Finn's former superior would be the one who has the biggest bone to pick with a traitor like him. It works!

• Perhaps she and Finn will have an Inspector Javert/Jean Valjean-style dynamic, e.g. Phasma still calling Finn "FN-2187", and not allowing him to forget his past as a First Order .
• It would also echo the price on Han Solo's head from the OT.
• Jossed. She dies in The Last Jedi.

Han isn't dead

Most of this is based on the fact that we've seen characters survive worse falls and injuries and that the whole cast, including Harrison Ford, is confirmed for Episode VIII. It's true we have to take Leia's force feeling into account and the big explosion, and he could just be appearing in flashbacks next time, but some are preferring to remain hopeful.

• Ford's casting may be him appearing in flashback or dream sequences, though.
• Except Han was killed off in the exact same was as the Emperor (thrown into the heart of a massive superweapon which explodes shortly after), and Word of God confirms the Emperor was Killed Off for Real.
• Actually, he's even worse off than the Emperor. Remember that he was also stabbed directly through the chest with a lightsaber before falling, which is instantly fatal as far as the movies are concerned. And he's not a Force user, so he probably can't pull an Obi-Wan and become a Force Ghost, either.
• But let's not forget that this is Disney.
• Well, remember Mufasa?
• Also, any wound caused by a lightsaber would be instantly cauterized. Assuming Han wasn't stabbed in any vital organs and could survive the fall and escape, he could still be alive?
  • All Jossed.

Phasma will return... as a lieutenant.

Because of Finn's betrayal of the order and the incident with the trash compacter, she will be demoted to a measly lieutenant as punishment for her failures. This will make Phasma vengeful towards Finn, as it was he who led to her downfall.

• She can only hope that the First Order didn't manage to download computer logs before fleeing Starkiller Base. Because if they check they'll find that she was the one that lowered the deflector shield, which allowed the Resistance fighters to attack!
• Jossed.

Rey was left on Jakku by Kylo Ren

She's Luke's child that everyone assumed died when Ben Solo turned to the dark side. He was clearly agitated when the girl was first mentioned, and takes an interest in her over BB-8 and the traitor Finn in the forest. He altered her memories of life before Jakku, which is why she doesn't use a last name. This also explains how she picks up force powers so quickly. She isn't learning them, she's remembering them.

• Dunno. If that's the case, why didn't Kylo Ren recognize Rey?
  • It's been fifteen years? In the novelization he has a the line "It is you."
• Why would he choose to do so if she was a young child with powerful force abilities that could be molded to join the Dark Side?
  • A lifetime of deprivation and cruelty could mold her just as easily to the Dark Side, with fewer expenses on his part. Hell, he could be deliberately trying to re-create Anakin Skywalker's path to darkness - and he was planning to play both Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan, swooping in at an opportune time to lift her out of that life. Now he has a Force-sensitive, fanatically grateful apprentice, turned cynical and bitter by ten years or more of slavery - or would have, if it weren't for that meddlin' droid.
• Considering how keyed that map seemed to be for her, R2-D2 turning on when she showed up, the guy with the piece happened to be on the same planet as her it's unlikely it was Kylo Ren.
  • The writers have stated that it was actually BB-8 who woke up R2-D2; Artoo just needed some time to reboot. Plus, it's doubtful that, if Lor San Tekka was trying to reconnect Kylo Ren with his family, he wouldn't have done the same for Rey had he known that they were on the same planet. So it's unlikely that the map was keyed for her.
• A more modest spin on this theory is that perhaps Kylo Ren didn't deliver her to Jakku personally, but still spared her as a child when his knights were butchering the new Jedi Order. A lot of the movie was dedicated to showing how he's trying to be Vader but can't exactly live up; compare/contrast Anakin being willing to murder children versus Kylo potentially... not.
• This would also fit with Ren's challenge being to kill Han Solo. Assuming you subscribe to the theory that Rey was born Skywalker, then she could have easily been training with Ren, and he found himself unable to kill her when he turned. Instead, he abandoned her on Jakku, hoping she'd never be found.
• Probably Jossed. The writers have stated Rey was already on Jakku when Kylo lead the Knights to attack the temple, and that the "it IS you" line refers to her being the "awakening" he'd sensed in the Force.
• Fully Jossed by The Rise of Skywalker.

Rey was left on Jakku to Die or Fly

Think about it, her life on Jakku was one long test of stamina and skill. Note the similarities between Luke playing Tarzan on Dagobah and Rey climbing around inside wrecked star destroyers. She also developed some serious hand-to-hand combat skills with that staff of hers. Maybe whoever left her on Jakku did so in order to see if she could develop Force powers without formal training?

• Jossed. She was left on Jakku to keep her safe from Palpatine's forces.

Snoke is smaller than he looks.

The projection of Snoke is large, but he's actually a smaller alien using smoke and mirrors à la The Wizard of Oz in order to appear more imposing.

• That much is somewhat confirmed. Word of God puts Snoke at seven feet tall, about the same height as Chewbacca; so while he's already The Big Guy, clearly Snoke wasn't making enough of an impression to intimidate Hux and Kylo Ren by himself without a massive hologram.
  • At this point though, it is still quite possible that the claims of Snoke being seven feet tall is a lie to obscure the twist.
• This is actually standard for Sith Lords at least. Remember The Empire Stikes Back? Other than Palpatine enjoying being intimidating, was it otherwise really necessary for them to build a huge holographic pit in Vader's chambers aboard the Executor just so that Palpatine could appear twenty feet tall when he calls him? Vader had known him since he was a kid! It's not as if he wasn't perfectly aware of how tall Palpatine was in-person!
• Confirmed.

Building on the above, Snoke is another member of Yoda's race, but old and scarred.

The Force is strong with them.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Or Snoke is a member of that other race of rather short build: He is an Ewok.

He lost all his hair and gained his scars due to the Endor Holocaust. This traumatic experience left him angry, half crazy and an easy prey for the Dark Side. He has sworn revenge against those who - according his twisted logic - are directly responsible for this catastrophe that destroyed his people's home and way of life: Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie and the two droids, who on that one fateful day turned up near the village of Snoke's family, and tricked the Ewoks into fighting their war for them! (Revenge Through Corruption is obviously the way he chose.)

• Jossed cause the Endor Holocaust is imperial propaganda according to the Word of God and canon material.
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Snoke is in fact, a Wookie.

He's about the right size and being hideously burned and disfigured would explain the lack of hair. We never see what they look like under there, do we?

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Snoke is just as big as he looks.

Because wouldn't THAT be unexpected?

• Jossed.

Snoke is a Sorcerer of Rhand

The Sorcerers of Rhand were a darkside sect from the Unknown Regions who worshipped entropy. They were more dangerous than the Sith because of their signature powers of Darksight: they could see the future and change it for worse by manipulating current events while having foresight. This also explains the disappearance of post-Endor Legends: the Rhandites changed history and made the New Jedi Order and the Vong invasion never happen, and the Empire of the Hand change into the First Order.

There is one named Rhandite in the old EU: Lord Cronal, also known as Blackhole. Snoke could be him or another, unrelated Rhandite. This way or another, Snoke is directly responsible for reshaping the Legends galaxy into the Canon galaxy.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Rey will get a double-edged lightsaber

Her weapon of choice on Jakku was a long stick with similar dimensions as a double sided lightsaber. Also, she's shown to be very powerful so she'd potentially be able to handle one. Plus, it would be cool to see someone have a Darth Maul-like saber on the light side.

• A saber-pike might work better with her fighting style since it allows for more hand movement. Also we've yet to see one of those in live-action .
• Jossed. It's only in an illusion.

Rey actually descended from Obi-Wan Kenobi's bloodline

During the visions she got when picking up Anakin's lightsaber up in Maz Kenata's castle, one of the voices heard is Obi-Wan's, addressing her. It's possible that she either descended from one of Kenobi's flings back in the time when he wasn't a Jedi yet or during the Time Skip between Episode III and IV, or that she's descended from one of Kenobi's relatives. Given that we don't really know much about Obi-Wan's past both in the Original Trilogy and the Prequels, it's entirely possible that we haven't seen the last of the Jedi Master's legacy just yet.

• The first "force trick" we see her use is the Jedi Mind Trick, the first one we see Obi-Wan use.

It's practically his signature technique.

• Perhaps she's a culmination of both the Kenobi and Skywalker bloodlines - her mother a Kenobi and her father Luke Skywalker, which would also justify her suspicious amount of parallels with the Skywalkers.

• This theory also makes a lot of sense when you consider the similarities between the Rey and Ren's fight on the Starkiller and Obi Wan and Anakin's fight on Mustafar
  • Before the fight begins, Ren and Anakin both kill/fatally wound the one person who still believes there is good inside of them and is keeping them from fully turning to the Dark Side.
  • The fight occurs after the death of someone that Obi Wan and Rey both cared for, Han Solo for Rey and Anakin for Obi Wan
  • The fight ends when Ren and Anakin are badly injured after overestimating their own power/underestimating their opponent's power.
  • At the end of both fights, Ren and Anakin would have died from the environment around them (Mustafar's lava and Starkiller exploding) if not for their master, the Big Bad, intervening and saving them.
  • After the fight, Ren and Anakin fully embrace evil and begin training to fully master the power of the Dark Side, while Obi Wan and Rey both leave for the sake of Luke (Obi Wan bringing him to Tatooine and Rey leaving to go find him).
  • Furthermore, the two are somewhat shadows of each other as well; Ren is Ben Solo, seemingly named after Ben Kenobi, and admires Anakin/Darth Vader, while Rey lives on a desert world like Anakin and inherits his light saber, while also being a major fangirl over Han Solo, who died in a way much similar to how Obi Wan did in the first movie.
  • The setting itself is also an inversion of Obi-Wan and Anakin's duel. Mustafar was a lava planet, Starkiller Base was an ice planet.
• She could be descended from Obi-Wan and Satine.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter,

The Star Forge is part of the inspiration for the Starkiller Base.

The Starkiller base (or Death Star 3.0 as some might call it) gathers energy by draining the sun and using that to power itself and its massive laser. As Kylo Ren shows they are not above using the old EU (or even Knights of the Old Republic specifically) for inspiration, and what other superweapon in the EU was powered by stars? With the planet Rakata Prime still in the new canon its possible that either Knights will be brought into canon, or they are drawing from it and have an ancient artifact like the Star Forge appear in the sequel trilogy. This would explain why the First Order has so much money, technology, and ships available despite technically being only a fragment of the old Empire, and would explain the introduction of the technology used to drain stars despite not showing signs of having any such technology, or even a predecessor to that technology, available before.

Expanding on the above, the First Order still has one or more Star Forges of their own.

Which is why losing Starkiller Base isn't that much of a setback this early in the trilogy. With that kind of production capacity they can easily find another planet to turn into a new one, or build a fleet similar in size to Revan's during the Jedi Civil War but with modern technology.

• Jossed.

The truth of Ren's grandfather was a key factor in his fall to the Dark Side

When Luke began training Ben, he took a page from Obi-Wan's book and hid the truth of who his grandfather really was from him. When Snoke began to seduce Ben, the turning point was revealing that his trusted master and uncle had been lying to him. That's one of the reasons Luke is so morose when we see him: he lost all of his students because in the end, he made the exact same mistakes that the Jedi of old made.

• Jossed. He turned to the Dark Side after believing that Luke was trying to kill him.

Kylo Ren will play only a minor role in Episode VIII

at the end of Force Awakens Kylo has been defeated by a former stormtrooper and an amateur (or novice depending on you theories about Rey) force user. He's lost his lightsaber and Supreme leader Snoke says that Hux should bring Ren to him in order to 'finish his training'. It seems likely that they will bring back Captain Phasma and introduce more villains to be the antagonists in Episode VIII, possibly the other Knights of Ren and/or bounty hunters. While both Rey and Ren spend the movie learning how to better use the force for their follow up battle in Episode IX.

• Jossed. He's the main antagonist.

The riot stormtrooper that kicked Finn's ass survives and gets an expanded role in the sequals/expanded universe

Because Death hasn't stopped other popular character coming back (Boba Fett, Darth Maul). He could come back, scarred or cyborgized, as a lieutenant to Phasma (promoted due to doing a better job fighting Finn than Kylo Ren) and a rival to Finn.

• Jossed.

Rey found Luke on Rakata Prime

First of all, Rakata Prime was confirmed to still even exist following the canon-wipe, meaning that unless they made the planet canon while simultaneously leaving everything attached to it in Legends (which nullifies the point of bringing a planet that appeared in a specific and very influential Legends story into the Canon), at least some of what was connected is planned on entering the canon sooner or later. It was in a region of space that didn't match any other records, placing it in the Unknown Regions. Luke was looking for the First Jedi Temple, and Rakata Prime was the home of one of the oldest Force-sensitive races in the Galaxy. He was on an planet that was mostly ocean dotted with islands, which matches the description of Rakata Prime.

• Jossed. The planet is Ahch-To.

Rey is the reincarnation or Opposite-Sex Clone of Anakin

Same reasoning as above at the "Anakin is helping from the netherworld of the Force" WMG: she's an uncanny good Ace Pilot and mechanic. Anakin's lightsaber has such an extremely strong connection to her, that touching it instantly triggers a vision that starts with her hearing the Vader Breath, a sound Anakin was constantly hearing for twenty-five years until his death. She also picks up Force-tricks on the fly. If you watch closely, during her duel with Kylo Ren, after she let's the Force guide her hand, her fighting-style starts to mirror Anakin's, including starting her counter-attack with a twohanded strike started from above head, which was practically a Signature Move of his, before he was put in the Vader-armor. Vader was also extremely proficient with reading the emotions and minds of others, and Rey was able to turn Kylo Ren's mind probing back at him with relaitve ease. There's also Maz Kanata's line after Rey's vision: she tells her that "if you live long enough you start seeing the same eyes on different people". Eyes are the windows to the soul, and if Maz really is a thouasand-years old pirate, it's not unimageninable that she has met Anakin before his turn.

• However, given that she is the spitting image of the young Padme Amidala, the more prosaic theory that she is the grandaughter of Anakin and Padme via Luke seems far more plausible. Not a spoiler if you've seen the poster, of course.
  • That would be really contrived, for a number of reasons:
    • 1: Kylo is at most 10 years older than Rey, likely less. We know that Luke went into exile after Ben turned. Ben had to be at least 15 when he turned for him to be capable of "ruining everything" for Luke. We don't know exactly when Rey was left on Jakku, but if we assume that she was left there after Ben's turn: why didn't Luke take his own daughter with him if he was going to vanish from everyone anyway, instead of leaving her stranded somewhere? And if she was left there before Ben's turn, that would mean Luke had abandoned his daughter for no reason whatsoever.
    • Maz Kanata tells Rey, that she can see it in her eyes, that Rey knows that whoever she's been waiting for on Jakku, was not going to go back. However she also adds that someone else is waiting for her in her future, to which Rey responds with "Luke!". Now if she was waiting for Luke on Jakku despite knowing that he was not coming back, why would she immediately think that he's the one waiting for her? I'm sure it can be explained, but it kind of makes this part of the scene pointless.
    • Who says that Luke has to have been the one to have left Rey on Jakku and that Rey has to have been waiting for him if he was her father? She could have been separated from him or stolen from him and then dumped on Jakku without his knowledge.
• The prequels showed that Anakin used several different light sabers and was even a bit careless with them. It's only because Obi-Wan told Luke that it was his father's that made it special. In other words, it's really only special to Luke and not Anakin.
  • Anakin had exactly two lightsabers, the one from Attack of the Clones appears in Obi-Wan & Anakin. And sure, the second one was special to him: it's the weapon he used throughout the Clone Wars, which he used to decimate the Jedi.
• The concept art book states that Anakin's Force ghost was originally supposed to have appeared in the movie. How could Rey be his reincarnation if his Force ghost is still hanging around while she is alive? Plus, it's highly unlikely for someone to have gotten a good enough DNA sample of Anakin to create a viable clone of him.
  • Key word: supposed to have. It has been cut for one reason or another, and a rewrite is as likely to be the explanation as anythingelse. I don't really think Rey is a clone either, I'm leaning more to the reincarnation, but I can't rule cloning entirely out either. As for the viability of the sample: if she's really a clone, likely the lack of viable DNA samples is the reason why Rey turned out to be female.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Lor San Tekka was supposed to be Rey's very own Obi-Wan

He's an important Resistance member (important enough to have the map leading to Luke) who just happens to live in the same remote, unimportant desert planet as a mysterious Force prodigy. Coincidence? I think not. Most likely Luke asked him to stay on Jakku and look after Rey, either because Rye is Luke daughter, or because he somehow knew Rey would grow up to become a strong Force user. After Rey was old enough, Lor San Tekka was supposed to tell Rey who she truly is and give her the map that leads her to Luke. But Kylo Ren killed him before he managed to accomplish this task.

• Jossed.

Knights of the Old Republic will be made canon again with the next movie

As somebody else pointed out, Rakata Prime is still in the official canon, a planet introduced in Knights of the Old Republic. Furthermore, Kylo Ren seems to be heavily inspired by Revan - The design of the helmet and hood being similar to what Revan wears in visions and flashbacks, the mentions of 'The Knights of Ren' which remind me at least of the Revanites (if in name only), the seduction to dark side and how he seems to think about going back and forth between them, talking about how the light side is calling to him, similar to how Revan was light-sided, turned to the dark side and then can turn back or continue on a dark path. One could argue about how this is also similar to Darth Vader, but Vader never mentions wanting to go back to the light in the original trilogy. He just does so.

• More to the point Snoke's relationship to Kylo Ren mirrors Revan's own corruption to the darkside by an ancient Sith trapped in the unknown regions.
• Alternately, Snoke will prove to be an Expy of Darth Traya, Revan's master who taught him about the ancient Sith and played a role in his initial fall to the Dark Side.
• To add, in the official visual dictionary for the movie, on Kylo Ren's page with cross section of his lightsaber, there is a mention of a 'Great Scourge of Malachor' or something that took place 'Thousands of years ago', which would possibly fit it in with the Old Republic timeline if it were still canon. A possible reference to Malachor V, just with a changed name, maybe?

• Jossed.

Vader's mask is inhabited by Palpatine's ghost

Kylo asks it to show him the power of the Dark Side, and, apparently, sometimes it does. Vader went Light, so who's left? Alternately, Vader has undergone a Shadow of Revan-like splitting.

• Jossed. Palpatine is on Exegol.

Snoke is Luke

Luke's wife and daughter are killed in a terrorist attack, and the grief caused by the loss makes him feel Palpatine was right after all, the galaxy needs order and obedience so that random killings like this would never happen. (Unbeknownst to Luke, his daughter survives and grows up to become Rey.) So he decides to recreate the Empire and starts rallying the remaining Imperial loyalists. Obviously he realizes they would never follow Luke Skywalker, the man who destroyed the old Empire, so he creates the persona of "Snoke", who's a mere illusion. He realizes that Kylo could be pushed to the Dark Side, so he does that, subtly, so that Kylo himself doesn't even realize Luke was behind it. The reason for this is that he needs an enforcer and field general strong in Force, since he himself can't go to the battlefield without blowing his cover. However, after the Kylo incident Leia starts to suspect there's something wrong with Luke, so he decides to hide so that Leia won't discover the truth. At the end of Force Awakens, when Snoke says Kylo needs to finish his training, that's because Luke realizes Kylo needs some personal training from him so he can stand up to another Force user like Rey, and Luke feels that at this point Kylo is ready to learn the truth of who "Snoke" really is.

• Jossed: It is explicitly stated that Snoke witnessed the rise and fall of the Empire, thus he would predate Luke.
  • That part is Jossed as well. He was created by Palpatine.

Rey is the forbidden love child of Luke and Leia

All her Anakin-like abilities are explained by her having inherited his genes from both parents. She was adopted out at birth in an attempt to hide the scandal, but her foster parents' home planet was overrun by the unexpected expansion of the First Order.

• Perhaps this is part of why Luke has fled — he took Rey with him to raise among other Force-sensitive children, then lost her somehow during the cataclysmic aftermath of Kylo Ren's turn for the worse. He's guilt-racked for his part in the loss of two of his sister's children.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.
  • Read between the lines. Disney can't just come out and say it. If Palpatine created (a son) Anakin with the Force. Luke and Leia are his grandchildren. Luke and Leia hookup to create Rey, his great grandchild. This gets abbrievated to grandchild. And those people Rey remembers are false memories.

Everything that happened in the movie, specifically Rey's Instant Expert skill at anything, happened because it's the will of the Force

Rey HAS to survive to bring balance to the Force. Think back to the Prequels, when Anakin slaughtered the entire Jedi Order and leaving only Obi-Wan and Yoda as the last known Jedi (if we're not counting other materials) and Anakin, now Darth Vader, and his master Palpatine as the two dark side users. The Force was in balance. By the time the Original Trilogy ended, both Vader and Palpatine perished, leaving Luke as the last Jedi. The Force then created Snoke, the dark side user, to counter him. Snoke then turned Ren to the dark side and effectively committed the Second Jedi Purge. Now, there are two dark side users and only one light side user. The Force needed another Jedi to bring everything into balance, and so Rey, who has a strong connection to the Force, must survive in order to become the second Jedi to balance out the two sides of the Force, that's why everything that transpires in the movie is always in her favor. The Force wants her to become a Jedi. And it will do anything in its (UNLIMITED!) power to ensure that, even killing off Han Solo (in doing so keeping Kylo Ren in the dark side as well) to give her the motivation she needs.

The Republic will reform on a new capital, and take a fire-and-brimstone hardline approach to the First Order with the remnants of its forces.

• Hux will regret having provoked them. The next film will start off with an ad-hoc NR fleet fucking up a First Order installation.
• An it will be revealed that it was Snoke's intent all along: just like Palpatine manipulated to separatist systems to lure the Old Republic into dismantling itself, Snoke is in fact manipulating the first order to bring forth his real master plan: to bring the New Republic to the Dark Side by provoking its public opinion into favoring Revanchist policies.
• Jossed. The Republic was effectively wiped out.

The Knights of Ren are...

The rest of Luke's apprentices. Kylo Ren didn't slaughter all of Luke's pupils, some of them actually joined him and Snoke. Prerelease materials call Kylo Ren the leader of the Knights, which is odd if he's still not fully trained. But it makes more sense if he's the leader because the others are also untrained, and his direct connection to Luke and Darth Vader would give him a leg up on the others in claiming leadership.

• To support this. Listen to Han Solo explaining the betrayal to Rey and Finn. He stated that "one young man" had "betrayed" the new Jedi and "destroyed it all". He doesn't explicitly mention a massacre. Han Solo was basically the "Obi-Wan Kenobi" of the new Trilogy....the old exciled sage who imparts some wisdom to the protagonists before getting killed by the big black-clad villain in side the enemy base/superweapon. Remember Force-Ghost Obi-Wan's From a Certain Point of View explanation?
• Jossed according to the EU.

Kylo Ren is a really bad pilot

Unlike his father, uncle, and grandfather, who were notoriously famous pilots, Kylo Ren is never shown piloting anything in the movie, instead being ferried around in a shuttle. A complete lack of interest or proficiency in piloting starships would make it extremely difficult for someone like Han Solo to find a common interest with his son.

• It could be that Ren deliberately decided not to learn flying and disliked it because of tensions between him and his father. It happens sometimes that a child doesn't like something because it has bad associations with it.
• It could also be because Han is a bad teacher despite being an excellent pilot. This Troper has seen it before - a math prodigy was actually awful at explaining Maths precisely because he was brilliant, while his classmates weren't. Perhaps Kylo wasn't a prodigy, but had the potential to be a good pilot, it's just that Han expected him to catch it all instantly like he had, which precluded Kylo from learning.
  • Tangentially related WMG: Kylo Ren is a virgin who can't drive.
• Jossed. The Last Jedi shows he's a gifted pilot.

The First Order will be under siege in the sequel.

The Star Killer was their BFG they where going to use to keep the Republic in check. Their first shot was a pacifying shot to scare them into compliance. The Star Killer existence was to be a bogey man that would give the First Order control of the Republic with fear. But now that it's gone they are going to up against a united Republic out for blood and without the Star killer to hold them in check.

• Jossed. It's the First Order whose doing the sieging.

The sequel will explain Lor San Tekka's connection to Luke

It can't be a coincidence that Rey was left on the same planet as an old Resistance ally who was entrusted with a direct map to Luke's location. Or that Han Solo's legendary spaceship wound up on that same planet as well. In addition to explaining who Rey's parents are and why they left her on Jakku, it seems like Episode VIII would have to explain how Luke knew Lor San Tekka, and why he left the map to his hiding place with him.

• Jossed. He's never even mentioned.

Luke has gone bad

Episode VIII has the unenviable job of coming up with a "wham moment" to match "No, I am your father." One way to do that might be to use a line capable of producing the same reaction- as in, literally, the EXACT same reaction. And such a line exists- In the Empire shooting script, and on-set, Darth Vader's line was "Obi-Wan killed your father."Now, in Empire, Luke was seeking revenge for the death of his father, and Obi-Wan. Rey, on the other hand, would-in theory-be seeking revenge for the death of Han. So perhaps she'll best Kylo, and announce her intentions to get revenge for Han's death, only for Kylo to shout, "It was my mission! I was ordered to, by my TRUE master! She'll yell "Who?" And Kylo will simply say "Luke Skywalker. Luke Skywalker ordered me to kill Han Solo."Exactly why he would order that is beyond me.

• Jossed. He didn't know about Han's death until Rey told him.

The Character of Lor San Tekka's was originally going to be Lando Calrissian

Think about it, an old trusted family friend. One who knew the General for so long she would always be Princess to him. One who knew who Kyro was really and spoke to him in a familiar way like family . Imagine in the opening moments we see a familiar purple clad rouge , charming as ever returning to help old friends. Only to die at the hands of his olds friend Hans son. Imagine how heartbreaking that would be. Of course the PowersThatBe realised that Han was already going to die it in the film. Also that bringing back the only black character from the original triology only to kill him in the first few minutes may start off the new triology on the wrong foot.

• Actually, it was originally going to be Wedge Antilles, but the actor turned down the role.

How the Resistance started

The Imperial Remnant and the New Republic reached an unofficial ceasefire sometime after the Battle of Endor, however Leia believed that the Remnant were only retreating to lick their wounds and prepare for another war. She urged the New Republic to press the attack but they were sick of fighting by that time and would not lend much in the way of support. Leia's contacts in Remnant territory informed her that a new threat in the form of the First Order was rising from the ashes of the old Galactic Empire. She gathered some like-minded fighters and called in as many favors as she could, even getting Admiral Ackbar to come out of retirement, and founded the Resistance as a guerrilla force to stymie the First Order via subterfuge and sabotage, rather than military force. They knew that the First Order was planning something big, but as they lacked the resources of the New Republic or even the old Alliance (no Bothan spy network to call on this time), they were unable to find out exactly what that something was. This would also explain why they only sent a few dozen X-Wings to attack Starkiller Base: that's all they had.

• This is already explained in the tie-in books.

Phasma will go rogue in Episode VIII

She's quite literally responsible for Starkiller's destruction; there's no way even the First Order will let her off lightly, and she'll probably find demotion insulting. There's also the fact that Finn has humiliated her, which means she wants him dead, badly. The next movie may see her cutting off her previous affiliation with the Order (perhaps leaving the cool armour on) and going after Finn by herself, adding a Wild Card element to the mix.

• Jossed. She's still with the First Order.

The New Order is a youth movement

Just think about it: Both leaders General Hux and Kylo Ren are young (no older than 35), and Finn who is a (former) stormtrooper is like 20-22, very different from the Empire whose members were about 45-75.

• This seems to be in line with comments comparing the First Order to fleeing Nazis managing to reorganize in exile — presumably Hux and his generation are the first generation born during or shortly after the fall of the Empire and have been fully indoctrinated into the new self-serving image of their side as martyrs to Rebel treachery. No wonder there seems to be some tension between Hux and Kylo Ren — Ren originates in everything Hux and his ilk are opposed to, he must seem like a real Johnny-come-lately.
• Jossed. Several older officers appear.

Luke and Kylo Ren will meet and fight on a volcano planet, and Ren will defeat Luke and burn him much like Anakin was wounded at the end of Revenge Of The Sith.

This will lead to a similar scene as at the end of that movie, but there will be major differences. Leia or someone finds Luke badly burned, and get him into a treatment that would put him in a life-support suit much like his father; however, unlike Darth Vader, Luke will be completely unconscious during the surgery, only waking up once the second "Vader" suit is put on him. Afterwards, he will be released from the restraints manually, and stumble on the floor as Leia catches him; the next months sees him adapt to the much better made suit and learn how to walk again (but it would a process much like Korra's rehabilitation from Book 4 of The Legend of Korra, long and heartbreaking), and he will firmly remain a Jedi.

And the breathing sounds will be the lighter sounds Vader made after killing Palpatine.

• Jossed.

Snoke is one of the last True Sith

As in, the last of the Rakata that once formed the ancient Sith Empire.

• The problem here is that the Rakata never formed a Sith Empire. The Rakata and the Red Sith are completely distinct species.
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Finn is descended from Mace Windu

"Rey" is not her real name.

Rey originally had a different name when she was first left on Jakku but she went by Rey for so long she forgot her original name.

• If you subscribe to the theory that she's Luke's daughter and she was left on Jakku to protect her from the First Order, she might have changed her name to help her hide.
• She, like Ben, might also be a Dead Guy Junior. Possibilities for her real name include Padme, Beru, and Breha.
  • I'm fond of Breha, Rey could easily be a diminutive of it.
• Jossed. Her mother refers to her by that name.

Snoke is Darth Plagueis.

Plagueis found the secret to immortality, and knew of Sidious' ppllan to kill him in his sleep. Rather than die, he went into a healing coma. He was still semi-conscious, though, and projected his mind to various parts of the galaxy to spectate the Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War. He finally awoke after Palpatine's death and took command of an Imperial warlord faction, renaming it the First Order, retaking Coruscant, and training a new apprentice.

The actual Empire, meanwhile, is under the command of Gilad Pellaeon, who's just trying to keep the lights on. He does not approve of the First Order, and was absolutely disgusted by the mere concept of Starkiller Base, so the Imperial Remnant began secretly aiding the Resistance and entered into a de facto military alliance with the New Republic. After Hosnian Prime's destruction, Pellaeon will order the construction of the Eclipse and several new Executor-class Star Dreadnoughts to go into overdrive against the First Order. The Imperial Remnant will then become allies of the Resistance in Episode VIII, bringing with them the Star Destroyers, AT-ATs, and old stormtrooper armor we've come to be familiar with.

Getting back to Plagueis, in the old EU, he was a Muun, which Snoke clearly is. Guys, connect the dots, and you'll see that I'm right.

• Snoke appearance is less alien the Plagueis also he has a nose unlike Plagueis, pupils unlike Plagueis and much smaller head then Plagueis. Bearing the fact they do not resemble each other at all. The fact remains due to Sith law they are only two, the one who has power and the one who craves it. Sidious could not ascend until his master died, and Plagueis died so Sidious could ascend and get a new pupil. If Plagueis knew of Sidious plan to kill him , then his duty as a Sith Lord was to kill his apprentice for being sloppy and get a better one. It is not they are two unless one decides to go on Coma!vacation and let his student think he's ascended and get himself a student but not really ascend so now they are three. That would violate Sith law, and that was the only thing protecting the Sith from themselves and the Jedi.
  • In the Plagueis novel, it was revealed that Plagueis's master already was violating the Rule of Two by having a second apprentice named Darth Venamis. In addition, Plagueis himself violated it along with Sidious when he allowed Darth Sidious to take Darth Maul as his own apprentice.
  • I'm with the above troper; the Rule of Two isn't an immutable law of the force, it's a self policing tradition that many Sith have violated throughout the years.
  • In Darth Plagueis it's made explicit that Plagueis actually intended to subvert the Rule of Two by making it even more exclusive: the Rule of the same Two forever. His reaction to Palpatine declaring Maul to be an apprentice was suspicion of betrayal, because it showed that Palpatine was trending toward the traditional Klingon Promotion style of Sith than the new version Plagueis wanted to install. Also, Snoke is clearly not a Muun. Muuns have very narrow faces with rectangular construction and long noses. Snoke looks more like a deformed human than anything.

It should be noted, however, that the aforementioned Plagueis novel, and the details established therein, is no longer canon. As such, the only remaining canon facts about Dath Plagueis are that; he's male, was Palpatine's master, was obsessed with immortality, and was presumed dead after being assassinated. Snoke's facial scars must have come from something. A name-change would also make sense because the galaxy knew about the Sith and their tyranny, which is why Sidious operated under his Palpatine identity, for legitimacy. It's very possible that Plagueis manipulated his way to the top of his former apprentice's regime so as to do things the right way. The canon Tarkin novel also includes a throwaway comment from Palpatine about how his former master would've hated the day-to-day politics of running an empire.

• Snoke's leitmotif sounds very similar to "Palpatine's Teachings" from the Revenge of the Sith, which played when Palpatine talked to Anakin about Plagueis.
• Kylo Ren tells Han Solo: "The Supreme Leader is wise." What was that name Palpatine used to refer to a certain Sith Lord again? Oh yeah: Darth Plageuis the Wise!
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Kylo Ren didn't activate the lightsaber...

...during his confrontation with Han Solo. They're shown both holding on to Ren's lightsaber, as if fighting for control of it, much like struggling with a loaded gun and having it go off.

The simplest possibility was mere accident prompted it to activate the way it did. However, another possibility is that Han was attempting some kind of gambit on Ren and deliberately sacrificed his life in the process. By allowing Kylo Ren to kill him, after Han promised he would do anything to help him, it may create a bond of trust that balking at his request might have destroyed, in addition to leaving Kylo a chance at redemption by taking it out of his hands since Kylo killing Han willingly would have ensured his complete and total allegiance to the Dark Side.

Dovetailing with this is Han's well-known reputation as a smuggler and a gambler - two professions that require the ability to accurately read people. He goes into the confrontation in all earnestness, but as soon as Kylo Ren shows his face and seemingly goes along with him, Han knows he's lying. His gambit failed, he is left with no choice but the aforementioned Heroic Sacrifice

In future episodes, we may see Ren having visions or hallucinations, since a Force Ghost is highly unlikely, of his father, Han. It may even act as a Good Angel, Bad Angel scenario, since the actor is confirmed to return in Episode VIII.

And if they want to reference the Knights of the Old Republic games, they could make this a great moment for Han. In the original Knights of the Old Republic, Malak attempts to have Bastila kill someone she loves, in this case a redeemed Revan, to extinguish the light within her. If Luke happened to tell Han the old Jedi legend of the Prodigal Knight, he would have known about that and possibly sacrificed himself to prevent his son from being able to go through with performing the same kind of atrocity, thus leaving a spark within Ben for Luke and Rey to try to ignite.

• Jossed. He specifically says he killed Han.

Qui-Gon Jinn is helping from the netherworld of the Force

Deliberately worded to go with the Anakin theory above. However, Qui-Gon Jinn may be a better candidate as it's established that he is able to work with the subtlety the theory requires. He never appears as a Force Ghost but was established in Revenge of the Sith as able to communicate with the world of the living. It would create an interesting Full Circle if the first Jedi Knight to appear chronologically is also the one who most helps bring about the end of the series.

• He only makes a vocal cameo in The Rise of Skywalker.

The presence of Luke's lightsaber is what triggered R2-D2's activation towards the end of the movie

.

As we learn about midway through the movie, R2-D2 has sat inert ever since Luke disappeared. But the moment all the action is over, he reactivates and leads Rey and Chewie right to where Luke is. The most logical trigger would be Luke's old lightsaber being detected on the Resistance base. Possibly something was put inside that that, once detected by R2-D2 would cause him to spur to action.

• Finn had the light saber at the rebel base before the trip to Starkiller Base. R2 didn't activate then. More likely is the presence of Rey is what activated R2.

Alternatively, Rey's presence triggered R2's activation

It's more likely, because Finn has already possessed Luke's lightsaber by the time the heroes reached the Resistence's base, but Rey was abducted by Kylo Ren. It wasn't until after the battle and Rey got to the base that R2 reactivates. There are two possibilities, first is maybe R2 was programmed by Luke to reactivate when in the presence of another force user so that it can give him or her the map that would lead to where he is hiding so he can train them to be a Jedi. But that would risk finding someone who is a dark side user instead, and it's unlikely that droids can detect The Force, so the second and more likely possibility is that Luke targeted Rey specifically, so R2 would only reactivate to bring Rey to him.

• Jossed, it had nothing to do with Rey.

Rey is another science experiment by Darth Plagueis

Plagueis has the ability to create new life. In some continunities is created Anakin. There's no reason to believe that he didn't cheat death and made another lifeform. This explains why Rey is so good at using the force despite little training- she simply has a high Midichlorian count.

Add to the theory that Snoke is Plagueis, she will confront him and he will tell her that he is her father.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

There will be a gay character

The film has the most racially diverse cast of all the Star Wars movies, and Abrams said it was a goal to reflect the diversity of the real world. Wouldn't that extend to sexual diversity?

• Finn and Poe, anyone ?
• Confirmed with Commander D'Acy.

Rey is Luke's daughter but he doesn't know that she exists

It's highly unlikely that Luke would just abandon his daughter on a hostile planet, but it's possible that her mother did, either unwillingly or to protect her. Given how human reproduction works it's entirely possible that Luke has no idea that Rey exists.

Additionally, being a Jedi Master now and very strong in the force, he may have realised she was his daughter as soon as he set eyes on her at the end of The Force Awakens, which would (at least in part) explain his facial expression when he turns around.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Alternatively, Rey is Luke's daughter and he abandoned her to protect her

If Luke felt that he wasn't worthy or capable of training a new set of students after his first lot were murdered then it's entirely possible that he would also feel that he couldn't/shouldn't raise his own daughter. He would also have feared that there was too much Vader in her as well since so many family members have turned, or almost turned, to the dark side, and so wanted to keep her as far away from Ren's influence as possible, at the same time fearing that Ren would simply kill her for being a threat given what he did to the other force-sensitives in Luke's training.

And why such a hostile place? Probably the same reason Luke was left on Tatooine: because it is the last place one would look for the child of a powerful force-user, not to mention being super remote and almost deserted.

• Headcanoned! This tropette also thought of the above. TFA was full of parallels to A New Hope, so this theory isn't too much of a stretch.
• Luke was left with parental figures to raise him and despite the harsh environment actually grew up fairly comfortably. He had home cooked meals, a land speeder, a sky hopper, and plenty of blue milk. Why leave his daughter to scavenge every day for a half portion of muffin?
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Kylo Ren is a covert Jedi agent, following Luke Skywalker's orders

Kylo's actions seem a little off, and even if he isn't necessarily aware, it's possible that he's being manipulated by Luke in a greater game to bring about the end of Snoke.

• Kylo is obsessed with finishing what Darth Vader started, but Vader was redeemed in the end, and considering who taught Kylo, it's incredibly likely that he was told the story of Anakin's ultimate rebellion against the Dark Side. It would be odd for him to cling so strongly to Vader's morals if he knew that Vader threw them off moments before his death.

• Kylo is visibly in conflict between the Light Side and the Dark Side, and when he discusses it, he leans heavily towards the Dark Side. Assuming that Snoke is a Sith or on par with the Sith, it would stand to reason that he would need to use the Dark Side to maintain his image in the presence of force users greater than him.

• Despite his fervent and aggressive lightsaber combat, Kylo's ability with the Force could exceed anything we've seen demonstrated in the past. His psychic torture methods and catching a blaster shot in mid-air with the Force, as well as keeping it suspended without even looking at it exhibit his speed and agility, something his swordmanship lacks. In the duel with Finn and Rey, the possibility stands that he was holding back. After seeing how fast he is, it seems odd that his aggressive combat methods would be so slow. Why would he not fight to his full potential? Perhaps because he knows he's not meant to win the battle he's engaged in, though he does intend to survive it. And considering his remarkable ability to sense his father's presence the second Han arrives on the same planet, it wouldn't be a terrible stretch for Kylo to have guided the fight to somewhere where the shattering terrain would naturally save him from Rey.

• Killing his own father is one hell of a way for Kylo to prove his allegiance to the Dark Side. In the moments leading up to Han's death, Kylo asks Han to help him, and Han says that he'd do anything. Han sacrificing himself to establish the evil of Kylo in the eyes of both the First Order and the Resistance affirms Kylo's commitment to Snoke, letting Kylo get closer to the most sinister individual presently existing in the galaxy.
  • To make the Snape and Dumbledore parallel clearer, maybe Han Solo knows he is already terminally ill.

• Luke going into hiding the way he did is extremely odd. The student that betrayed Luke (assumed to be Kylo) would have to be exceptionally talented, but why Luke and Kylo are both alive after a duel of that caliber makes one wonder. For Luke to simply vanish afterwards, rather than going after his rogue apprentice, implies that he has other reasons for not going after Kylo. Perhaps the most obvious being the idea that Luke guided Kylo to betray him. We know Luke has grappled with the Dark Side in the past, and perhaps it's a bit meta to discuss Mark Hamill's tendency to play villains nowadays, but it would certainly catch a number of viewers by surprise to have Luke Skywalker explain why he turned his own nephew into a mentally-shattered weapon of mass destruction.
• Jossed. He tries to kill Luke.

There is no civilian population in the First Order

While it makes sense that all we see is the military their is no indication of any kind of a civilian population, compared to the empire which was A. run by politicians who want more personal power B. Massive covering most the known galaxy and C. had only gotten rid of the senate by the time of A New Hope. the First Order was most likely founded by runaway members of the military those who were loyal to the Galactic Empire, and raised their kids to believe that the New Republic was just as corrupt as the Old Republic, the education of the First Order Probably Stressed Military training and eventually Hux's soldiers are what they do now, raised to be Stormtroopers. their supplies are most like provided by worlds in the unknown territories that fall under their "protection" but they are not considered part of the First Order and are more akin to Vassal states, allowed to do what they wish so long as taxes, supplies, and possibly troops (if human colonies) go to the First Order

Leia will become Chancellor of the New Republic

• With most of the Senate dead, Leia would be a prime choice for a wartime leader to help rally the weakened Republic and begin regrouping for a counteroffensive. At the same time, she will also be pressured by some Senators to institute the same militarization and emergency powers that Palpatine implemented during the Clone Wars in order to better confront the First Order, leaving others to question if Leia is embarking down a similar path.
  • The first part might just turn out to be true by the movie's ending. In her last scene, Leia is dressing in a formal, royalty-like attire in contrast of the military uniform she has been wearing for most of the movie, suggesting that she may indeed has to play a role in the Repullic politics. As for the last part, we'll just have to wait and see...
• Jossed. The New Republic is no more.

BB-8's lighter is a pilot light for a flamethrower.

Luke lost his powers.

The trauma of Ben's betrayal and the death of his students cost Luke his ability to use the Force and he's gone into exile to try and get his powers back.

• Somewhat confirmed. He cut himself off from the Force.

Anakin's lightsaber is a case of the Weapon Wields You

Rewatch the scene where both Kylo and Rey attempt to Summon to Hand. A Force-user of Kylo's power should have been able to make the lightsaber jump right into his hand in the blink of an eye. Instead, it seems to hesitate in the snow, and Kylo actually looks perplexed that it is not immediately coming to him. Then it flies right past him, into's Rey's hand. She proceeds to become an Instant Expert with it. This, combined with the fact that the lightsaber seemed to be calling to her through the Force in Maz's castle, and that she had intense visions when she actually touched it, strongly implies that at least for her, it is not simply a laser sword. The lightsaber is actively touching her mind whenever she has it in-hand.

• As an alternative, it could be that Anakin himself is spiritually bound to the weapon.
• In Maz's castle, in addition to the telepathic summons that Rey received to go to where the lightsaber was stored, something opened the door to the room where it was kept without anyone touching the control panel.

• Jossed.

Rey will have no love interest. While Finn and Poe might be the official romantic couple.

Given how homosexual couples are becoming common in movies and television, this theory isn't far off.

• An interesting Ho Yay point to note is that at the end of the film, when they all return to the Resistance base, if you watch carefully Poe runs off to follow the medics as they haul the badly-wounded Finn away. Rey watches sadly, but stays near the Falcon and ultimately ends up sharing grief with Leia over Han. Both Poe and Rey hug Finn in the movie. But Poe hugs Finn out of sheer joy at seeing him alive at Maz's castle. Rey hugs Finn out of gratitude that he came looking for her (unlike her absent parents). While the default assumption is that Finn and Rey are the Official Couple because they are a man and a woman, Rey's behavior makes them seem like Just Friends. She even departs, giving the comatose Finn a kiss on the forehead, to go seek out Luke Skywalker. This draws some parallels to the original trilogy, where Luke obviously cared deeply for Leia, but went off to pursue his Jedi training. It was Han that was more concerned about Leia's well-being in The Empire Strikes Back, and vice versa in Return of the Jedi.
  • The movies have been fairly progressive so far, given the two leads are a) female and b) black (with Latino Poe rounding out the trio) as opposed to the classic 'white male hero' trope. Having the main romance be between two men and establishing a female lead without a Love Interest would be a continuation of that.
  • Outside of the de-canonized Legends expanded universe, Luke appears to have been a Celibate Hero. The prequels established that the Jedi were not supposed to marry (to the dismay of EU authors and fanfic writers alike). If Luke has had any lovers in the intervening decades, they are either no longer with him or are dead apparently. It would be an interesting aversion of the Single Woman Seeks Good Man trope if Rey were to not end up with a Love Interest, instead choosing to pursue the path of being a Jedi. That would up-end the old-fashioned notion that no woman is complete without a man, while at the same time pairing Finn and Poe would subvert the idea that heroic men must be straight.
  • When they are reunited, they run into one another's arms, and then a moment later Poe complements Finn on how well the jacket suits him. The only reason they don't already look like a couple is that we don't automatically expect a two-man relationship.
    • Not confirmed by the director, but Oscar Isaacs and John Boyega are both playing Finn and Poe as a romance, so it's Subtext only because nobody's actually come out and said "yep, they're in love" yet.
• No romantic relationships are explicitly confirmed between the three characters.

Poe is going to be a Sacrificial Lion in Episode VIII

Somebody important is going to have to die to up the stakes, and since Rey is the protagonist and the writers are going to want to avert Black Guy Dies First with Finn, the handsome, loveable, and experienced fighter pilot Poe Dameron is gonna be the one who bites the dust.

• Jossed. He lives.

Potential Plot Summary for Episode VIII

Rey is training with Luke while Finn and Poe have to escape the rebel base when they are attacked. The two get trapped by the New Order and are chained in an arena. Rey gets a vision of them and leaves her training early to go help while Luke just goes "oh my god."

Or says "Learn from my mistakes. I'm coming with you."

• Jossed.

Snoke will be a Disk-One Final Boss, and Kylo is destined to be the Big Bad

This has likely been mentioned before, but I think it has even more evidence than before. In comparison to the invincible Vader who gradually became much more human, Kylo Ren starts off as very human and vulnerable. Therefore his growth through the movies will be to become more and more powerful and composed, working his way up to true Big Bad status. Snoke on the other hand will turn out to be far less invincible than he presents, and at the end of the next movie will be killed (either by Kylo Ren or Luke).

• Partially confirmed. Palpatine is the Big Bad.

Captain Phasma, TR-8R and JB-007 are going to get scapegoated for the destruction of Starkiller Base

Nevermind the multitude of planning failures, like not requiring two-party or multiple component authorization to drop the shield, or the virtual absence of internal security on base, or every other screw-up that let the heroes win. Accepting those would require the top-level planners to take the blame, and they don't want that. Instead, it's Phasma for giving up the codes to the shield generator at blaster-point, JB-007 for falling victim to Rey's Jedi Mind Trick and giving her a chance to escape, and TR-8R for (in spite of a valiant effort) throwing down his blaster so he could beat the crap out of Finn with a riot club, resulting in Finn's survival/escape who are going to get thrown under the bus. While JB-007 and TR-8R might still be alive to deal with the consequences, the former evacuating from Starkiller before detonation, the latter turning out to be Only Mostly Dead, Phasma is probably going to eat the brunt of it, what with being a named character with an officer's rank and an actress already signed up for the rest of the sequel trilogy.

• Jossed. According to a deleted scene in The Last Jedi, Phasma kept that fact hidden.

Captain Phasma will be the primary villain of Episode VIII

We've already had confirmation that she will have a much bigger role next time. Kylo Ren will be Demoted to Extra for most of the film due to his failure and won't really come back until Episode IX, after which he'll be the badass he always wanted to be.

• Jossed. She only briefly appears before getting killed off.

The Knights of Ren were the bottom of the class

Out of all the "Knights" of Ren seen in the flashback vision, only Kylo is shown with an ignited lightsaber. The others are holding an assortment of undefined weapons (staves, clubs, etc.). It's entirely possible that they are not a formal organization at all, but rather were merely Kylo's clique among Luke's Jedi students. If they are Force-sensitive, they may not be very powerfully so. That would account for young, partially-trained, Kylo being their "master". The allure of the Dark Side for them was the promise of being able to achieve greater Force powers than what they had managed so far under Luke's teachings. So they rally behind Darth Vader's grandson, who in turn has a powerful Dark Side mentor in Snoke. This would basically make them a gang, which have possibly become Elite Mooks for Snoke and the First Order. However, not wanting a bunch of fully-trained Dark Jedi forming a power base for Kylo, Snoke has split them up because it hinders their further advancement in Force powers keeping them separated from each other and Kylo. Their name could be borrowed from some past Dark Side figure or group and adopted for coolness factor the same way that Kylo actively tries to emulate Darth Vader. However, even Kylo would hesitate to be so presumptuous as to call himself a Sith (plus there is that pesky Rule of Two), so he uses the Knights of Ren name instead.

• Jossed.

JB-007 wasn't mind-tricked, but is actually a stormtrooper with a conscience ala Finn

Rey being an Instant Expert in the arts of the Force is rather unbelievable, and the possibility of rebel stormtroopers is confirmed with Finn. Is it so difficult to believe that another stormtrooper could turn traitor? Also, Rey somehow "mindtricks" JB into dropping his weapon when he's already at a distance, something not even Obi-Wan could do. It makes much more sense for him to have been playing along to give Rey some much-needed confidence.

• Or more subtly, he was mind-tricked but he was fairly easy to do it to because he was also slightly uneasy with his job. Rey didn't have to push him very hard to act against the Order.

Kylo will try to summon the spirit of Darth Vader

But, instead of that, he will summon the ghost of a powerful Jedi Knight, who will summon a ghostly lightsaber and start a duel with him. He will eventually lead Kylo to one of those inconvenient catwalks, and then have a dialogue like this:

Kylo: I don't know who are you. This is a mistake. I did not try to summon you.

Ghost: Don't you know who am I? My name is Anakin Skywalker. The Light Side is strong in me, because I died bringing balance to the force. A balance that you are now trying to disrupt. Your master Snoke never told you about me.

Kylo: He told me enough! He told me you helped Luke Skywalker to kill Darth Vader!

Ghost: No. I am Darth Vader.

Kylo: No... that's not true! That's impossible!

Ghost: Search your feelings, you know this to be true.

Kylo: NOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Ghost: If you only knew the power of the light side... join me, Kylo Ren, and together we'll save the galaxy, like grandfather and grandson. Come with me. It is your destiny!

• Jossed.

Luke is in hiding because he realized the only way that The Force can ever be at peace is if there are no Force Wielders; by creating the New Jedi Order, he actually threw The Force into chaos and thus caused the rise of the Dark Side once more.

The Jedi Council believed that the Force would be brought into balance with the destruction of the Sith, but ultimately both the Jedi AND the Sith were destroyed, leaving Luke the sole Force-Wielder left; Luke had shades of both Jedi and Sith, and was trully a Grey Jedi, allowing the Force to be at complete balance, as the Light Side and Dark Side were no longer in conflict in Luke.

But once Luke began training other Jedi, the scales tipped too far towards the Light Side, and so the Dark Side once again flared up in response, causing destruction and chaos by the two Sides coming into conflict.

Luke ran and hid not only because of his guilt over having trained the individual responsible for killing all the new Jedi Order, but also because he realized that his desire to train other Force Wielders directly caused the Force to become unstable; he also hid in the hopes that the Dark Side, as small as it currently is, would eventually be ended by its own tendency for self-destruction, and that in time the knowledge of Force-Wielding would die with him, leaving The Force finally, and completely, at peace.

Snoke won't be the main villain in the Sequel Trilogy.

In trilogies, there are always last minute surprises, especially during the concluding film. I believe Snoke willeither prove to be The Dragon type who is following the orders of the real Big Bad, or he'll underestimate someone in his own ranks, who will overthrow him and take over as the real Villain. There is also the heavy possibility of a Face–Heel Turn character being the real villain. Who will it be? Time will tell.

• With the rumors that Thrawn may appear in Episode VIII, perhaps he decides that Snoke's regime is a failure, and usurps him.
• Jossed. He went into hiding out of shame for contemplating killing Ben.

Luke's first scene in Episode VIII will be him refusing the lightsaber.

The next movie will pick up right where the last one left off, with Rey holding out the lightsaber to Luke. Luke will turn away rather than take it.

• Confirmed. He throws it over his shoulder.

There Is (Or Was) Another Solo.

Despite the new movies basically retconning all of the Expanded Universe into an AU, it's pretty obvious that some of the characters are culled somewhat from the 'Legends' mythos. Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is basically a port-over of Legends' Jacen Solo, as the son of Han and Leia that goes dark in early adulthood. The role of Jaina is taken by Rey. But Han and Leia had three children in Legends. Maybe it's not a one-to-one correlation, but it's entirely possible that there's another Solo sibling that will show up in Episode VIII or IX. Of couse, given the fate of the last Solo sibling in Legends, it's also possible that said Solo child is already dead.

• They spared Chewie. Why not do the same with the younger Solo brother?
  • Maybe the younger Solo brother was [[spoiler: among the Jedi trainees killed by Ben? It's been stated by Word of God that Ben went to Luke to be trained at an older age than had been customary in the old days for Jedi to start their training, and was already a young man in his twenties by the time of his fall to the dark side - drawing yet more parallels to Anakin. The way it's treated in the movie, however, was as if they had lost a much younger child. Perhaps they lost this child (doesn't necessary have to be a son, obviously) to his/her own older brother? That would make the original Trio's reactions to his turn to the Dark Side make a lot of sense. It wasn't just that Ben turned; it was that they lost another child/niece/nephew as a result of the turn.
• Jossed.

Luke activated Finn's conscience.

Why else did this one particular trooper, in the right place at the right time, and with no previous record of disobedience, suddenly rebel? And what better way for a Jedi Master, in isolated meditation for years and sick of killing, to exert his influence?

• Jossed. Luke cut himself off from the Force.

Snoke is a Palpatine clone.

Just because ;)

• Actually the more I think about this...
  • Ren wants to finish what Vader started, and is terrified of falling to the light. What did Vader ever start? Nothing but the destruction of Palpatine. It would be an amazing arc for Ren if he's intentionally embraced the dark in order to get close enough to Snoke.
  • That plus Snoke's provocative sabre scar across the head...
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

The next movies will be more examples of "the same thing, done different".

And here are predictions about their complete plots.

Episode VIII:

• Kylo Ren is not dead.
• Rey trains with Luke Skywalker, while Finn and Poe fall into a trap in the attempt to kill Kylo Ren.
• Rey interrupts her training to go and save them.
• Rey fights against Kylo Ren and loses a hand.
• Poe tries to flee, but is captured again.
• Rey gets a bionic hand implanted.

Episode IX:

• Finn, disguised as a stormtrooper, frees Poe.
• There is a new, larger Starkiller base (possibly two).
• Snoke appears in person for the first time.
• Rey goes back to Luke Skywalker to resume her training.
• They are attacked, Luke Skywalker dies and dissolves into the Force.
• Rey decides to go and kill Snoke.
• Snoke tries to seduce Rey to the Dark Side, revealing that she is Kylo Ren's sister, daughter of Leia and Han Solo.
• Rey refuses Snoke's offer and starts fighting him.
• Before Snoke can kill her, Kylo Ren redeems himself and kills Snoke for brotherly love, but he gets killed too.
• The new Starkiller weapon(s) get(s) destroyed by the Millennium Falcon, flown by Poe.
• Poe makes a heroic sacrifice and explodes together with the Millennium Falcon.
• Rey and Finn marry.
• Luke Skywalker's and Ben Solo's ghosts appear.
  • Mostly Jossed.

Episode VIII is going to reveal that Rey is the product of Villainous Incest by proxy in an Ass Pull.

To throw off everyone expecting the writers to repeat the Luke, I Am Your Father moment from Episode V which has become an It Was His Sled to virtually all Star Wars fans these days, Rey will be revealed to be Luke and Leia's daughter that neither of them ever knew they had. A female will be revealed to be the Woman Behind The Man Behind the Man, pulling Snoke's strings the same way he's pulling Kylo's, and it'll turn out she arranged to gather (shall we say) Luke and Leia's genetic material during routine physical checkups, and then impregnated herself with whatever she considered the best result of her sick experiments. After raising Rey to be about five years old, she abandoned her on Jakku with a false promise to return in order to maximize the odds she'd turn to the dark side later.

Her primary motive will be to break both Luke and Leia and seduce Rey to the dark side. Her Wham Line to Rey will be "You honestly don't remember I'm your mother, do you, Rey?" followed with a credible We Can Rule Together offer along the lines of "Snoke and Kylo are fools. We can rule the galaxy far better than any mere men!" Her (later) Wham Line to Luke (though not Leia) will be something like "Oh yes, I gave birth to her, but she's all yours. Of course, you wouldn't know--would you, Luke--that she's Leia's daughter... by you!!!" (Luke's likely response: first denial "But I never...! She never...! We didn't...!" and then after the villain explains how this happened, "Suddenly, I'm not so sorry Leia didn't live to see this day.")

The female villain's secondary motives for doing this will include one or more of the following:

• She figured the best way to maximize her surrogate child's force-sensitivity was to recombine the genetic material from Darth Vader's children, since he was the most powerful Jedi/Sith ever to have lived.
• She also figured the more twisted and evil the way she conceived her offspring was, the more easily she could turn the resulting child to the dark side.
• She was just so plain perverse that the thought of making a child from Sibling Incest gave her the ultimate sick thrill.
• She (also) got a sick thrill from the thought that maybe she could get Rey and Kylo together for even more inbreeding and perversion.

As for the writers' motives for pulling such an Ass Pull on us, how the characters come to grips with this horrible revelation will serve to deconstruct Sins of the Father and the Jedi's stupid rules against falling in love and getting married in the prequels. The big moral lesson Rey will learn from all this is that despicable origins don't force you to be immoral (as she ultimately rejects the villain's claims that she has to turn to the dark side just because she was conceived for its purposes and by its means). The big lesson the next generation of Jedi will learn in the meantime is not to make stupid rules against love and marriage and having children because those are what the Sith and Knights of Ren used to corrupt Darth Vader and Kylo Ren and others, and how they nearly seduced Rey as well. (Oh, and did I mention that one more big revelation from all this will be that this pointless celibacy requirement was one more motivation for Kylo Ren to turn against Luke? "Maybe your father would have made a better Jedi if the other Jedi had let him be your father, Luke; sounds to me like Vader had a point about those prigs.")

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

The Dragon of the new trilogy will be ... Rey.

Rey is the Ace at many skills pretty much instantly. This is in part because she already trained them and forgot, in part because she is a mirror of Anakin Skywalker.

When Luke himself learned about the force, he had to come a large part of the way himself after Obi-Wan Kenobi had died and before he met Yoda. Later, when he founded his new Jedi Order, he trained his apprentices from childhood, but was eventually betrayed by Kylo and his Knights of Ren. Luke only managed to save his most promising young student: Rey, the daughter of Han Solo and Leia Organa.

Luke realised he could not be trusted with the education of young, malleable children like Kylo had been at the beginning, so he decided that Rey should find him herself once the time was right and the force called to her, allowing her to figure out some things for herself like Luke had before being trained by Yoda. He put her on Jakku with a suppressed memory and placed Lor San Tekka near her to explain to her what the Force was and give her part of the plan to find Luke in time (the other half he left with Leia so Rey would have to talk with her and find the resistance before going to find Luke). Luke hoped that this way, she would only reach him once she was truly ready and he would teach her then.

Luke will train Rey in the ways of the force while the New Republic will strike back at the First Order in Episode VIII. Rey will become extremely powerful but also distant towards Finn, which worries him. Finn will find out about his own sensitivity to the force. At the end of Episode VIII, Rey will confront Kylo Ren again, whose training is now finished – but it is clear she is superior. He taunts her and tells her that Han was her father (a little fact that Luke, in good old Obi-Wan tradition, had not told her). Remembering how Kylo murdered Han, she goes into a rage and slaughters a helpless Kylo Ren. She glances towards the camera with a yellow glint in her eyes and the movie ends.

In Episode IX, Luke is heartbroken while Rey-led First Order forces win battle after battle. Finn finds Luke and begs him to teach him – Finn has always been ready to risk everything for Rey despite him being terribly afraid. Luke agrees eventually and teaches Finn, but Finn is still completely underprepared when he faces Rey. However, he eventually convinces her to come back to the light side like Luke did with Vader before. In the end, it is Finn who establishes a new Jedi order while Rey goes to the first Jedi temple to find herself again.

• Jossed. She remains on the light.

Not all of Luke's new apprentices are dead.

Some have either gone underground or gone into exile with him.

• Or perhaps some actually turned bad alongside Ben and became the lesser Knights of Ren.
• This theory is supported by Snoke's dialogue in the movie. He specifically fears that if the Resistance finds Luke Skywalker then "the new Jedi will rise". This line makes much more sense if Snoke fears a cadre of mostly trained Jedi knights in hiding ready to answer Luke's call instead of Luke starting to recruit and train new Jedi from scratch, a process that could take many years.
  • None ever appear.

Kylo Ren will be a condensed version of Darth Vader.

In Episode VII, he was a whiny brat who was eventually left for dead on an unstable planet. In Episode VIII, he will be a menacing, dangerous opponent who will be killed by the film's end. In Episode IX, someone (Captain Phasma, General Hux, or even Rey) will use Kylo Ren as a pillar from which to base their ideals.

• Jossed. He survives Episode VIII.

There will be another, bigger Starkiller in Episode IX as a nod to the second Death Star

However, instead of blowing it up, it will be turned against the First Order.

• Jossed.

Snoke is a Sith Pureblood.

The Legends design of the Red Sith is no longer canon, so they can look however the hell JJ wants them to. Besides that, Snoke is apparently extremely old, having been around and doing his own Dark Side thing even during the Clone Wars. We know that the Massassi still exist in the new canon, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for the Sith species to be around too, and it could also tie into the First Order's exploration of the Unknown Regions— it seems like a good place for the last of a species known to be a virtual incarnation of evil to hide, no? Perhaps the former Imperials found him out there, or maybe he found them.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Lor San Tekka was born on Alderaan.

He's someone Leia describes as a friend, which suggests a closer connection than a mere political alliance, or an indirect acquaintance through Luke. He's also trusted with precious information that the Empire's remnants would pay a galactic-sized fortune for. That level of trust and intimacy implies that she and Lor share a very strong background experience - one that ensures he would never betray Luke's secret location to the enemy - and him having been native to Leia's home planet, who'd been off-world exploring old Jedi ruins when the Death Star destroyed it, would create a nigh-unbreakable bond between the two survivors. Nor would he hand over information to the same sort of villains as had blown up his homeworld at any price.

• Notably, he still regards her as royalty, even though Alderaan was destroyed roughly four decades earlier. A former Rebel who was not from Alderaan would likely have come to identify her with her military role during that time, and forgotten about the princess thing, especially since she herself stopped using the title.

Han and Leia are guilty of Parental Neglect

Kylo has a major chip on his shoulder with regards to his parents. He is also notorious for his Wangst. Where could he have learned such personality traits? From Threepio!!! The droid whines almost constantly, but maintains a pretense of intellectual superiority. Sound familiar? Leia and Han's reaction to Kylo's betrayal was to throw themselves into their preferred careers to the extent that they broke up. Maybe this was not a new thing however? Perhaps they had been doing it all along, with the only unifying factor in their relationship being their child? But perhaps that did not greatly mitigate the Family Versus Career behavior, and Kylo was the result of Freudian Excuse? Notably, Kylo does not seem to possess either his mother's skills for leadership and military strategy (he is very much a Bad Boss), nor does he appear to have any of Han's piloting skills (he never once in the film pilots a vehicle himself). While this could possibly be an unconscious rebellion against his parents, it could just as likely be a case of him never picking up these skills because Han and Leia never spent much time with him, leaving him to Threepio, and then to Luke once addressing his Force potential and anger issues became apparent. Leia seems to get along better with Poe, who was basically born and raised a Rebel pilot. Han quickly relates to Wrench Wench Rey, who appreciates the Falcon and his improvisational lifestyle.

• The EU mentions that he was distant from his parents.

Rey is the daughter of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade

• Though most of the EU is Exiled From Canon, a few elements are still there, and supposedly the door has been left open for more. Mara was killed in the EU by a Solo kid turned Dark, so Kylo/Ben could have killed her when the Knights of Ren attacked Luke' academy. It would help explain why Luke went away and left her behind. And Rey has some very green eyes for being the daughter of blue eyed Luke, but if she had Mara's eyes that would make sense.
  • Considering basic genetics mean that a blond and a redhead wouldn't be able to produce a brunette, this looks unlikely even if Rey is Luke's daughter. There'd have to be a brown-haired mother in the equation to explain why she's not blond like Luke.
    • Genetics is much more complicated than that. The trait for hair color is made from a combination of many different genes and some traits skip generations, depending on the certain combination of genes and what other genes it combines with. Luke had a brunette mother so he definitely had the genes for brown hair. So if Mara had at least one brown-haired parent, the genes from that parent could have combined with the genes that Luke inherited from Padme to give their daughter brown hair.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Leia is, in fact, a trained or partially trained Jedi

• Similar to Luke, once Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side she put down her lightsaber. Perhaps in Episode VIII, when Kylo inevitably confronts her, she'll reveal combat abilities similarly to Yoda vs Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones. And it'll be awesome.
• Confirmed.

If Rey is a Kenobi, her mother is Asajj Ventress

• Kind of out there, but she and Obi-Wan had a certain atmosphere about them, and while she is still canon, her death is not, so it's technically possible.
  • Going by the timeline, she is more likely to be Rey's grandmother than her mother.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Rey is Luke's daughter, and he thought she was dead.

Rey being Luke's daughter doesn't necessarily mean he was the one to leave her on Jakku. Maz Kanata tells her that whoever she's waiting for on Jakku is never coming back, and it's left deliberately vague as to whom she's crying at to come back in the flashback to her as a kid.

It's possible that it could be either her mother or Kylo Ren who left her. The former could have escaped the Jedi massacre with Rey and left her on Jakku with a promise to come back for her, then got killed on the way back and led Luke to believe both she and Rey died, hence contributing to his self-imposed exile and explaining why he never looked for Rey. It's also probably notable that in the audiobook for the novelization, the voice for the additional line in a flashback that wasn't in the movie ("I'll come back for you, sweetheart, I promise" or something to that effect) is female, and Luke is standing in front of what could be a gravestone at the end when Rey finds him.

The latter is a less likely possibility, but it could work. Knowing his obsession with Anakin's bloodline, he probably couldn't bring himself to kill a fellow heir and decided to maroon her on a deserted planet instead to keep her out of the way without having to bump her off. Given the timeline, he would have been a teenager during this scenario, so it's not entirely out of the question.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Rey's skill in the Force is because of Luke's legend.

It's possible that Rey's quick grasp of the Force compared to Luke is simply because Luke never heard anything about the Jedi. No real legends of what they could do were told to him. Rey, on the other hand, knows about Luke being a Jedi- she's not overcoming a lack of belief in what the Force can do, but accepting that *she* can do it. Since Jedi can do mind tricks, then it's just a matter of how can she do it.

Rey's real name is "Breha Solo"

If the popular theory about her being Han and Leia's daughter turns out to be true, this seems like it would be a good bit of foreshadowing for that fact, since it would mean that she was named after Leia's stepmother Queen Breha Organa of Alderaan. It would also mean that she and Kylo are actually siblings named "Ben and Breha", which calls to mind Luke and Leia Skywalker before them, as well as Jacen and Jaina Solo from the Legends continuity. Not much of a stretch, considering Kylo is already pretty heavily based on Jacen Solo/Darth Caedus.

• Unlikely; first, Rey would have been old enough to remember Han and Leia as her parents, which she doesn't. Second, if they were her parents, they'd have no reason not to tell her the truth, given how important her family is to her. And thirdly, I find it really hard to believe they'd ditch her on Jakku, promise to come back, and never return.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Kylo Ren is being affected by a Ganma.

He has a relic of a dead historical figure (Anakin) who he idolizes, and it's having a negative effect on his psyche. All we need is for Takeru to come in and hug him, and he'll leave the Dark Side behind. The Anakin Ghost Eyecon would give Kamen Rider Ghost Force powers.

• Jossed.

Hux was probably an initiate to join the Knights of Ren, but was cast out because Snoke favored Kylo Ren instead.

• That's why both of them are always at odds with each other and always try to one-up one another to gain Snoke's approval.
  • In relation to that theory, the on-going cold war between them could escalate to the point where one of them will try to kill the other and/or be forced to defect to the Resistance.
• Jossed. He seems to have no force sensitivity.

Phasma is a droid.

Why not?

• Jossed. We see a human face though her mask.

Rey is Snoke's daughter.

• Just so Snoke can say right before the climatic battle: "Rey, I am your father."
  • Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Snoke is really a human.

• His hologram is really just an avatar of some sort.
  • Jossed.

Rey has the force ability Psychometry.

This could be an explanation for many of Rey's actions throughout the movie, including her many Instant Expert moments. Psychometry allows someone to gain information by merely touching an object, so in order, off the top of my head:

• Rey gets in the Falcon during an extremely stressful incident, and somehow instantly knows how to fly it LIKE A FREAKING PRO, pulling off maneuvers that would make Han Solo jealous.
• Rey touches Anakin's Lightsaber and experiences a series of visions, likely of events the lightsaber was there to be imprinted with. Part of the reason for Rey's blatant rejection of the Saber at first was probably because she felt the deaths of those 30-odd Younglings in it.
• Next, during Kylo Ren's attempt to interrogate her, she gains a lot of insight to using the force, so much so that she can do the Jedi Mind Trick in three tries later. However this case is a little iffy for Psychometry as in this case the "object" Force-touched her rather than the other way around.
• Finally, during the fight with Kylo Ren, despite being untrained with Lightsabers, the moment it touches her hand she proceeds to kick (an admittedly wounded) Kylo Ren's ass. This could be Psychometry by use of the combat experience of all who've held the saber being channeled through her.

(If anyone would like to edit links to related tropes in my entry, I would not mind.)

• In addition to her first brush with the Falcon, she's had experience clambering around in potentially similar vessels to salvage parts, potentially acquiring knowledge through that contact as well.

Poe is dead and has been replaced by a clone.

This would explain his miraculous off-screen escape from the crash and it stands to reason that the Resistance would want to have a backup of their best pilot. Clone-Poe has been filled in on "Original"-Poe's relation to Finn by BB-8, and is keeping his clone status a secret, due to widespread prejudice against clones. Finn's expression after their last interaction before the battle suggests that he suspects Poe of hiding something.

• They would have had to really bend over backwards to fake everybody out. If you look carefully at him after Takodana, Poe still has marks on his face from where he was bleeding after his torture. That would have required that the Resistance know exactly what injuries he had sustained while in captivity. They would have also needed to know about Finn, since Poe recognizes and rushes to hug him when they see each other at the Resistance base. Any clone made of Poe would not have his recent injuries or memories. In the latter case, BB-8 never saw Poe and Finn together until then, and the droid had no knowledge of what their prior interactions were like so as to coach a clone how to react to seeing Finn.

Maz Kanata was supposed to be Lando Calrissian

Similar to the above theory that Lor San Tekka was supposed to be Lando, maybe Maz Kanata's role was meant to be Lando's. Think about it, she's a smuggler colleague of Han's, and she somehow acquired the Skywalker lightsaber last seen in Cloud City. Perhaps at some point between ROTJ and TFA, Lando went back to Cloud City to reclaim his title of Baron Adminstrator, and while inspecting the city, he found the lightsaber in the refuse somewhere.

Snoke is a former Jedi.

This is why Leia trusted him, and why no one noted his Obviously Evil appearance. Snoke was once a respected Jedi Master (maybe even someone we know) who was burned and crippled following Order 66. As a result he was able to present himself as a heroic survivor and gain access to the New Jedi Order, no one suspecting that he had actually turned to the dark side.

• Given the filmmakers have already lived up to their statement of borrowing elements from the Legends continuity, this would make for a very dark twist on Empatojayos Brand.
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

The name 'Ren' actually stands for 'Revan''

Think about it, the costumes worn by the Knights of Ren (especially the masks) basically screams Revan, as well as the leader/the best among them is a fallen Jedi. Maybe they're the twisted version of the 'Revannites' from SWTOR that's been manipulated by Snoke to use as tools to defeat the 'weak' Republic and remake it. And thus they've been brainwashed into thinking that what they were doing is for the good of the galaxy, no matter the cost.

• Jossed.

Episode IX will feature the Gray Side of the Force as the ultimate balancer of the galaxy

• Jossed.

The electrified batons capable of blocking lightsaber swipes (wielded by the "traitor!" stormtrooper among possible others) were ultimately intended for subduing Kylo Ren after he outlived his usefulness.

Or in the event that his fits of rage ever got out of hand. Hux and his ilk aren't force-sensitive, but they appear to be in a tense position; it makes sense that Hux at least might want to rub out the competition behind Snoke's back. Given his young age, it's possible this is his usual modus operandi for climbing the ranks, and Kylo Ren's abilities are merely an irritating wrinkle.

Kylo Ren is far, FAR weaker than he would have been had he stayed with Luke.

Kylo Ren is painfully aware of his relative inadequacies as a force-user, fearing he'll never measure up to the power of Darth Vader. And his performance backs this up: his main claim to fame is slaughtering similarly untrained Jedi apprentices with backup in the form of the other Knights of Ren to support him. Hard as he tries to seem intimidating with the helmet, the saber and his flashy fighting style, he gets hit by a blaster bolt he should have seen coming, takes longer to take down the non-Force sensitive Finn than a Stormtrooper with a stun baton did earlier (apparently not even thinking to simply use his powers on him), and ends up beaten by a neophyte whose prodigious abilities should by no means have given her enough of an edge to best a true warrior. Most likely, when Snoke lured Kylo to the Dark Side, not only did he not "complete his training", he probably didn't train him much if at all; he didn't need a hardened fighter, and certainly not a successor (given how that worked out for the Emperor), but a pre-trained blunt instrument desperate and naive enough to be convinced turning to the Dark Side would itself be enough to give him the power he wants, and short-sided and foolish enough to never realize just how badly he's been had and how weak he's ended up, compared to what he might have become with Skywalker blood and completed training under one of the most powerful Jedi of all time.

• Additionally, it's possible that he simply did not need to be trained until this point, because there's no one around who can really oppose him (which would also factor into his inadequate fighting, what training he did have would have rusted after years of lack of real use) and just looking intimidating and carrying a lightsaber to perform executions had been enough until another lightsaber and Rey showed up. To support that Snoke didn't train him much if at all, his attempts at tapping into the Dark Side, particularly in the final fight, aren't really effective at even giving him a temporary boost.
• This seems plausible, but remember that while Rey may be a neophyte as a Force-user, she is far from a neophyte as a hand-to-hand combatant. The movie shows us her beating up two guys at once on Jakku largely to make it believable later on that she can take a wounded Kylo Ren. Also, he didn't get hit by a blaster; he was shot with a weapon that was shown to be much more powerful than a blaster. Again, they had the characters talk about the power of that weapon precisely so that it would be believable that Ren would not be able to block it.

The Resistance will receive help from the Imperial Remnant that hasn't joined the First Order in future films.

The data on the First Order notes that they are a splinter faction of the former Empire - this implies that not everybody who was loyal to Palpatine's Empire immediately joined the FO and perhaps are content with living in the peace offered by the treaty signed by the New Republic and the Empire. They probably viewed the First Order's military build up as the saber-rattling of deluded extremists and dismissed them as a lunatic fringe until the destruction of the New Republic's capital worlds. They'll support the Resistance not out of any loyalty to the New Republic but as an enemy-of-my-enemy reaction, perhaps out of fear that that if the First Order triumphs over the Resistance, the next target will be them for not being loyal to the FO's vision of a revived Empire.

• Bonus points if the Imperial Remnant faction is led by Mitth'raw'nuruodo.
• This is a probability since some members of the Resistance dress like Imperial officers. This troper accepts this as Head Canon at least.

• Jossed.

Snoke is Gollum.

In this universe the ring was never destroyed. Sauron used Gollums body instead of his own when reunited with the ring. He rose up and developed space technology. He entered space and the Dark Side of the Force is actually flowing from Sauron/Snoke, creating the Sith. "It's true, yes precious, it is!"

• Already lampshaded by HISHE:
  Snoke: Bring me The Precious!
  Kylo Ren: Yes, Supreme Leader. *Beat* You are talking about the girl, correct?
  Snoke: PRECIOUS!!!!
• Jossed.

Post-release theories - Part 2

Kylo Ren is a corrupted Light-Side user, not a Dark Side user.

We never see him use the traditional "Dark Side Powers", ie Force Lightning. (Darth Vader couldn't because of his cybernetics). He uses Stop and Mental Suggestion, up to eleven so they don't appear like their original selves.

• I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Those are just Force powers, with no inherent alignment. Asajj Ventress was able to Mind Trick clones and she was pretty steeped in the Dark Side. The Inquisitors don't seem to use Force Lightning. Hell, Darth Maul, an explicit Sith doesn't use Force Lightning. It's probably more that Force Lightning is an advanced technique and everyone who could have taught him it is dead.
• Given that Kylo Ren received at least part of his training from Luke, and other parts of his Force use seem to be intuitive rage-based variations on Force manipulations of matter that in their original form would be neutral (using the Force to lift a person into the air to choke them, for instance, as opposed to lifting an object for any other purpose) it's possible the techniques he's most proficient in are the ones he learned while still nominally allied with the Light Side. Snoke doesn't seem particularly interested in actually teaching him anything, and might not even be an actual Force user.
  • Jossed.

The twist regarding Kylo Ren was added in to fill in for the other twist's impact

.Let's think about it: Han Solo's death, while shocking, was meant to happen earlier on (as in Return of the Jedi earlier) with several interviews having proof of people, including Harrison Ford. Because of this (and a leak regarding the meeting between Kylo and Han), the writers knew that people would be savvy enough to see the twist coming and be unsurprised, so they decided to add in an extra twist to make sure that wouldn't be the case.

Leia was so stressed with Kylo's turning to the dark side she took on a nasty smoking habit.

Some sort of Star Wars Scifi smoking habit that damaged her voice.

"You wanna buy some death sticks?"

• Expanding on this, the Trauma Conga Line Leia endured between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens drove her into a myraid of bad habits that negatively affected her health, in a mirror of Carrie Fisher's own ''interesting'' life.
• Jossed.

Snoke was created by Darth Plagueis in the same way as Anakin.

If Plagueis figured out a way to create life with just the Force, there's no reason why he'd stop at creating only one person. Snoke looks deformed because he's one of Plagueis' earlier, imperfect attempts at creating life.

• Alternatively, Snoke is the result of the same technique used by another in a more ancient time on a long since dead species, his 'deformity' just the result of his extreme age and scarring.
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

R2 reactivating wasn't a coincidence

Luke could've left it at the Rebel base, equipped with sensitive technology that can detect ambient Force potential. The moment a strong enough force sensitive arrives, R2-D2 was planned to activate, give part of the map, and they'd go on a Secret Testof Character to find the missing price from the beginning. Only then would he train them.

• Jossed. Luke wanted the Jedi to end.

Finn and Poe will end up together

Because why wouldn't they? They have at least as much chemistry as Finn and Rey, and haven't been confirmed as straight. When the movie forgoes the white male lead for a trio like this, it's honestly a realistic expectation.

• Jossed.

Really stretching the whole Obi-Wan and Rey connection

I just rewatched the fight between General Grievous and Obi-Wan Kenobi in Revenge of the Sith, and the moment Obi-Wan picks up the Electric Staff, he fights a bit like Rey... Granted this is reaally stretching the Kenobi descent theory, but it could possibly be used as a connection of sorts and/or expand on it, if anyone wants to take this WMG for grabs...

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

If Obi-Wan might be Rey's grandfather, then Duchess Satine was the grandmother.

Really, there's no one else in the galaxy that Obi-Wan could have loved much as Satine. Maybe they had an illegitimate son at some point in the Clone Wars, but was never fully disclosed. And when you consider the time in the past when they were engaged in some little tryst, this might not be too far off.

• Except she died years before the end of the Clone Wars. Meaning, his son/daughter would be older than Luke. Meaning, we'd probably be talking about Obi-Wan being Rey's great-grandfather, not just grandfather. Meaning four generations removed from Rey, not just three.
• Satine had a "nephew" with no known parents, could've been Obi-Wan's illegitimate son.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Starkiller Base is built out of none other than what used to be planet Endor.

When Poe shows a holographic representation of the Death Star and Starkiller Base sizes, the Death Star was dwarfed by Starkiller Base. Now, Death Star II is slightly bigger than the first one but is still considerably smaller than a planet, and in Return of the Jedi we saw that planet Endor still dwarfed it in size, so Endor most likely has about the same size as Starkiller Base. Maybe the First Order deliberately construct the weapon on the planet that was the location of the fall of the Empire to build the ultimate weapon that will finish what the Death Stars failed to do. They then cleanse the whole planet, eradicating the Ewoks who played their part in helping the Rebellion destroy the Death Star II, turning the forest planet into am ice world devoid of any life. This is supported by the fact that while there isn't any noteworthy scenery on the planet, there are still forests with tall trees that may very well used to be Ewoks villages. It would also explain why Kylo Ren decided to stay on the planet in the climax as opposed to his starship. It was where Luke Skywalker held a funeral for Vader, and Kylo Ren probably got Vader's mask from there, too. He thought staying on the planet would amplify his 'dark side connection' with Vader, making him more powerful.

• That's intriguing. Endor was a moon, but they obviously moved it away from its primary. There'd be plenty of parts to salvage floating in orbit from Death Star II. Yeah, I could see that.
• Jossed. It was built from Ilum.

If Rey is Luke's daughter, she's illegitimate.

If Rey is Luke's child, you'd think he'd want to interfere...unless he didn't know. While early in her pregnancy, Rey's mother left him for whatever reason. Maybe she was afraid the kid was going to be a target of the First Order, or maybe it was for selfish reasons. Either way, she left without Luke marrying her or telling him he was going to be a father. By the time Luke found out about this, he didn't know where she was and even if he did wouldn't know how to deal with it. This'd serve as a larger twist to a Captain Obvious Reveal: the mystery of Rey's mother and why she left.

• We honestly don't know yet if Luke opted to abide by the old Jedi Order's prohibition on marriage or not. Remember that even the EU writers were taken by surprise when Lucas sprang the whole Jedi-cannot-have-long-term-relationships thing on them. So a lot of EU stuff, including Luke's marriage to Mara Jade, was based on the assumption that Jedi could marry and that there were whole Jedi families. Something Lucas Jossed as of The Phantom Menace. Thus, it's quite possible that if Luke observed Jedi tradition, he did not marry, and if Rey is his daughter she is illegitimate.
  • Even ignoring that, it could just be possible Luke wasn't ready to get married yet.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Episode VIII will open with the Knights of Ren tracking down Luke and Rey

Not only would it make an awesome Action Prologue, it would give us our first real look at Kylo Ren's old buddies from the Jedi Academy, and it would make one hell of a Development Gag for Lucas' widely distributed rough draft of Star Wars from 1974. In that draft, the movie was supposed to have opened with the Starkillers (later "Skywalkers") in hiding from their enemies on the secluded fourth moon of Utapau, with the Old Master Kane Starkiller training his young sons Deak and Annikin [sic] in the ways of the Jedi Bendu. In the first scene, a lone Sith Knight tracks the Starkillers down and manages to kill young Deak before being killed by Kane, and Kane and Annikin then commandeer the Sith's spaceship and decide to use it to return to their home planet of Aquilae and join the rebellion against the Empire. Considering where Rey and Luke end up at the end of The Force Awakens, it wouldn't be that hard to translate that scene to Episode VIII: a low-level Knight of Ren tracks them down in their hiding place on the island planet and interrupts Rey's training, Luke busts into action and saves Rey, and Luke takes the attack as a sign that it's finally time to leave their hiding place and rejoin the Resistance.

• Jossed. It opens with the Resistance evacuating their base.

Luke didn't leave his daughter, Rey, on Jakku - her mother did. And it was a complete accident (sort of).

Most people just assume that it was Luke, if he IS Rey's father, who left her on Jakku. However, Maz says to Rey "Whomever you're waiting for on Jakku, they're not coming back." Meaning, the person who left her there isn't coming back for her. Why? Because the person who left Rey there and was going to come back for her is dead. So they literally can't come back for her. And, unless they pull another "birth from The Force" thing ala Anakin (which I'll lay money they won't), then Rey didn't just have a father, but a mother too.

How I think it went down: Snoke/Kylo Ren began targeting little Rey (who was 4-5 when she eventually got left on Jakku). So Luke, reluctantly, let his wife/girlfriend/lover and their child flee to go into hiding, while he felt obligated to stay behind to try and help the Resistance/try and bring Ben/Kylo back to the light. However, things somehow got screwed up, and Rey's mother had to leave Rey on Jakku in some kind of desperate act, but with every intention of coming back for her. Except, she couldn't because she got captured/killed. And she never had any time to tell Luke where she'd hidden their daughter before she was. So Luke, no matter how long he might have looked for her, finally just assumed his child was killed along with her mother. It was only 14-15 years later, when Rey fully awakened to the Force, (at Maz's castle, as well as he encounters with Kylo Ren on Starkiller Base), that he realized he was mistaken, and that his child actually wasn't killed after all. Which is why he looks at her the way he does when she arrives. He's known that she was alive at least a day or two before she actually arrived, via the Force. So there's no surprise on his face when she arrives. Because he's has a day to two to get over the shock and joy of knowing she's alive. And now all that's left is the sadness - sadness of knowing he missed 14-15 years of his daughter's growing up. (And that she may not fully get who he is to her, being she was only 5 years old at most the last time she saw him).

• The "coincidence" of someone with ties to Leia being on Jakku and having the last piece of the map to Luke Skywalker combined with R2 reactivating and revealing the rest of the map when Rey arrived at the Resistence base would seem indicate otherwise. It only really fits if Luke was already planning on going to the planet of the first Jedi temple when the plan to put Rey on Jakku was arrived at.
  • Why does it fit if it's only Luke who leaves her there because of Lor San Tekka (Max Von Sydow's character who had the map)? We have no idea how he got that map to Luke - if it was given to him by someone other than Luke himself or not. And R2 reacting to Rey - which we are just assuming at this point - doesn't necessarily mean Luke placed her on Jakku either. Because it assumes that Luke knew that sooner or later Rey would leave Jakku and just happen to find Leia who had R2 for that to happen - without any knowledge or idea to do so. Because, if you look closely at the flashback, Rey was not left with Lor San Tekka - she was left with Unkar Plutt (it's his hand you see and who's voice you hear in the brief flashback). You know, the guy Rey was scavenging for and getting food rations from. Why would Luke knowing leave his daughter (assuming she's his) with him to hide her there for an indefinite amount of time? The novelization, which yes is canon, hints that Rey getting left on Jakku was a quick decision, not something that was planned out beforehand, or to be for a long period of time (i.e. years): "Then behind her, another voice. THAT voice. 'Stay here. I'll come back for you...I'll come back, sweetheart. I promise.'" And then, of course, Maz telling her that "whomever you're waiting for on Jakku, they're never coming back." Meaning, the person who left her there, who tells Rey they'll come back for her - isn't coming back. Then, Maz goes on to say the belonging Rey wants isn't behind her, but ahead, to which Rey answers "Luke." The belonging Rey wants is her family. And if Luke's ahead, by deduction, the one who left her behind wasn't Luke.

  • Word of God has it R2D2's reactivation had nothing to do with Rey.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Rey was using the Dark Side during the events of Episode 7

The Dark Side has always been the quicker and more instinctual route to power, and Rey's progress has been far too fast, and based on no training in balance and moderation and self-control whatsoever. Her final defeat of Kylo Ren seemed also to have been fueled by emotions - anger and hatred at what has been done to Han and to Finn.

There's conveniently no one around to observe her, but you can pretty much imagine Palpatine cackling and calling on her to strike Kylo down in that last fight - and she was only prevented from doing so by chance. I suspect that Luke is going to disappoint her a great deal by telling her to do a lot of unlearning in the sequel...

Finn lied about being in sanitation.

Finn was trained as a fighting soldier, hunting the Resistance. He's going to be coy about that when he meets them. "I was in a death squ... I mean sanitation.' It's twenty years of training that has given him the systems knowledge to get the heroes around Starkiller Base. The 'sanitation' line is also a funny shorthand for 'we are getting in through the nasty bits of the base'.

• I doubt it - HOWEVER it would be an interesting thing to reveal because it would throw some complication as to why he blanched at the prospect of shooting innocents at the beginning.
• Jossed.

Rey is a new character, not related to anyone.

Because the movies are called "Star Wars", not "Adventures of Just the Skywalkers", and not everything has to be about them.

• Except Kathleen Kennedy, the now-head of Lucasfilms, has said the core films "focus on the Skywalker family saga" and always will. [3] The spin-off Anthology films (like the upcoming Rouge One) will focus on other things and people, but the main episodic films will always be about the Skywalker family. So, they may not officially be called "Adventures of Just the Skywalkers" . . . but that's what they are, at their core, and will remain so. (Plus, George Lucas' original vision for the saga, or at least for Episodes 1-9, was always about one family. He even talked to Mark Hamill back in the early 1980s about coming back to play older Luke around 2000-2011 or so and passing things on to the "next generation." [4] [5] ) I'm not saying this 100% confirms Rey IS a Skywalker . . . but as the main protagonist, it's probably more likely to assume she's related in some way than not. And before anyone makes the Kylo Ren argument - he'd be the Skywalker (by blood) antagonist of the series, just like Vader was to Luke in the OT, not the protagonist. Abrams has already said his story is the evolution of a villain, not a hero. [6]
• Seconding the above point. Hell, even George Lucas' post-release interview with Charlie Rose strongly hinted that it's not really a Star Wars movie if a Skywalker protagonist isn't front-and-center, and that he always saw the story as being about the trials and tribulations of the Skywalker clan.
  "It’s all about generations and it’s about, you know, the issues of fathers and sons and grandfathers; it’s a family soap opera. I mean, ultimately. We call it a space opera, but people don’t realize it’s actually a soap opera. And it’s all about family problems—it’s not about spaceships."
• The notion of the "protagonist" is a loose one in Star Wars. The prequels focus on Anakin, whose fall to the Dark Side and eventual death is a case of Doomed by Canon. Hence the many fan complaints about him being a whiny jerk. The entire prequel trilogy was about him trying to become a hero and becoming a villain instead. We are spared the sight of Kylo Ren as a child or a teenager, but he is still a member of the Skywalker line, struggling with the Light and Dark much like his grandfather did.
  • True, but . . . I think any similarities the filmmakers/Disney will make to the prequels are going to be slim-to-nonexistent. This new trilogy seems more interested in pulling structure and ideas from the OT (hence people complaining that the plot structure of TFA is very similar to A New Hope). Meaning, I don't think they're only going to be doing a "Skywalker Falls To The Dark Side" as the core-main Skywalker storyline again, like the prequels did.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Rey isn't Luke's or Leia's daughter: she's Kylo's second cousin.

Shmi Skywalker, like Padme, had twins who were separated at birth. Anakin's sibling was sold off-planet by the slave-dealer who owned Shmi, who never told Anakin about it because life on Tatooine was sad enough already. This lost Skywalker twin, like Leia, never mastered any Force-powers, but did possess enough sensitivity to pass the bloodline's Force-affinity on to Rey.

• If this theory turns out to be true, it would make the Star Wars parody on Johnny Bravo a bit Hilarious in Hindsight.
  "No, Biff Proton! I didn't kill your second cousin! I AM YOUR SECOND COUSIN!"
  "NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!"
• Rey looks way too much like Padme not to be related to her. She's either Padme's grand-niece (I think one of the illustrated guides mentioned that Padme's sister greets them at the lake house in Ep. II) or possibly the granddaughter of one of Padme's body-doubles, most likely the one played by Keira Knightley because that's who I kept mistaking her for.
  • She was cast color-blind, which means she could have been black, asian, or anything. They didn't specifically seek out white, brunette leads. So the resemblance is not intentional.
    • All that means is that Rey is not the daughter of Han and Leia since both are white. But that does not mean that Rey's resemblance isn't intentional, especially if one of the parents is an unknown new character. Not to mention that doesn't exclude other facial features that the crew was looking for, such as the structures of the face. The fact remains Rey's face uncannily resembles that of Padme and Shimi.
  • What about Rey's force sensitivity? Padme wasn't force sensitive, nor was anyone in her family, nor was any of the body-doubles (that we know of). Meaning her father would have had to have been. Meaning, who was he?
    • Maybe Anakin had some secret hanky-panky with the Keira Knightley body-double? That would explain both Rey's resemblance to her and her Force powers.
    • Anakin could have only been Rey's grandfather though, not her father. Especially because he died a little over 10 years before Rey was born. Heck, that goes for the handmaiden too. IF Anakin cheated on Padme with the Keira Knightly body-double, (which, given how Anakin was shown to feel about Padme is doubtful, but okay), and had a child with her, then that child would have to have been Rey's either mother or father, not either of them. Because even if the body-double lived after the fall of the Empire, she would have been around 50 or 60 years old when Rey was born.
    • You know Force-sensitivity isn't only passed down through parents, right? Some Force-sensitive parents have non-Force sensitive children, and vice versa.
  • Kylo is Rey's father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roommate!
• First person: (blushing) I wasn't thinking of Anakin or Obi-Wan having affairs at all, just Rey being related Padme — or someone who looked like her — and having incredible Force powers by chance!
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Kylo Ren has put Vader on a pedestal, and doesn't realize he's already more powerful.

I base this on one thing: Vader could stop a blaster bolt from hurting him, but Kylo Ren, without even using much effort, froze one in mid-air, without causing it to lose any kinetic energy when it was released.

• There is a slight possibility that he does somewhat realize, but looks at it from another perspective — Darth Vader except for a short bit at the very beginning was a physical wreck barely clinging on to life with the help of extensive cybernetics and possibly the Dark Side of the Force, and was still a powerful Force-user and enforcer for the Empire, and Kylo Ren almost certainly knows that given his familiar relations and training under Luke. He might simply not think that he would yet be capable of doing as much if hampered as much as Vader was, and hence be less powerful despite technically being more powerful.
• Psychologically, stopping an incoming blaster bolt may be easier for Kylo than Vader as well. Kylo doesn't loathe himself as much as Vader did, so may find it easier to use the Force for self-protection than his grandfather, who subconsciously believed he deserved to be hurt.

Kylo Ren will eventually become a Death Seeker.

Ties into the above theory. If he ever figures out that he is stronger than Vader, he'll have nothing left to strive for.

• Jossed.

Kylo Ren already knew, and resented, Poe Dameron

While Kylo might have recognized Poe from intelligence reports about the Resistance, it's also possible that he knew, or knew of, him through his family. Poe's parents served in the Rebel Alliance under Han and Leia, and Luke also knew them. Poe has devoted his life to the Resistance, which means he works for Leia. He is also an Ace Pilot, like Han and Luke. Kylo is neither of those things. This might have heightened his sadistic pleasure at having Poe in his power, since Poe is basically the goodie-two-shoes sort of son that Leia and Han would have wanted him to be.

Luke inadvertently incorporated Sith doctrines into his Jedi teachings.

Some people have noted that, prior to this film, none of the canon films made any reference to the "Light Side" of the force (minus a somewhat ambiguous reference from Luke to the "good side"), although it was used in the Legends continuity. The original intention, from a meta perspective, was to have "The Force" which had a "Dark Side" which was like a cancer on the otherwise pure Force.

Then I realized: there's no way to test either view, even in-Universe. How can you tell if the "not-Dark Side" parts of the Force are a "Light Side," or simply the natural state of the Force? You can't.

So, this makes me suspect that the existence of the Light Side was actually a doctrinal difference between the Jedi and Sith. The Sith tried to use a Balance Between Good and Evil understanding of the Force to justify their own existence, while the Jedi insisted that true "balance" was an absence of the Dark Side.

After Yoda's death there were no other Jedi to explain the Jedi perspective to Luke, and the Empire destroyed most of the Jedi archives. So, for some of his teachings, Luke had to raid Sith archives to try to reverse-engineer the Jedi teachings, and the presence of a "Light Side" was an error on his part.

• Jossed.

Contrary to the above, Luke deliberately incorporated Sith doctrines into his teachings.

In the original trilogy, Yoda and Obi-Wan are wrong, repeatedly. Wrong not to tell Luke the truth about his parentage, wrong to tell Luke not to go to Cloud City, and wrong to tell Luke that Vader was irredeemable. Palpatine was evil, but the idea that emotions turn you evil and that the solution is to "bury your feelings deep down" is what brought about the fall of Anakin and the destruction of the Jedi in the first place. In his fight with Vader, it is Luke's anger and his fear, for his sister, his friends, and the cause, that gives him the strength to triumph. If that is the Dark Side, then we must conclude that Dark Is Not Evil. Maybe it is prone to being used for evil, but it is not evil inherently. At the end, Vader kills Palpatine, as is the Sith way: the apprentice kills the master, thereby becoming the new master. And then Vader dies in Luke's arms. Luke, at the end of Return is the last of the Jedi and the last of the Sith.

So, in teaching a new generation, Luke tried to teach balance between the serenity of the Jedi and the passion of the Sith. The problem is that Luke learned to balance the two sides of the Force through painful experience. Kylo and the other Knights of Ren failed to understand what Luke was trying to teach them. Luke said that the dark side is not inherently evil and that drawing on your emotions, including fear and anger, will not automatically make you evil. Kylo and co. heard 'dark side all the way!'

Rey, on the other hand, did understand. She clearly drew on her fear for Finn and herself, and her rage of the murder of Han, for strength to fight and beat Kylo. That does not make her evil, and it does not mean that she was about to fall to the dark side or that she will fall. It means that she is the worthy successor to Luke Skywalker.

• Jossed.

Maz got the lightsaber from Lando Calrissian.

Some years after the fall of the Empire and the end of the Civil War, Lando decides to return to Bespin (no longer in the hands of the Empire), the place where he became briefly very successful, settled and happy. Once successfully reclaiming the mining operation in Cloud City, he and his company to expand the operation, and begins excavating/exploring the planet. Whilst doing this the lightsaber Luke lost in his duel with Vader is discovered and given to Lando, who believes that it should be returned to Luke. By this point, however, Luke has disappeared. He also can't track down his sister Leia, as she has established a secret Resistance base whose location Lando doesn't know. Han and Chewie are off travelling the galaxy on smuggling missions with no fixed abode, so Lando can't find him either. Unable to contact any of the Skywalker family, Lando has an idea of passing on the lightsaber to someone who is both a trusted ally and also someone who he knows is certain to bump into either Luke, Han, Leia, or Chewie at some point in the future - Maz Kanata. He gives the lightsaber to Maz and this series of events, the "story for another time" that Maz mentioned, will be revealed in Episode VIII and will lead to Lando's reintroduction to the saga.

• Jossed. Lando doesn't appear until Episode IX and how Maz found the lightsaber is never revealed.

Kylo Ren's weapon isn't a true lightsaber.

It's a three-muzzle blaster. The "blades" are blaster discharges that Kylo holds in place with his Force ability, much the same way that he held that one blaster round during the attack on Lor San Tekka. Kylo lacks the training and Jedi understanding that would have allowed him to build a true lightsaber, so he cobbled together something that at least resembled one.

• Unlikely, if this were true then anytime he put the "lightsaber" away then the discharges would be released and fly out rather then the blades going back into the hilt which it does like a regular lightsaber.
• Jossed.

Kylo Ren had his body artificially matured/lengthened

What Ethan Hawke did to his legs in Gattaca Kylo did to his whole body because ...? Maybe he thought Vader was naturally seven feet tall, maybe he wanted to mature faster to get more power, or perhaps he just wanted to make sure his mother and grandmother's short genes wouldn't leave him smaller than his father.

• I sketched this out and he becomes a male Asajj Ventress with hair...
• Jossed.

Rey's mother is the character Felicity Jones will be playing in Star Wars: Rogue One.

This is a theory that's gained some traction in some places, so I thought I'd put it here. For a long, detailed explanation of the theory, just go here.

• Jossed. Jones's character in Rogue One, Jyn Erso, dies at the end of that film, which takes place well before Rey could be conceived.

Finn will find out he's related to Mace Windu...

by meeting Windu's former parental figure (probably a foster mom or just a friend of the family that's a longer-lived species) before the Jedi took him to be trained. While this figure can recognize the good Mace did while he was alive, she still dealt with the pain of a broken family, made worse when Finn was taken by the First Order years later. The fact that the so-called "good" Jedi did the same thing to children that the First Order did will cause him to doubt whether he made the right choice by helping Rey find Luke Skywalker.

• And here I figured he might just be descended from a sibling or cousin of Mace's who wasn't bound by the Jedi Order's vow of chastity.
  • The Jedi didn't have a vow of chastity, they didn't allow long-term relationships. Jedi could whore it up all over the galaxy if they wanted to, but they weren't allowed to settle down with anyone.
• Jossed.

In Episode 8 Rey will fall to the Dark Side, and Luke, not Kylo will die by her hand

I'm basing this on the fact that Rey seems far more unstable than Kylo is. She would've cut him down without a second thought if not for the planet falling apart. She shows extreme fear and rage throughout the movie, while all Kylo displays is anger and possibly resentment. Kylo is trying to suppress the good in himself, while Rey is lost, confused, scared and enraged. Rey will be trained by the time she takes on Kylo again, and even though he will have full Sith training by this point, his heart will not be truly dark. Rey meanwhile will engage him full-throttle with everything she has. She will beat him and have him at her mercy again. Before she can cut him down Luke will intervene, as he has followed her rightfully not fully trusting her judgement, and Kylo will take this time to run. Rey is enraged at Luke for not letting her kill Kylo. Luke tries to talk Rey down, but to no avail. Rey will brutally cut down the much older Luke after a intense duel. At that point Rey will have fully Jumped Off The Slippery Slope into the Dark side. This of course leads directly too...

• Jossed. Rey stays on the Light Side and Luke dies after projecting his image with the Force.

Kylo will abandon his new name, becoming Ben Solo again and redeeming himself

Luke dying will be the slap in the face Ben needs, as he has now witnessed true evil, and he does not like it. From then on, he will do his best to atone for his previous horrifying actions.

• Semi-confirmed. He does so after Leia dies.

The gangs that ambushed Han Solo's freighter will reappear in the sequel, and will play a similar role to Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi.

Bala-Tik, the leader of one of the two gangs that boarded Solo's ship survived the Rathars incident on board, and we don't really see that Tasu Leech, the leader of Kanjiklub, died too. As they have a personal score to settle with Solo, they will hire bounty hunters to pursue the Millennium Falcon across the galaxy and eventually find out that it ended up being inherited by Rey and Chewie after Han's death. Of course, they still try to demand both of them to repay the debts that Han owed them anyway, and Rey will have to deal with them somehow, maybe even with Luke's help, considering that he had a personal experience dealing with gangsters who has ties with his late friend before. The gangs themselves will be the Disc-One Final Boss in the next film not unlike Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi.

• Jossed. They never show up again.

Finn is an illegitimate son of Lando Calrissian.

And one whom he didn't even know about— would YOU put it past Lando to sleep with some random lady and ditch her, without ever learning she was pregnant? She proceeded raise Finn on her own for maybe a year or two before the First Order took him away. Bonus points if, when confronted with the realization, Lando exclaims, "It's not my fault!".

• Alternatively, Lando knew the woman was pregnant, but was forced to leave her and their unborn child for some reason (such as being hunted by Imperial remnants or bounty hunters). And when confronted with realization, Lando will instead exclaim, "I had no choice!"
• Jossed.

Finn is Lando Calrissian's wholly legitimate son.

Han and Leia and Luke aren't the only ones in mourning over losing someone they love to the bad guys; the First Order kidnapped Lando's son and raised him to fight against his parents because... well, the First Order is really sadistic in that way.

• Jossed. They meet and don't seem to have any history with each other.

Kylo Ren was conceived during the celebrations on Endor after the second Death Star blew up.

According to the wiki he was born 0-1 years after the Battle of Endor, and what better way to celebrate surviving the war than getting busy? Look at the Baby Boom in the real world.

• Confirmed.

The Falcon was owned by Kamen Rider Decade.

Look at the gun Han gives Rey, that he got from the Falcon. It's borderline IDENTICAL to the Ride Booker!

• Jossed.

More First Order Stormtroopers will defect

The reasoning being they're tired of being name-less, numbered Cannon fodder. However, it will only be a small number, maybe 10-20 troopers. Still, that will be more than enough for Finn to found his own Badass Crew.

• Confirmed with Janna.

Rey is Obi-Wan's granddaughter

• She's more similar in terms of personality to Obi-Wan than to Luke. Skywalkers are brash, impatient, and emotional—we see these traits with Luke, with Anakin, and with Kylo Ren. Rey displays none of those qualities. She is, however, cool-headed, patient, and solitary, traits Obi-Wan had.
• In the real world, accents are learned, but in Star Wars, they're inheirited. Obi-Wan and Rey both have British accents, and this isn't a case of her actress being British— John Boyega, Finn's actor, is also British, but he had to use an American accent. Daisy Ridley was permitted to keep her natural accent.
• Her fighting style is similar to Obi-Wan's, very defensive with lots of circular motions.
• She has a knack for languages, naturally understanding Chewbacca and BB-8, much like Obi-Wan.
• Some of the things she does call back to things Obi-Wan did. She sneaks around an enemy base undetected, like Obi-Wan did in A New Hope, and her fight with Kylo Ren includes a throwback to this◊ scene from Revenge of the Sith.
• She's a natural at using the Jedi Mind Trick, which is practically Obi-Wan's signature skill in A New Hope.
• Obi-Wan has canonically been in love before, with Satine Kryze, and stated he would have left the Jedi Order if she'd asked him to, meaning he's not one-hundred percent dedicated to the celibacy rule. In the years following Order 66, he may very well have fathered a child out of grief.
  • Additionally, narratively speaking, having the granddaughter of Obi-Wan fighting the grandson of Darth Vader has more of the "symmetry"/"poetic repetition" that Star Wars values than having two cousins fighting each other.
  • Yeah, I just don’t buy the arguments I see for this theory (here and in other places):
  • Rey may not exhibit some of the traits of Skywalker men. (Including the famous whining gene). But the Skywalker women, OTOH? Shmi, Leia - heck even Padme (who is a Skywalker by marriage)? I’d say Rey acts a lot like them very much.
  • Where has it ever been noted - in canon - that accents are genetic in Star Wars? They’re not. [7] Characters who have American accents are usually noted to have come from the Outer Rim territories (like Luke and Anakin). People who speak with British accents are usually people based/raised close to Coruscant and other Galactic Core Worlds. Max Von Sydow’s character of Lor San Tekka has the same type of accent Rey does. Anyway, Rey could have very well picked up her accent from her mother (if you want to go with genetics, though I think it was just from being around her), as well as other humans like Tekka who live on Jakku. (Which is not in the Outer Rim, but the Western Reaches, closer to the Galatic Core and other Core Worlds. [8])
  • Obi-Wan trained as a Jedi since he was old enough to be, meaning he was probably 3-4 years old. He had years to develop a fighting style. Rey’s first time picking up a lightsaber was in the woods on Starkiller Base, and she was fighting for her life against someone who clearly had more training in using the force. She was trying to stay alive and protect Finn - so of course she fought with more defense than offense.
    • Han also can understand Chewie. And Anakin could understand R2. A knack for understanding languages isn’t limited to Obi-Wan in the SWU.
  • Jedi Mind Trick: it isn’t something Obi-Wan alone had a knack for. It was also something Luke clearly became quite adept at doing in Return of the Jedi. The Force Awakens wasn’t only mirroring things from A New Hope. There were a LOT of parallels taken from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as well - especially noticeable in the three specific planet locations the film takes place on.
  • One of my main problems with this theory: not only does it rest on assuming that Obi-Wan broke with his Jedi vows after Order 66, but then all of this would require a massive Infodump in Episode 8; including having to introduce 3 new characters that the audience would, theoretically never meet or see. A wife/lover for Obi-Wan, then a son or daughter for him, and then a wife/husband for that son/daughter. When you have to introduce that many characters just to introduce a plot twist that actually doesn’t really enhance the plot in any way besides becoming a cool easter egg, it just makes it incredibly convoluted IMO. Rey could never be Obi-Wan’s daughter or anything directly connected to him 1 to 1 (because he died roughly 19 years before Rey was born). So she’d have to be 3 generations removed from him at least. And, out of all of those people you need to get to Rey, Obi-Wan is the only one any general viewers would actually care about. (Whereas with, say Kylo Ren, he's not just Anakin's grandson, but Leia and Han's son. Two characters who carry over from the previous films - the OT - right before TFA, and who people can already know and care about. So Rey being Luke's daughter would make her not just Anakin's granddaughter, but have a parent we would already know and care about from the OT, just like Kylo Ren. )
    • With regards to the meta issue of having to introduce 3 new characters, I disagree. A New Hope told us Luke was the son of Anakin, who wasn't revealed as a character until the next movie — and no mention was made of his mother in the entire original trilogy. I think it would be easy enough to reveal that Rey was descended from Obi-Wan without having to actually flesh out any characters. "Your father was Jimbo Kenobi, and his father was Obi-Wan Kenobi." Done.
  • All the above counter-arguments seem sound enough. Still, there's one question left that could determine whether or not Rey is really related to Obi-Wan: Why did she hear Obi-Wan's voice calling out to her in her vision when she picked up the lightsaber? And it's not just 'Ben' Kenobi's voice (calling out 'Rey'), there's also Obi-Wan's younger voice ('These are your first steps'). Of course, all of this could be just a coincidence, but I don't think they would put Obi-Wan's voices, both young and old, in her vision if they won't serve a purpose later.
  • In A New Hope Obi-Wan tells Luke that he's taken his first steps as they reach Alderaan: "You’ve taken your first steps into a larger world." As you point out, what does Obi-Wan say to Rey in the vision? "Rey. These are your first steps." It's an echo-callback to what Obi-Wan said to Luke (her father?) while on his journey. Plus, Yoda's voice also calls to Rey and says something to her in that vision too per Word of God (though I personally still haven't been able to make out what he says). Yet, no one is arguing Rey is Yoda's granddaughter because of this, are they?
  • Okay, that's true. But then again, why do we hear "These are your first steps" in Obi-Wan's younger voice, when it was 'Old Ben' Kenobi who said it to Luke? Maybe they put it in for a nice cameo from Ewan McGregor and for continuity's sake, this I can understand. And the point about nobody thinks she's descended from Yoda is because it's so unlikely. Yoda had been the grand master of the Old Jedi Order for hundreds of years (he's almost as old as Maz Kanata) and we all know from the prequels how strict to the Jedi code he was. And he retired to Dagobah immediately after Order 66 and stayed there until Luke come, so there's no way he could've gone anywhere to 'make' any descendant. Unless he was secretly so powerful in the Force, he created a new Chosen One like Anakin by himself, and was the real person that the famous quote "There Is Another" he spoke to Obi-Wan's ghost really referred to, and Obi-Wan mistakenly assumed it was Leia because she's Luke's sister. This new 'Chosen One' then ended up not doing anything at all because it turned out that Luke could take care of everything by himself, and promptly 'forgot' how to use the Force and lead a normal life, eventually creating a descendant that turns out to be Rey in the end. Okay, this theory is so crazy...
  • I do belive using Ewan McGregor's voice was meant to just be a nice cameo. Also? Let's face it, Alec Guinness is dead. If they want to show Obi-Wan's force ghost talking to Luke at any point in the next two films, they're going to have to use Ewan McGregor. Better start establishing him now, and what better way than with a callback-echo line, linking him and Alec Guinness' "Old Ben." (And we fans can just say he learned the "youthful force-ghost" look from Anakin.)
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Kylo Ren's end

Spoilers for other characters' endings:

• "Snape" ending: He was a double-agent the whole time and killing his father was a way to gain Snoke's trust. In the end he will die killing (or at least betraying) Snoke and go to the Light Side just like Grandpa Vader
• "Traditional" ending: Same as Vader's
  • I haven't actually seen the movie so this is just a guess: Kylo's goal is to recreate Vader's life exactly: Train as a Jedi, fall to the dark side, work for the Big Bad, betray him and his empire, get forgiven, go to the light side and die. This goes into the Zuko ending below: he will realize what a freaking stupid idea trying to be someone he's not is and will make up for it... unless Snoke brainwashes/kills/possesses him first.
• "Sasuke" ending:
  • Version 1: Same as "Snape" ending. Kylo wants to kill Snoke, who he blames for all the death and destruction around him and will do anything to get stronger and closer to do so. Derailed when someone else kills Snoke or he kills Snoke and discovers a bigger bad.
  • Version 2: Wants to be the Big Bad himself and wreck the good guys for their perceived failings. Derailed when all the good guys die (or appear to).
  • Version 3: Kylo wants to become the Big Bad and unite the galaxy with hatred of him. For some reason he decides to do this after the galaxy has already united to fight a Bigger (Biggest?) Bad. Derailed when the good guys smack some sense into him.
• "Lelouch" Ending: He appears to be irredeemable and goes over to the Dark Side permanently...but it was all just a ploy to make himself the symbol of hatred for the galaxy and the heroes only realize that after he is killed.
• "Char Aznable" Ending: He appears to pull a Heel–Face Turn due to guilt over Han's death or him being a mole being a confirmed theory, much like Char in Zeta Gundam and even becomes a sort of mentor figure for Rey, as Char did with Kamille. Episode VIII ends with the final battle against Snoke, but something bad happens that pushes him over the edge permanently and this sets him up as the Big Bad for Episode IX.
• "Gollum" ending: He goes into the Dark Side permanently and irredeemably. He kills Snoke as per Sith tradition and is then killed himself either in a final duel or by accident, though probably not as anticlimactically as book!Gollum
• "Book Jack Torrance" ending: He uses the last of his humanity/sanity to let the good guys escape and is then overcome by the Dark Side/Snoke/madness and is killed through his own actions, which according to the book is trying stop an unstoppable explosion with his bare hands
• "Arthas" ending: He dosen't get redeemed, but he regains his sanity and humanity in the last minute and everyone close to him forgives him.
• ''Legends-counterpart (Darth Caedus) Ending: He dosen't get redeemed in life, but the Force allows him to work torwards redemption in the afterlife as a Force Ghost. This may tie into the Char, Arthas, and Lelouch endings, as well as the Gollum ending depending on how much of an Alas, Poor Villain moment his death is in that condition.
• "Zuko" ending: He realizes that getting what he thought he wanted wasn't actually worth it, and performs a Heel–Face Turn near the end of the eighth/beginning of the ninth movie out of guilt. The heroes are slow to trust him, and most are skeptical, but he slowly earns their trust by working for redemption, and in the end becomes an ally (for a full-blown parallel, he takes on leadership of the remnants of the First Order and turns them into a force for good).
• "Saren" Ending: Kylo is redeemed and dies in Episode VIII or halfway through IX through suicide out of guilt, but Snoke possesses Kylo Ren as he dies and becomes the final enemy.
• "Gilthunder" Ending, AKA Snape Extended Edition: Actually the middle: Kylo's been acting heinous because Snoke is always watching. Maybe he got in over his head, maybe he has a plan, but he can't afford to show any weakness or Snoke will smoke him. Once Snoke is defeated he can begin to atone.
• All Jossed.

The new Clone Army will play a role in the sequels

General Hux mentions that the Clone Army is still an option in supplying their military might in addition to conditioned-from-birth conscripts. Presumably, after Starkiller Base's destruction, the First Order military was dealt a crippling blow, and is in dire need for additional soldiers. And so they will turn their attention to the Clone Army. Meanwhile, the New Republic, now realizing the threat of the First Order, would also be looking to create an army of their own to replace what was lost in the Hosnian System during Starkiller's attack. This will lead to the Battle of Kamino where both sides compete for control over the cloning facilities on the planet. If we also go by one of the above WMGs that Leia will be the new Chancellor of the New Republic, then she would be the one to approve the creation of the New Clone Army, and this new Clone Army will fight alongside the Resistance against the First Order. Of course, if this happens in the next movie, there's a very high chance that it would be 'The Empire Strikes Back' of the new trilogy, and would include a dark twist near the end when it turns out that this is exactly what Snoke wants, and he will pull an 'Order 66' and command the New Clone Army to turn on the Resistance and the New Republic itself. History Repeats itself once again.

• Jossed. It's never brought up again.

The Galaxy was protected from Snoke by The Emperor.

Snoke is clearly a powerful Dark Side user, but doesn't seem to be a Sith. Although Snoke has a calm demeanor, there is clearly a lot of Rage in him, and the First Order under his guidance has a much stronger bent towards destruction than the Empire did. Perhaps Snoke is the leader of a Dark Side religion that emphasizes rage and destruction, as opposed to the Sith ideals of Hatred, Fear, and domination/oppression. He and his followers existed in Uncharted Space but never attacked the Republic because there were too many Jedi. When the Jedi fell he tried to move in to destroy but was checked by the Emperor, who secretly setup military bases in Uncharted Space to keep his followers in check, and he returned to a waiting game since he knew he wasn't powerful enough to challange the Emperor or Vader. This would have several positive effects on the overall story:

• It would add at least one somewhat redeeming quality to the Emperor, much like him preparing against the coming Yuzhan Vong invasion in the Star Wars Legends continuity.
• It would add another level to Luke's feelings of guilt, feeling like his actions accidentally unleashed Snoke, directly leading to his Nephew's fall and the death of most of his students.
• It explains why Snoke, despite the power of the First Order and the Starkiller weapon, is so bent on destroying Luke and the Jedi, he is powerful, but isn't as powerful as Luke, who would always be a major threat to him.
  • It also explains why he is so interest in using Kyle Ren as a pawn, since it gives him the power of the Skywalker Bloodline.
• It explains why the First Order is so determined to destroy, rather than conquer, the New Republic and have designed its weapons to that aim.
• Adding a new Force Religion would add more dimension to the Star Wars Galaxy and allow the creators to give more detail, nuance, and difference to the ultimately cyclical story. It could also preface what others have suggested, the creation of a new, more balanced Force Religion to replace the Jedi at the conclusion of the Sequel Trilogy.
• Perhaps Snoke is a Knight of Ren. We don't yet know where the name comes from, perhaps the group or religion that Snoke used to be a part of was called the Kings of Ren and now that they are gone (killed by either Snoke, the Jedi, or the emperor) Snoke is sort of rebuilding them with Kylo Ren and Luke's other former students. They might even have some connection to the war between the Jedi and Sith or perhaps are even older than that.
  • There is a theory in Star Wars WMG that before the Jedi and the Republic the galaxy was divided up into fiefdoms controlled by force-sensitive individuals and groups like Feudal Europe or Japan. While not true in the EU, it could be true in the new canon and this could be part of the explanation for Snoke and the Knight of Ren. The Knights of Ren might have been one of the Feudal force groups that survived while the other were conquered by, or coalesced into the Jedi and Sith with Snoke being a member of the original group that survived by going into some force version of hibernation before being woken by Darth Plageius while on the search for eternal life. With the destruction of most of the Jedi and the death of Darth Vader and the Emperor, Snoke had his chance to recreate his old kingdom if not one bigger with the First Order and the newly reborn Knights of Ren.
• That would be an interesting angle, that Snoke is sort of an ultimate survival of the fittest type and seeks to kill everything else, eventually destroying his own species and everything else, and wants to destroy everything else as well. After years of being held in check by the Jedi and THEN the Sith, he finally realized the usefulness, at least in the short term, of apprentices and followers. Therefore he took over control of the Imperior Remnant, originally the soldiers the Emperor sent to keep him in check, and corrupted Ben Solo and some of Luke's other apprentices to use as weapons(as Han indicates) against the Jedi and the Republic in general.
• Jossed. Palpatine created Snoke as part of his plan.

The New Republic will play a huge role from here on out

What the First Order did to the New Republic was roughly the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, 911 and the Paris Attack rolled into one, times a million. Despite being in a weakened state, losing their capital and and an entire system, that sucker punch will unite the entire New Republic against the Order. All planets of the NR will rally, combined their various individual Army, Navy, and Financial backing to go to war with the First Order. The New Republic will do their best to make the First Order rue the day they blew up Hosnian Prime.

• Jossed. The New Republic was completely wiped out.

Rey's last name is Shan

Which is to say that she's the direct descendant of Revan. Mind you that is a family known for their female Jedi and staff-like weapons.

• If this were true, it could mean that she was using Battle Meditation in the fight against Kylo, which would explain how things turned in her favor so quickly.
• Jossed. It's Palpatine, though she later adopts the name Skywalker.

Maz Kanata is a failed Jedi

Speaks for itself. She's no Jedi, but she knows The Force. She has been living for hundreds of years and see many battles fought between the Light side and the Dark side. There's a pretty low chance that she would just sit it out through all of them, considering that she tries to convince the protagonists to join the battle against the Dark side. In her younger days, she may has been a Jedi before. Then something happened that forced her out of the Jedi Order (or maybe she failed to become a Jedi in the first place) and she came to live on Takodana from that point on. Maybe that's why she is pretty supportive for Rey to take up Luke's lightsaber as well. Rey reminds her of her younger self, and tries to persuade her to become the Jedi that she could never be. Also, she has all the characteristics of a Jedi. Wise, calm, observant, can be quirky at times. She's basically a non-Jedi Yoda.

• Maz has clearly had experience with the Jedi and is very familiar with them, and I believe Wordof God is that she knew Yoda. She rather seems like a Force Sensitive version of Han Solo. She's a pirate, which implies that she has clearly been up to some questionable activities, but is ultimately a good person. I foresee her playing a part in VIII and being very important in IX. My thought would be that Rey undergoes Jedi training in VIII but very nearly falls to the Dark Side because of the strict Jedi rules and practices and in IX Maz helps her realize that it is possible to be a good person, and fight for the Light Side, without being so restrictive and absolute about what that entails as the Jedi are.
• And I'm sure Luke would also learn that as well, considering that even after all these years, he still have much to learn in order to successfully rebuild the Jedi Order. Because it is kind of a Surprisingly Realistic Outcome when it comes to Luke trying to rebuild the Jedi Order all by himself with only little Jedi training. He had to figure things out on his own most of the time and he might not be the best teacher for the new Jedi, which might be one of the reasons that leads to Ben Solo turning to the Dark side and ruins everything in the first place. If Maz really does know Yoda, then Luke would have a lot to discuss with her regarding the Jedi Master's thoughts on the Force and advice on how to rebuild the Jedi Order as well.
• I picture that, one on one, Luke would actually be a good teacher. I think Luke's error the first time he tried to rebuild the order was trying to do too much. Based on the number of bodies in the Force Vision Luke was trying to train A LOT of students at once, and I can't imagine that he was also trying to help Leia rebuild the Republic and re-establish the Jedi's role in it. That is a lot for one person to take on by himself, and would likely have led to many deficiencies in training. I picture her trying very hard to be a perfect Jedi but having increasing gnawing self-doubt(accentuated by her abandoment issues, she fears that if she isn't a perfect Jedi, Luke will reject her) at her fears and emotions in general, eventually almost falling to the Dark Side because she feels she is destined for it, or has no other choice, and then leaved Luke's training or maybe even becoming rather like Anakin at the beginning of Episode III of seriously struggling and even committing some Dark Side acts, at which point Maz would help her embrace a more balanced view of the Force, and I like the idea of her helping Luke with that as well.
• I just realized that having Maz as the Yoda figure, teaching a grey/balance view of the Force, and revealing that it is possible to be a good person and fight the Dark Side without being as morally absolutist as the Jedi and rejecting all emotion and attachement, actually fits in perfectly with Rey's first mentor, Han Solo. Han Solo may not be a Jedi or be Force Sensitive, but that is precisely the character he is. He is a good person, who fights evil when the chips are down, but isn't afraid of attachements, isn't afraid to get angry, looks out for himself and his own needs, and is more than willing to kill, even kill preemptively, if the situation calls for it.
• It also gives a good explanation of why Ben/Kylo had such an attachment and also a hatred of Han Solo. I can definitely picture him being very attached and admiring his hero father, who was probably with him more often given Leia's political role trying to rebuild the Republic. When he starts feeling the Force and wrestling with some anger issues, he looks to his father, who he correctly sees as being a more understanding character(since he is famous as both a war hero and a smuggler, he guesses that his father understands darkness and anger better). However, on hearing the confession of his son, and perhaps because of his own fear of Darth Vader, he defers to Leia and Luke's moral absolutist views and agrees to send him off to be trained, making Ben feel abandoned and betrayed, but still hoping that his father will eventually come around and help him.

Somebody is going to lose a limb in the next movie, but this time it's going to be a female character

Okay, nothing against sexes here. Just making a WMG. Since the new trilogy has a much more emphasis on equality between male and female characters (we have a first female lead who is also a force-sensitive who arguably has the most impact on the story as well, more female extras on screen such as the Resistance pilots, female Stormtroopers, etc.). Chances are the next episode would feature a major female character losing a limb in combat, considering that in the previous movies, only male characters are shown losing their limbs. I'm basing this a little from the fact that in the climax battle of this film, during Kylo Ren and Finn battle, Kylo could potentially slices of one of Finn's limbs and the end result would've remain the same, but Finn is still in complete shape by the end of the film aside from being in coma. And the second movie in a trilogy is famous for featuring someone losing a limb for the first time. I am guessing that if it won't be Finn, it would most likely be Rey. This is especially very likely because she's the 'main Jedi' character of this new trilogy, and we all know Jedi have a high record of losing a limb or two. Poe is unlikely simply because he's a pilot, and would rarely participate in the up-close-and-personal ground combats. MAYBE he could lose a limb if he does get shot down, but I don't think that Poe losing a limb would have as much impact as if it would happen to the other two leads. Or maybe it could be Phasma who would lose a limb, probably from the 'Trash Compactor' incident that Han and Finn forced her into on Starkiller Base, and she would definitely want revenge against Finn for that.

• It could be Kylo Ren who loses a limb. That is a Skywalker tradition, after all. Or maybe he and Rey lose a limb to each other, fulfilling both the "new Jedi loses a limb" and "a Skywalker loses a limb" clauses.
• Jossed.

Rey is an Anakin's Daughter, by way of Kamino cloners.

While Anakin was being rebuilt after his defeat to Obi-wan, Palpaltine took what remained of his baby juice and gave it to the Kaminoans for future use in creating force-sensitives should the need arise. However, he had enough inquisitors so he never needed it. After his death, the Kaminoans started use the sample to try to create force-sensitive super soldiers to sell back to the First Order. After years of trying, the Kaminoans had little success, creating only a handful of force-sensitive children, including the youngest and strongest, Rey, who they began instructing in things like mechanics, piloting, and survival. However, before any of these children completed their training and could be sold off, they were rescued by Boba Fett. Out of spite, the Kaminoans told the First Order about the children and Fett. To protect her, Fett and the others dropped Rey off on Jakku meaning to come back after they lost the first order. However, their ship was destroyed by the First Order, commanded by then Captain Hux, before it could reach Republic space. Hux assumed all the force-sensetives were destroyed and reported it as such.

• Figure there is too much prequel stuff and too complicated without a Fett movie to tell about this to be true, but tried to come up with theory to explain Rey's connection to the Skywalker family, Conuscant accent, and mechanical/ piloting skills.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Snoke is Jar Jar.

Most people on the internet know the theory that Jar Jar was actually a Sith or dark side user who manipulated the clone wars and helped brought Palpatine to power. What if the theory is true but Jar Jar wasn't a Sith or in league with Palpatine, what if he was Snoke? Perhaps Snoke has figured out a way to separate his soul from his body and possess others, after watching Palpatine's machinations he possessed a stupid force-sensitive Gungan by the name of Jar Jar Binks and just "happened" to run into Qui Gon Jinn. Snoke was helping Sidious because he wanted the Jedi dead too and figured it would be easier to take an empire from two Sith than a republic from an army of Jedi. He may have even had a hand in helping the rebels destroy the empire with the intention of seizing the pieces of the Galactic Empire and using them to forge his own as he inevitably does with the First Order.

• Alternatively, Snoke doesn't even exist; all of his appearances have been as a hologram, but he hasn't actually appeared in the flesh, either in The Force Awakens or in Before the Awakening. Supreme Leader Snoke was a persona created by Jar Jar to appear larger, more powerful, and more sinister. When the heroes finally confront Snoke, BB-8 will pull a curtain back, thus revealing that Jar Jar was simply controlling a holographic projection of Snoke the whole time, much like The Wizard of Oz.
• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Kylo Ren's fall is because of his name

Honestly, Ben Solo sounds like a limbo champion, not a Jedi.

• To be honest, we don't really know what Ben's last name is in the movie itself. Maybe he took on his mother (Leia)'s family name instead of his father's, and therefore would be either Ben Organa or Ben Skywalker, both of which sounded way cooler than Ben Solo. And this is more likely because for all we know, Han is just a smuggler, while Leia used to be a royalty, so Ben is more likely to have used his mother's family name instead. And no, I don't think Ben would turn to the dark side just because of his surname...I mean, how many people could have a last name as cool as 'Solo'? Even if it looks ridiculous in hindsight, it's...Solo!
  • Jossed on both accounts. His last name is Solo and he fell because he thought Luke was trying to kill him.

Rey will wield a double-bladed lightsaber next movie

She's been using a staff to protect herself her whole life, so her fighting style is probably adapted to using one. People who fight with staffs or stave-like weapons fight differently from people with a sword, because the differences in the weapon require it; ie, it's easier to protect your legs with a staff because of the extra length. Learning to use a double-bladed lightsaber would only require a little tweaking to her current style, while learning to use a single-bladed one would require learning a whole new style. And since Luke presumably keeps his when she returns it to him, she'll need to forge a new one anyway.

• Jossed.

Jar Jar Binks was still a senator

And he was impeached and expelled from the Senate with extreme prejudice, because he's Jar Jar. And then, the First Order blows up the planet, and cited that Jar Jar has once been a senator as an incontrovertible proof that the Universe is better off without them. The resistance saw the speech, and Solo said "Hey! They have a point there!". And then, they fired the Starkiller weapon a second time against the remains, just to be sure. Then (in a scene removed to make the film shorter) J. J. Abrams appears and...

J. J. Abrams: Jar Jar Binks is dead!

Audience: (audience cheering)

J. J. Abrams: Well kids, we all know that sometimes when film characters die, they're back again the very next film. That's why I'm presenting this sworn affidavit that Jar Jar Binks will never, ever, ever return!

Lawyer: This document conforms to all applicable laws and statutes.

Audience: (audience cheering)

• Jossed. According to the EU, he became a street performer.

Snoke was Darth Plagueis's first choice.

As many people have noted, Snoke looks like the old depiction of Plaguies, and both their themes sound similar. This is because they are the same species, and Plaguies chose Snoke as his apprentice when his master died. However, this was short lived, as Plaguies eventually found Palpatine during a trip to Naboo, and he decided to train him instead. Plaguies tried to kill Snoke as he had outlived his usefulness, and Snoke was forced to flee. Snoke went into hiding until he heard about Palpatine's death, and decided it was his destiny to rebuild the sith order. Unfortunately for him, Plaguies never taught him the full ways of the Dark Side, leaving him, and eventually Kylo Ren, under-trained and under-powered. This came back to bite them, as Kylo Ren's lack of training was what led to him being defeated by Rey on Starkiller Base.

• Jossed. Snoke was created by Palpatine well after Plagieus' death.

Benicio Del Toro's Villain Character in Episode 8 is a fallen Ezra Bridger

Basically, this theory goes that after Ezra becomes Darth Maul's apprentice as seen in the recent Rebels Trailer, Maul, Ezra, and later Snoke unite as an opposing force to the Empire out of a unitified hatred for Palpatine and Vader, forming the Knights of Ren, likely named after an ancient Sith Lord. Clues to this could include:

• Benicio himself looks like an Older Ezra. Ezra would be approximately 53 years old around FA, while Del Toro is 48, so this could be very plausible.
  • At least according to his wookiepedia entry, Ezra was born nineteen years before the Battle of Yavin, which would make him the same age as Luke. Benicio del Toro is fifteen or sixteen years younger than Mark Hamill.
• Ezra has been proven capable of using ancient Sith Mechanisms, not usually possible for a Jedi.
• He has a Sith Holocron
• Ezra is seen wielding a stable Crossguard Saber. It's stated that Ren's Saber is an ancient design, but what if he got said Idea from someone else's knowledge of said design?
• Every Force Wielder around him, be it Kanan, the Sentinels, Ahsoka, or Maul can sense his affinity for the Dark. And like Kylo, can wield both sides effectively.
• The Dark Side Calls to Ezra, similar to the way the light calls to Kylo.
• Jossed. His character is named DJ.

Snoke is Darth Maul

The hologram and Andy Serkis saying Snoke isn't someone introduced in the canon before is to throw people off. Going with the theory that Ezra is one of the founding members of the Knights of Ren and Maul is his master, it could be that Maul in order to hide from his former master and his new apprentice started going by a false name and using a hologram of an old and scarred old man to keep word from getting around about a Zabrak who claims to use the dark side of the force. Still using this identity even after Palpatine's death, he was able to infiltrate and claim control over the First Order while converting Ben Solo into Kylo Ren so he could become one of his apprentices along side Ezra since they are not Sith anymore and don't have the rule of two to prevent having multiple apprentices. Ezra (going by another name ending in Ren) will be the enemy in Episode VIII possibly meeting Leia again at which point it will reveal who he is and by extension Snoke/Maul.

• Jossed. Snoke was created by Palpatine.

In Episode VIII, the Resistance/New Republic will end up using Imperial starships, or at least allied with someone who does.

What information we have suggests that the Empire's collapse was extremely messy. It is highly likely that there are (or at least were) a number of Imperial successor states. And going by the collapse of Real Life dictatorships, an inevitable consequence is that a lot of military equipment goes on the market. One of two scenarios might come into play:

• 1: The Resistance forges an unholy alliance with one of the more reasonable Imperial successor states.
• 2: Following the destruction of the Republic's primary fleet (and heavy losses to the First Order in the period between Episodes VII and VIII), the Republic (or Resistance) is scrambling to replace those ships. So they buy a few used Star Destroyers from somewhere.

Either way, Episode VIII will contain a scene where the heroes are rescued by a classic Star Destroyer.

• Jossed.

Rey is just some random girl who is strong in The Force.

• We're told that there are other such people (as Luke was training future Jedi prior to Ben Solo going rogue), so it's possible that Rey is one who got missed, possibly due to not having awakened to her abilities at the time.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Kylo and Rey accidentally forged a Force Bond in the interrogation scene

• From the wiki: "... connections were known to occur when one was made to open to the Force, or imbued by a powerful wielder of the Force." Rey first becomes aware of her powers after Kylo tries to Mind Probe her; that's because his presence unknowingly awoke them in her, likely out of a need for a Psychic Block Defense. And given how they were pulling up each other’s fears and insecurities, they had to be digging pretty deeply into the other’s mind—deep enough for two untrained/incompletely trained Force-users to get “stuck” there, so to speak. Not to mention, a Force Bond would explain several things:
  • How she learns to use the Force so quickly. People who were Force-bonded could pull knowledge and techniques from each other.
  • How he finds her so fast in the snowy forest. Force Bonds don’t tell you where someone specifically is—which is why he couldn’t find her in the base—but they do tell you their general area, like how he knows Han is on Starkiller, but not where. A Force Bond would give him enough of a hint as to the direction Rey was travelling and head her off.
  • Kylo telling her not to be afraid because "I feel it too", and the general ease with which they read each other’s minds. A Force Bond allowed people to sense each other's emotions, like he was doing there, and mentally communicate, which would make finding the other’s deepest fears and insecurities much easier.
  • During the scene itself, the script notes, at one point, that they both recognize “a strange, unspoken energy” pass between them. The moment a Force Bond was made was pretty much instantaneously felt—that could have been when it happened.
• Pablo Hidalgo teases at the idea of Rey picking up the Jedi Mind Trick from Kylo, which further adds credibility to the theory.
• The risk of something like this happening may be why Kylo is the only Force-user yet shown (in the currently canonical material) to use such an highly intense and connecting way of drawing out information using the Force — the closest other example was Vader's 'especially for... your sister' sensing in Return of the Jedi, which done to someone he already had an added connection of sorts to, and was more surface-thought-level especially since he was using his words to guide Luke's thoughts in the right directions rather than just ripping out the information he wants. Actually trained Jedi and Sith in the days of the Republic would have known about Force bonds and how they can be forged and hence have been more careful even if they lacked moral qualms... but the Sith Order ended on the second Death Star and Luke's training as a Jedi was abbreviated, so there likely has been a lot of 'sure, you can do that — but here's the costs and dangers that might not be immediately obvious' Force technique knowledge lost (Snoke might know more, but from his own statements he hasn't exactly been teaching Kylo all he knows).
• According to the sequels, they do have a connection called a dyad.

Rey isn't related to Luke or Obi-Wan but is a Time Lady

And she ran away from Gallifrey and into Jakku using a stolen TARDIS

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

For first time use of the Force Trick, it's helpful to have eye contact.

That's why Rey did better after the stormtrooper walked over to her.

Luke created a secret Jedi academy while in exile.

He created a new academy in a secret location safe from the Knights of Ren.

• He's building a CLONE Jedi army in secret!
• Jossed. He believes that the Jedi should end.

Phasma will kill someone close to both Rey and Kylo

Phasma will no doubt have a vendetta against her former soldier Finn and the Resistance as a whole. So to sate her Anger she will likely target the top commanders of the Resistance, Leia in particular perhaps. Whoever Phasma takes down will send massive shockwaves throughout the resistance, first order, and perhaps Rey and Kylo personally.

• Jossed. She dies without killing anyone.

Rey is the reincarnation of Anakin Skywalker.

That's this guy's theory, anyway.

• (Not original person) I saw a similar theory that Rey/Anakin are basically Avatars: They're created by the Force to bring balance (ignore what Palpatine hinted about Darth Plageus manipulating life, he was probably lying or was lied to himself), therefore Rey and Anakin are "siblings" and she's technically a Skywalker.
• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Phasma is a droid

She's WAY too calm when she's captured, heck C-3PO gets more freaked out when other people get in trouble.

• Alternately she's a tiny alien piloting a 6'3" robot body.
• Jossed. Her face is shown to be human behind her mask.

Finn will betray the heroes

Finn was supposed to have been raised to be a Stormtrooper since infancy. He has trained alongside his fellow Stormtroopers his entire life. He knows that they were indoctrinated as babies just like him. And yet the first chance he gets, he throws the entire First Order under the bus and begins slaughtering them en masse after hijacking a ship while yelling "WHOO!" and joking around with Poe. Throughout the rest of the movie, he is perfectly happy to kill men and women who were his former comrades. Honestly, it's a little scary how casually he turned on people he knew his entire life and should know were functionally brainwashed like he was. Now, taking this into consideration, and the fact that he has known the Resistance for far less time, how long will it be until he decides to betray them?

• The Resistance took away his number and gave him a name. He will never betray them.
  • Unless he has been made a dormant agent by, let's say, the Knights of Ren, or Snoke himself, conditionned to defect under certain conditions, only to be reactivated later, once he has successfully integrated the Resistance troops through actions that will convince everyone he has definitely switched sides.
  • Unlikely , if they had such abilities there would be no need for re-education. They could simply rewrite a person to fit their needs and wants. Also certain conditions would apply for something useful. Such as when Finn wanders around the Resistance base without an armed guard and could take out the leadership on a suicide run. Or when the programming could have kicked in just as Finn was about to take major action that would deprive the First Order of their main weapon of terror. Those are useful conditions for pre-programming to kick in. Times when a strike would end the resistance or prevent a Stromtrooper from helping destroy the First Orders prize gun. Practical triggers for programming to kick in. Seeing that it doesn't kick in when the First Order could use it the most, then logically there is none there to kick in. Also if there was a phrase or such then higher ups like Plasma and Kylo Ren would have used key words against him . They didn't because there is none there.
• Jossed. He stays with the Resistance.

Kylo Ren turned to the Dark Side for no other reason than thwarted ambition and self-entitlement.

There was no terrible trauma, no big secret. He was just spoiled and lazy, and so he did not progress as quickly under Luke's tutelage as some of the other less naturally gifted but harder working students. This made him angry because he thought that, just because of his ancestry, he was entitled to be the best. Rather than work harder, though, he turned to the Dark Side instead, because it is quicker and easier. That's the whole story: he's just a spoiled brat throwing a galactic temper tantrum.

• Jossed. He turned to the Dark Side because he thought Luke was trying to kill him.

Rey's easy use of the Force is completely normal

Face it, the Force has never been shown to be difficult to use, especially if you're strong in it. Luke had some trouble but Yoda outright stated that it was Luke's own mental state that was the problem, and he fully expected that Luke could pull his own X-Wing out of the swamp with his minimal training. Rey didn't have that problem as she'd grown up hearing stories about the Jedi, had recently been told everything she'd heard was fact and even personally wanted it to be true. Jedi training seems more about controlling your emotional state once you've grasped the basics of opening yourself to the Force. Even Kylo Ren fully expects Rey to become more powerful by the minute now that she's aware of how to use the Force despite having no training at all.

• This makes perfect sense based on what little (very, very little) is revealed of the Force and training to use it in the movies. Training seems to be a matter of improving focus, control, complexity and stamina in order for the user to call on the Force more quickly and powerfully, with greater skill and precision, and for longer. The only Force Abilities explicitly stated to be complex are Force Lightning, blocking Force Lightning, and becoming a Force Ghost. Everything else is undiscussed but the basic abilities aren't treated as difficult.
• Indeed. In the original trilogy, Luke was able to use the Force to make an otherwise impossible shot on the Death Star's exhaust port after maybe three minutes of training with Obi-Wan on the Millennium Falcon, and then, with no more training, he was able, when he was trapped in the Wampa cave on Hoth, to use Force telekinesis to pull his lightsaber into his hand, despite having never seen the Force used for telekinesis before, or even having been told it could be used for that purpose. And again, that was after maybe three minutes of training with Obi-Wan. Rey was doing things that she knew could be done.
• I just realized that the very idea that the Force is something that is basically easy to use, but has a vastly higher skill ceiling, gives a lot of nuance to the characterization of the other Force users by creating parallels to ideas and personalities in real world academia:
  • The Old Republic Jedi are academic establishment, they are dedicated to honing Force skill as much as possible, but do so through a series of self-generated rules that are often arcane and even arbitrary that they feel is necessary to be using the Force 'correctly'.
  • The Sith (and whatever Snoke is, if not a Sith) are all about real world applicability. It doesn't matter how technically artful something is if it doesn't have an immediate benefit to you.
  • Obi Wan Kenobi is the hyper-dedicated student when he is first met, he is so devoted to learning the academic way that he has a tendency of quoting the rules back to his teachers and like many with that mindset and dedication, he is promoted to teachers early, and proves a good teacher of skills, but has trouble relating to his, not all that much younger, students.
  • Anakin is the prodigy, so naturally talented that he feels constrained by the rules of Academia and because of the natural talent, combined with a dislike of being told what to do, and a voice in his ear (Palpatine) telling him he doesn't need to, he tends not to work as hard as he should, usually the natural talent makes up for it, but he also makes mistakes that cost him sometimes.
  • Luke is a natural talent, but one who is already a young adult when he is made aware of it, and in the absence of any information on the Force, he doesn't know what it is capable of, so while initially amazed, a lack of teacher, and too many other things to do, leads to him neglecting his studies for a while and becomming close minded to those abilities. Then, after his wake-up call he actually applies himself and studies hard, which is why he improves so drastically in the 6 months from Empire to Jedi.
  • Kylo Ren is a perfect example of what would happen if an overindulgent parent (Snoke) allowed their child to just leave school at 15 years old. The talent is there, but it seems pretty clear that in the absence of someone making him practice his skills, he probably only trains when he feels like it, and even then only in the 'cool' abilities. Hence his impressive Force Stasis and Mind Reading abilities, and being a decent fighter, but having very little control or precision in other areas.
  • Finally, Rey is somewhat similar to Luke in that she isn't made aware of her talent until young adulthood, but she has at least heard of the Force and what it can do. She is also backed into a corner and forced to rely on the Force in a way that Luke never really was, hence bringing her to use her talent and become more effective more quickly than Luke did.
• Don't forget that there are Real Life examples (i.e Mozart) of people who were even more crazily talented than most talented people at a particular thing. Rey might just be the Mozart of the Star Wars Universe. Even then, extreme stress and danger has been shown to be a catalyst when it comes to discovering/instinctively using the force and Rey was certainly in a huge amount of danger...

Rey is a droid

The Star Wars Universe has worked out how to make droids who look and feel human. She was made by Darth Vader some time before episode VI. He made used a voice from the same source as C-3PO which is why they are among the few characters in the Star Wars universe with English accents. Her programming include lightsaber fighting, starship piloting and Jedi mind tricks but the she was subjected to a memory wipe similar to C-3PO in Episode III which is why she cannot remember gaining these sklls or why she was on Jakku.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

All the theories of Rey's ancestry are correct.

She is descended from Palpatine, Obi-Wan, Luke, and Han and Leia. Here's how: Palpatine begat a daughter, whom we shall call GM. GM knew Obi-Wan and begat a daughter, whom we shall call M. M knew Luke and begat Rey. Because the Galactic Civil War left so many orphans and foundlings, every planet radically loosened its adoption laws, permitting, among other things, posthumous adoption as long as the dead adopter had assented to the adoption beforehand, the dead adopter's surviving spouse had also assented, and the adoption was finalized within a limited time after the death of the one adopter. On the way to the Resistance base, Han and Leia agreed to offer to adopt Rey, after she made it to the Resistance base, agreed. That is why Rey was flying the Falcon at the end; with Han's death, it would have passed to Leia through intestacy (Han Solo is not the kind of guy to make an estate plan), but Leia let Rey have it. So Rey was the daughter of Han and Leia by adoption and the descendant of Luke, Obi-Wan, and Palpatine. All the theories are true.

• Jossed. She's only descended from Palpatine.

Kylo Ren will have a Redemption Arc and sacrifice himself for either Leia or Rey

What better way to redeem yourself after killing your father than sacrificing yourself to save your mother? Somewhere near the end of Episode VIII/beginning of episode IX, Kylo Ren will realize the error of his ways/have sense curb-stomped into him by a now formally trained Rey, and will turn on the First Order, or at least rescind any allegiances. The heroes will still mistrust and dislike him, for obvious reasons. In some sort of climactic final showdown in Episode IX, Kylo (who has come to understand his grandfather a bit better than his speech in Episode VII suggest he currently does) will realize his goal of following in Darth Vader's footsteps by sacrificing himself in order to prevent the true Big Bad from killing either Leia or Rey. Leia would work because of the parallels to Kylo's actions in Episode VII would make for a particularly meaningful redemption and the fact that Darth Vader died protecting Leia's twin. Rey would work because she is the Luke-expy of the new generation, and also because she will likely end up being a Skywalker as well.

• Confirmed.

Rey is going to kill Kylo Ren with the blaster Han gave her.

If you look carefully at the end of the movie, Rey still has the blaster Han gave her on Takodana. That's odd, because she was captured and disarmed by the First Order. She used the Force to get JB-007 to drop his blaster so that she would have a weapon. Somehow, though, she must have recovered the pistol Han gave her before leaving Starkiller Base. Why put such a detail into the film unless it is going to be significant later? Why make a point of showing us that she still has the blaster, unless it is going to be fired significantly later? And what would be more fitting? She beats Rey in a lightsaber duel, but then, once he's beaten, she tells him that he isn't fit to die like a Jedi, killed by a lightsaber. Instead, she is going to kill him with the blaster that Han gave her.

• Jossed. He dies giving up his life force to save her.

Leia has far more Jedi training than is currently let on

Though it has been stated that Leia has no Jedi or force training, I believe that to be a lie. Here are my reasons behind this assumption.

• Leia is a very practical woman, and therefore would find being trained as a Jedi beneficial to herself, her family, and the resistance.

• Leia doesn't strike me as a neglectful parent. She might have joined Luke's academy around the same time Ben did so he wouldn't feel lonely or abandoned. However, she did eventually have to drop out because her business involving the resistance became all-consuming.

• As recently shown in the Star Wars comic, Leia has effectively used a Lightsaber in combat.

• She also stated in said issue that she always wanted to wield a Lightsaber. So she clearly wanted to learn at that time. Learning she was Luke's sister and a Skywalker would only increase that willingness for her.

In my opinon, Leia is at least at her son's level Force power and Saber Dualist-wise, if not better as she may have continued training by herself. In episode 8 I believe we will see Leia display her Jedi skills in battle, maybe against Kylo, Snoke, or Benecio's character?

• When was it stated that she is not trained? That being said, Leia was always more diplomat and strategist than soldier. I realize that the concepts of Jedi Guardians, Sentinels, and Consulars were really only invented for Knights of the Old Republic, but Leia seems like she would fit more into the Consular role, to Luke's Guardian.
• Confirmed.

Dr. Kalonia is related to Count Dooku.

Maybe she was his niece.

• Given the time-gap, great-niece seems more likely.

Luke is hiding because he knows something that the bad guys (or anyone for that matter) shouldn't know.

Maybe he figured out how Darth Plaguies used the force to raise people from the dead or some other dark secret of the force. Kylo and the Knights of Ren know that Luke knows this and want to track him down and steal this secret. Rey showed us that force mind tricks can be resisted, but give it enough time and torture then most people will crack. Luke decided not to risk it and went into hiding.

• Jossed. He is hiding out of guilt for contemplating killing Ben.

Snoke doesn't exist. Not completely anyway

Because what sort of a name is Snoke anyway? Really, it sounds a bit like a name a four year old would give his imaginary friend...... except that 'imaginary' isn't quite the right word. Perhaps being born with too much power in him meant that young Ben's brain has always been a bit dysfunctional and he 'heard voices' all his life. Because it's the sort of thing children do, instead of knowing it was a hallucination he gave the most dominant one a name and a personality, and eventually he started seeing Snoke, too. Now for anyone else it would eventually have lead him to be diagnosed as suffering from a psychotic disorder- only because Ben is Strong with the Force his telepathy means that by the time he was grown, his hallucinations were projected into other people's brains and now they see more or less what he's seeing. Leia used to be able to 'overhear' Snoke telepathically but has still never realised that her son was creating him himself.

• Jossed.

Like Palpatine, Snoke will be trying to use the new Force talent to replace his current enforcer

It's pretty obvious that Kylo Ren is important to Snoke for as long as he's useful, but if someone better comes along (after all by the end of The Force Awakens Ren is falling apart physically as well as mentally and was never very stable to start with)... only this time it's not a younger guy but a young woman... and the Force seems to be genetic, so why not try to affect her capture and... well in this rating it would probably still be 'marriage', to see what sort of powerful offspring they could create? (Obviously Rey would be spectacularly unimpressed with this idea, seeing as on his very best behaviour Ren is still a solipsistic Psychopathic Manchild with signs of an ambiguous disorder. Kylo's possible Villainous Crush might mean he's happy to go along with it, but when it comes to the Supreme Leader he does as he's told anyway.) It probably wouldn't happen but it might well be seriously attempted.

• Josssed. He wanted Kylo to kill Rey.

Rey isn't strictly related to the Skywalkers- she's a fatherless Force-created child, like Anakin

We know that Rey had 'family', but we have no idea exactly what sort of relatives. And it gives her a sort of bond with the Skywalker twins without actual blood-relationship.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Whatever Han worked out about Rey's background, Kylo Ren either worked out or had been told of, too

Notice that Kylo never uses Rey's actual name- maybe significant, seeing as identity and background are such a big deal in this film. He avoids it because he's aware that she wasn't born 'Rey', or at least it's only a small part of her name (most humans in Star Wars at least have two names and most of them more elaborate than that.)

• Jossed.

Rey being Luke's daughter will deliberately be The Un-Twist, so the audience will be distracted and unprepared for the real twist.

People keep saying that her being Luke's daughter is too obvious, and they're right, but if it's true, the fact that she even has a father means she was not conceived by the Force, which means she has two parents. Audiences are being intentionally led to the reveal that she is Luke's daughter, so that once it comes, the audience will assume that the big reveal has happened and won't be looking for another one. This will leave the Wrong Genre Savvy audience nice and complacent, so we'll be properly blindsided when someone drops the Wham Line about Rey's mother.

• What Wham Line could there possibly be that would be meaningful to a mainstream audience? The only female candidate- either in this trilogy or the original- would be way too much squick to ever consider.
  • The big reveal about Rey's mother doesn't necessarily need to happen in the same film as the revelation about her father. Maybe she'll be introduced in Episode VIII, but the truth won't be revealed until Episode IX. And maybe it won't necessarily be about the woman herself, but about who her parents are.
  • It would be pretty hard for Luke's supposed babymmama to be a surprise to anyone after that, seeing as any middle-aged human woman who got introduced at this stage would be assumed to be her.
  • The twist will probably lie in who she is beyond just being Rey's mother/Luke's wife.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

Luke went to the original Jedi Temple because he realized there were flaws in Yoda's training methods and modern Jedi doctrine.

The Jedi were successful for thousands of years, but the last generation had grown both complacent and bound by doctrines and traditions that pretty much pushed Anakin over to the Dark Side. Luke's attempts to follow Yoda's methods led to a similar event with Kylo Ren. He's now gone back to the beginning to learn the methods of the original Jedi, which spawned an order that lasted thousands of years.

• Jossed. He went to the temple out of shame for contemplating killing Ben.

Rey's father is a clone of the Emperor.

Bear with me here; in canon, cloning is a thing. As of yet we don't know what happened to Kamino post-Clone Wars, so Palpatine could've taken it over for his own schemes. And while never spelt outright in the movies, you can make a really good case Sheev's an Immortality Seeker. Shortly after amassing power as the newly-minted Emperor, he wanted to means of preserving his own life by cloning. However the more mechanical cloning the clones went through would spoil the clone(let's call him Cosinga: the only way Sidious could ensure his new body was perfect was to be an un-modified replica, raised under a surrogate mother. The result? Cosinga became an individual who didn't want to help the Space Devil. So he ran away, and that method of immortality was a failure.

Fortunately for the clone, Palpatine died before he could either take Cosinga over, perfect the cloning or find another means of escaping death. Unfortunately the First Order was interested in this secret, and wanted in on him. He ran away, found a wife and started a family. But because the First Order was still on his tail, Cosinga had to leave Rey on Jakku and never come back; a potential heir to the Empire would cause havoc. Even if he used surgery to alter his appearance, they'd undoubtedly since his power to be just like that of the late Emperor(being his clone and all, and in case Ian Mc Diamard can't return). Through all this, Rey is the granddaughter/genetic daughter of the late Emperor.

Cosinga and Rey would both be direct counters of the Villainous Lineage trope that continues to causing suffering across the galaxy, and a reversal on Kylo Ren (the villain descended from the light, the hero descended from the dark.) If Snoke is Plagueis, it'd give him even more of a beef with Rey as her grandfather tried to/did kill him. Finally, it'd tie Palpatine into the Sequel Trilogy, but in a massive sense of irony he's responsible for the hero.

And yes, this would be one huge, over-elaborate Discontinuity Nod to the events of "Dark Empire."

• Confirmed.

Kylo's grudge against Luke is deeply personal and is to do with the disappearance of young Rey, or at least the child we now know as Rey

Whoever Rey is, it seems she had something to do with the doomed new Jedi academy, before she was dumped on Jakku with large parts of her memory deeply repressed, like what happened before Jakku and that there was even such a thing as the Force.

Supposing that this little girl was left with Luke- either because she was actually part of the family or was from a totally different family but was already showing unprecedented power... it was bound to get some kind of reaction out of Luke's mercurial, prodigious nephew. Perhaps he was bitterly jealous at being displaced as the school prodigy and expressed it in a way we could probably guess... unless it wasn't like that and he treated her- maybe the only girl and the youngest by a long way- as his own protege (she might be his sister or cousin after all)- though to the point that it looked like suspicious over-compensation.

Perhaps when the little girl went missing neither Luke nor Ben knew exactly what had happened. And perhaps Luke suspected the worst of Ben, and stuck to the story to the point that Ben got the idea that Luke was deliberately framing him- especially when it was Luke his parents believed (or at least his mother believed that Ben was lying and trying to cover up an accident he'd caused.) It would explain Luke's manner when Rey arrives at the island if all this chaos and destruction started with the presumed murder of a little girl fifteen years ago who it turns out isn't dead after all.

It would give an opening for Snoke and the Dark Side if Ben could believe that Luke had turned against him first. (In the words of [[Disney/Tangled Mother Gothel]] "You want me to be the bad guy? Fine, now I'm the bad guy...")

• Jossed. His grudge is that he thought Luke tried to kill him.

The trauma of Kylo's Ren's massacre made Rey cut herself off from the Force.

Whether she directly witnessed it or not, if she had already been developing her abilities at that point, she could have empathically sense the deaths of the Jedi. For a young child experiencing that kind of trauma, cutting off the sense responsible for it may have been the only thing she could do to keep from snapping. If she is Luke's daughter, or even Leia's, this could explain why they never found her. Cutting herself off from the Force could have also removed her from the Force senses of her family.While this did protect her from her cousin, it kept her father and aunt from knowing she was alive, or having any idea where to start looking in the many, many habitable planets in the galaxy. It was only the events of the movie, and the added need to survive, that caused Rey's connection to the Force to reestablish itself, thus the Awakening discussed by Snoke and Kylo. Also, just as Kylo Ren's fall is a tie-in to Han and Leia's son in the Legends continuity becoming a Sith, this would be a tie-in to Luke's son from the Legends continuity cutting himself off from the Force because he could feel the suffering caused by the Yhuuzan Vong War.

• Jossed.

Rey isn't the Skywalker, Finn is.

Star Wars is the story of the Skywalker family. Finn is as much a main character as Rey, maybe he's the Skywalker in this set of movies.

• While Kylo Ren's interactions with Rey are more blatant and memorable, he actually pays a lot of attention to Finn. Right from the beginning, he glances toward him, and right after the breakout Kylo immediately realizes Finn's the one who broke Poe out, even knowing his designation. Even at the end when he's on the catwalk and looks up at Finn and Rey who stare on in horror, it zooms in as if to follow Kylo's gaze, but it's Finn that it zooms in on. The obvious explanation is force sensitivity, but if Kylo and Finn are cousins, it could explain why he'd subconsciously watch some random stormtrooper even when he's not his target (not to mention a symbolic mirror in them both being traitors to the sides they were raised on).
• Meta pertaining to reality, but when the OT came out, mixed race relationships were not well viewed, something Lucas would know, regardless of whether he agreed. A different, less accepting time where a non-white or mixed race (which was arguably considered worse for...reasons) character wouldn't make a main, thus the all-white protagonists. Having a main character be of such a background could be a deliberate Take That! towards that time by him in this more accepting time. Possibly, I don't know Lucas' views on the matter. Back to actual in-story evidence, there's the amount of time emphasized that Finn is somehow relevant to Kylo Ren for all the reasons the troper above me pointed out. Furthermore, Finn has to be at least somewhat Force-sensitive. Why? Because he could stand up to Kylo Ren at all. Yes, Kylo was injured, but still, not a poorly trained fighter. Regarding another WMG that Rey was an Instant Expert because she was unconsciously drawing on the dark side, perhaps Finn is actively shying away from the Dark Side, given that he felt it everyday in Kylo's presence. Not too mention, it's Finn's first battle and he's part of The Dragon's Praetorian Guard? Hmmm... . Also note that, as of VII, Kylo isn't a Complete Monster, more Anti-Villain. His yelling "Traitor" at Finn every time they meet practically would be made all the more potent if Kylo knew perfectly well that Finn was his cousin (via the Force like Luke and Leia 'just knew' given Finn would probably be Luke's illegitimate child) and was using his position to protect Finn, seeing Finn's defection as a personal rejection.
• Jossed.

Snoke was an Inquisitor when he was younger.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

There is at least one survivor from Luke's old Jedi order.

• A Jedi might have been away on a mission rather than at the school that Kylo Ren attacked.
• The Knights of Ren don't seem to be a very large group and only one wields a lightsaber.

Snoke is Darth Nihilius

Malachor has been recently brought back into continuity and there is already a connection to the new trilogy with Kylo Ren's lightsaber being based on a design used during the Scourge of Malachor. As seen in Star Wars Rebels Malachor while not being destroyed by a Mass Shadow Generator the planet was apparently the location of a temple that doubled as a super-weapon and the remains of a battle where the fighters appeared to have been destroyed suddenly leaving statues that used to be people frozen in place. Perhaps they are referencing Malachor because it plays a role in Snoke's origin. Snoke could be based on Darth Nihilius, a former Sith who became something else entirely after surviving the Scourge that destroyed everyone else there, now he is a wound in the force devouring it which is the reason he has survived as long as he has. That is why he doesn't show much concern about the destruction of Starkiller Base and is obsessed with Luke Skywalker, his only concern is finding Luke and draining him before Luke finds a way to destroy him, with Luke out of the way he is free to drain the force (and by extension life) from the galaxy. The First Orders follows him because he reminds them of Palpatine, but to Snoke they are merely a means to gain enough control over the galaxy to make devouring it even easier. That's why Luke is at the ancient Jedi temple, he is not only searching on how to be a better Jedi Master but is trying to learn all the ancient Jedi knew about what Snoke has become and how to stop him.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Kylo Ren has Cauliflower Brain Syndrome

Before anyone points out that "that's not how the Force works!", the Force might not attack systems like microprocessors but we know that heavy Dark Side users tend to have physical effects from using it- Vader's strange colouring between his turning dark and the duel on Mustaffa, Palpatine's extreme accelerated aging, various characters from the EU who were practically falling apart... Kylo, though, merely has emotionally intense but physically normal eyes, and a pallor that would be inevitable from wearing a visor all the time. But his mental state could be easily attributable to one whose brain is in the early stages of serious damage in the frontal lobe. It would also explain some if not all of his Villain Ball moments- such damage would make anyone absent-minded.

Kylo's ambiguous disorder is a direct result of growing up plugged into the Force at all times

Because if you can crawl people's minds with no difficulty you don't need to develop normal empathy or emotional literacy.

Dasha Promenti survived the attack on Jakku and will appear again.

She's appeared in quite a bit of merchandise, including the Visual Dictionary and the Topps trading cards, for a character that's barely appeared onscreen. She will appear later on, possibly to seek revenge on Kylo Ren and raise the question of whether or not he deserves forgiveness.

• Jossed.

Hux is a lot more powerful than he seems.

I refuse to believe that Hux, a fascist military General who has murdered his way to the top and clearly has some type of ambiguous disorder such as megalomania or a dangerously simmering god complex, is simply a filler character or somebody to be killed off. He's probably going to be a Big Bad in the next movie or at least provide a wide source of danger for the heroes. Some more expansion on his relationship/conflict with Ren would be interesting as well.

• There were exactly two people who Snoke wanted to make absolutely sure would survive the destruction of Starkiller Base. His apprentice Kylo Ren, and General Hux. This guy is clearly very important to the First Order.
• Jossed. He doesn't have any powers.

Betty and Veronica are different genders

I haven't seen this interpretation for Finn and Poe yet, but it fits that we're seeing another classic storyline with two main love interests, but in this case Rey is Betty and Poe is Veronica.

The planet that would become Starkiller Base is named Sullarn

Early "leaks" pointed to the climax being set on "a Scandinavian-esque planet" called Sullarn

• Jossed. It's Ilum.

Luke killed the other Knights of Ren in a fit of Dark Side rage

• And his self-imposed exile is because he was afraid of how much he liked it.
• Jossed. He doesn't seem to have confronted the other Knights of Ren.

Han Solo died years before Episode VII

Fans have long debated the extent of Leia's ability to use the force. Being Luke's twin, her natural ability should be equal to his, but there is no indication in the films that she has ever attempted to cultivate this ability. In Episode VII, she has force powers as vast as Luke's. The Han Solo seen in Episode VII is a force ghost created by Leia to fill the void in her life caused by the loss of her entire family. With her homeworld destroyed by the original Death Star, her brother missing, and her son turned to the Dark Side, the death of her husband caused her to go a little crazy and resurrect him as a force ghost. That would explain how a 70 year-old man could keep pace with younger protagonists, and why everything from his attitude to his maturity level has remained unchanged for decades. Leia gives him the freedom to wander around the galaxy, doing what he always did, with Chewbacca to keep an eye on him, but he always returns when she needs him. And, having created him once, she could undoubtedly do it again.

• Han's not quite 70. He's supposedly in his late 20s-ish when he first appears in Episode IV, at least according to the novelization, which mentions that he could not have been more than ten years older than Luke when they first met. Luke's 19 according to all source materials, which would have made Han 29 at the very most. Given the four years that pass across the original trilogy, and assuming that the postulated 30-year time skip between Episodes IV and VII is accurate, that would put Han in his mid-sixties at oldest, while Luke and Leia would be in about 53-ish. Their much older appearances can be both explained out of universe by the actors being several years to a decade older than their characters, and in-universe by the high amount of stress each had been under in the past several years.
• Jossed.

Luke is Rey's father, and her mother is the Force.

Like his grandmother Shmi, Luke is a Truly Single Parent. He saw his sister and best friend having kids and kind of wanted one of his own, but, having dedicated himself to a semi-monastic lifestyle in the service of the Force, he couldn't have one the old-fashioned way, so he asked the Force itself to give him a child, and it obliged. A bit of an out-there theory considering how human reproduction works, but would be an interesting twist or Call-Back of the Skywalker history in the reveal.

• Jossed. She's Palpatine's granddaughter.

The stormtrooper that released Rey was taking the piss.

His first reaction was to do the exact opposite of what the mind trick suggested. After seeing what prisoner he actually was in charge of guarding, he probably did not take Rey seriously as a threat and decided to play along for the giggles, because being a stormtrooper can be a reasonably boring job. That would also explain why him confirming he will drop his weapon sounds more like "sure, whatever" than "I should really leave my weapon behind".

Luke lives in the High Hrothgar.

The way up that mountain just looks so similar, and Luke even sports a grey beard. Maybe there's a dragon nearby somewhere.

• Jossed. The planet is Ahch-To.

Ben Solo had a traumatic experience with machinery in his youth.

This is why he lashes out at it whenever he's stressed.

Snoke was Maul's apprenctice.

This would explain why despite being all about the Dark Side, Snoke and the Knights of Ren are specifically not Sith. Maul was trained as a Sith but then discarded after his first defeat, causing him to despise the Sith just as much as he does the Jedi. In Star Wars Rebels, he tries passes on Sith-derived teachings while tempting Ezra, but remains very much opposed to the Sith. This would surely continue with any other apprentice he trains. And he would teach any apprentice that you never discard a loyal follower who's still strong enough to be useful, just as Snoke makes sure that Kylo Ren is recovered alive after his fight with Rey.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

By the events of the sequel trilogy, there is a galaxywide shortage of Kyber crystals.

• The Death Star's main laser was powered by Kyber crystals - the same crystals that Jedi (and Sith, for that matter) use to make their lightsabers. It would explain a lot if developing both Death Stars and the weapon on Starkiller Base (which was basically a Death Star laser turned up to eleven) caused a galaxywide shortage of Kyber crystals. For example, the Kyber crystal Kylo Ren used to make his lightsaber was cracked, causing its unstable appearance. That wasn't because Ren was particularly incompetent; that was because the crystal he found, though imperfect, was the only one he could locate. That would also explain why Anakin's lightsaber was kept under such close protection; not so much because it was Anakin's - as some have pointed out, its past is as checkered as that of its owner^note read: Among Anakin's first acts with the saber after he turned was the slaughter of an entire temple full of children. It was because it was just damned hard to find and make lightsabers due to the FO having control of any Kyber crystal mines that existed.

Finn is actually royalty

• In this zine, Finn is explicitly referred to as a prince. His origin planet (Artorias) also happens to have a kingship. Not to mention, Finn being a prince will help to mirror the original trio with Finn as Leia, Rey as Luke, and Poe as Han. As a bonus, Finn's trooper number (2187) is the same as the cell Princess Leia is being kept in in A New Hope, which could be subtle foreshadowing.
• Jossed, at least as far as the films are concerned.

The tragedy of Kylo Ren is precisely that he has too much darkness in him to stay with the Jedi, and yet too much light in him to make a very effective Dark Side warrior/Sith.

• It's implied through dialogue toward the end of the film that Ren bailed on his training with Snoke before it was finished, similarly to how he'd turned his back on Luke and the Jedi years earlier before he was able to complete his training with them. Perhaps after some time with Snoke, he started feeling the call of the light and, in an attempt to redeem himself, destroyed the rest of the Knights of Ren. (That might explain why nobody else from this Oddly Small Organization pops up in Episode VII, despite the group being name-dropped a few times.) Except that the taking of life is typically associated with the Dark Side, which, along with his previous betrayal (and no doubt Snoke's influence), made Ren feel like he was irredeemable. So, feeling too guilty to return home, decided there wasn't any other place for him to go but the First Order.

Vader's Misaimed Fandom comes from lack of information.

There were about two people who know for a fact that Darth Vader had Heel–Face Turn; Palpatine(who died seconds after) and Luke Skywalker. Knowledge that Vader was ever Anakin Skywalker is very scarce, and it is practically impossible to get the whole picture. Because Luke had a fractured profile on his father, he didn't know enough about Anakin's Start of Darkness to prevent Kylo's. Kylo idolizes Vader because he honestly doesn't know that Anakin was far worse off being Vader, resulting in him repeating the man's mistakes. If Snoke knows, he's fudging the details to keep him loyal.

Snoke is Mace Windu

This video makes a very good argument for Snoke being Mace Windu. Though, Snoke was said to be an alien, that could have been a misdirect.

• Jossed. He was created by Palpatine.

Kylo Ren will kill Snoke and take his place as the Big Bad.

• Kylo Ren's arc will parallel his grandfather's in that he will kill his Dark Side teacher, but in so doing will fall further to the Dark Side rather than redeem himself and become the main villain of the New Trilogy. The novelization of The Force Awakens hints that killing his father did not have the effect Ren intended and when he is beaten by Rey, Snoke makes it clear he intends to finish training him. As a teacher, Snoke is far more kind than Palpatine was to Vader and more caring of his pupil; its possible that he will sacrifice his own life to strengthen Ren's resolve and turn him into the Dark Side warrior Vader never was. The fact that Snoke's actual appearance wasn't even decided on before The Force Awakens was almost completed possibly supports the idea that as a character he isn't completely essential to the endgame of the story.
• Confirmed.

Snoke will turn out to be Affably Evil

Where Palpatine's initial politeness mostly proved to be a front for his hammy lightning-throwing megalomaniacal tendencies, Snoke will prove to be a genuinely polite kind of devil, preferring gentle seduction and rational manipulation of one's own emotions over riotous revelry in evil and letting his emotions manipulate his reasoning. Where Palpatine manipulated Vader through Anakin's affair with Padme, Snoke will be revealed to have persuaded Kylo Ren to turn against Luke through several credible arguments that the Jedi were fools for suppressing their stronger emotions and forbidding personal attachments to others rather than learning how to balance their training in the force with family life. When we see him training Kylo Ren, he'll be telling him things like "You need to get a grip on your emotions, Kylo. Your wrath can make you powerful, but only if you learn to control it instead of letting it control you."

• Jossed. He's pretty monstrous.

The First Order was named when Ren and Hux went to McDonald's

They were the first to arrive in the day, and when the waitress gave them the receipt for their order, they noticed that it read: "Your order is the first order." The duo immediately finished their meal and went to suggest it to Snoke.

The First Order discovered the galaxy's Advanced Ancient Acropolis.

It seems unlikely the remnants of an empire that was already Fascist, but Inefficient could make Starkiller Base, much less the leader not be too concerned with its destruction. The Unknown Regions are called the Unknown Regions for a reason. Going deep into space, the remnants of the Galactic Empire discovered a powerful ancient empire with technology they couldn't have dreamed of, having gone unnoticed by a galaxy that's never explored. Starkiller Base already existed-they spent thirty years trying to understand the Lost Technology so they can one day replace these old relics. Any claim they invented it is either propaganda from them or the New Republic not knowing better.

• Jossed. Starkiller Base was Ilum.

Masochism isn't the (only) reason Kylo Ren pounded his injury, he was trying to quell involuntary twitches that would have destabilized his stances.

Kylo Ren was shot just below his hip joint. The muscles surrounding the gaping wound started cramping and twitching in reaction to his continued movement, and he pounded the muscles to make them stop twitching.

As supporting evidence, this troper got injured in the same area by overexerting the involved muscles and then stumbling while running scared (It's a Long Story). The muscles cramped and twitched, hindering this troper's balance from both the pain and the uncontrolled movement. Pounding the cramped muscles provided temporary relief that lasted roughly as long as the intervals between Kylo Ren's self-punching sessions. More effective relief was only possible once this troper reached safety and could sit down to properly massage the abused muscles.

Poe got off Jakku Luke Skywalker style.

I wanna say it's the novelization that states that Poe paid a smuggler to get him off Jakku. I say he went full Luke Skywalker and got off a desert planet by convincing a smuggler that they'd be paid by Leia Organa.

The Daniel Craig stormtrooper was in fact Benoit Blanc!

While investigating an unrelated whodunnit in a to be made 2nd Rian Johnson Star Wars trilogy, Benoit Blanc got roped into disguising as a stormtrooper and was going to have to wiggle his way out of torturing her until she gave him an out of going along with a Jedi mind trick.

Rey has been using Kylo Ren as a crutch, and for longer than anyone has realized.

Rey briefly met Ben Solo as a child on Jakku, and somehow formed a Force Bond with him. Life on Jakku was hard, but whenever she was miserable, she could always get rid of it, by channeling her feelings into her Force Bond with Ben. Later on, when Kylo was trying to learn about the Dark Side, he learned he could channel his positive emotions into the Force Bond with Rey. Also, a lot of skills between the two could be shared, which is where Rey picked up her a lot of her Force training. This explains why Ben Solo went Dark, and why Rey, being practically a slave on Jakku, is relatively well-adjusted.

• Jossed.

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