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Rey Skywalker

https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/rey_tlj_1.png

"I think I can handle myself."

Species: Human

Homeworld: Hyperkarn; Jakku (adopted)

Portrayed by: Daisy Ridley, Cailey Fleming (young; The Force Awakens), Josefine Irrera Jackson (young; The Rise of Skywalker)

Voiced by: Livier Zúñiga (Latin American Spanish dub), Sandra Villa (European Spanish dub), Chiaki Nagatomi (Japanese dub), Jessica Monceau (European French dub), Adriana Torres (Brazilian dub), Kaya Marie Möller (German dub)

"Something inside me has always been there... but now it's awake, and I'm afraid."

A self-sufficient scavenger who spent a large part of her life on Jakku. She was something of a loner that took an interest in the myths and legends of the wars that preceded her birth, and she had no grand aspirations for her life, happy to live alone on Jakku in hopes her parents would one day return... At least until meeting BB-8 and Finn (and later, Han Solo) and being drafted into the conflict with Resistance and the First Order. Her first encounter with Kylo Ren — the fallen Ben Solo — revealed she is Force-Sensitive and a prodigy at that, and she went on to seek the teachings of Luke Skywalker, who she would learn from before receiving further training from his sister, Leia Organa.

Initially living as a hypercompetent scavenger, Rey eventually learned of her true nature about a year after leaving Jakku behind her — her father, Dathan, was an imperfect clone of Emperor Palpatine, making her the "granddaughter" of Darth Sidious. Finding love with a woman named Miramir, the two both escaped from the Sith Eternal and chose to be "no one", raising a child in secrecy before leaving her on Jakku to spare her an even worse fate, at the cost of their own lives. Rey struggled with the Dark Side of the Force on her Jedi path, and this knowledge, alongside the return of Palpatine in a cloned body, nearly broke her — as she realized that the power that she'd been struggling to understand was something that could hurt those she cared about most.

Nonetheless, Rey was reminded that the heroes of the Original Trilogy — Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa — accepted her without condemnation, despite suspecting the truth. Thus, Rey rejected her dark heritage and was able to turn Ben back to the light, before the two of them confronted Sidious and successfully ended the resurrection of the Sith for good. While Ben gave his life to restore hers, ending the Skywalker bloodline, Rey vowed to take up his family's name — and their goals and legacy — as her own after giving the family a symbolic burial, placing their lightsabers in the sands of Tatooine near the resting place of Shmi Skywalker.

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#-C

10-Minute Retirement: Late in The Rise of Skywalker Rey attempts to exile herself on Ahch-To like Luke did to prevent herself from falling to the Dark Side, but Luke's Force spirit persuades her she's strong enough to resist and she quickly rejoins the fight.
The Ace: Since before her one year of Jedi training, Rey was a talented mechanic, an Ace Pilot, a crackshot, is skilled in parkour, an instinctive close-quarters fighter, and charismatic in nature. By The Rise of Skywalker, Rey's skills in the Force enable her to: levitate in the air, heal major wounds, and pull back a flying spaceship before accidentally destroying it with Force lightning.
Ace Pilot: Rey's strong connection to the Force allows her to manage flying the Millennium Falcon, a vessel which needs a co-pilot at the best of times, somehow escaping two TIE Fighters and enable Finn, with a broken gun, to shoot them both out of the sky. And this is when, by her own admission, she's never flown a ship offworld. Additional lore indicates that she had plenty of practice with flight simulations.
Action Girl: Rey is skilled at staff fighting even without training and proves quickly that she doesn't need Finn to fend off some thugs. Later, on discovering she has a powerful Force sensitivity, Rey grows into even more formidable, learning how to use her abilities along with a lightsaber and becoming a full on Action Heroine.
Action Heroine: Rey utilizes her staff as a weapon in a style similar to the real-world martial art of bōjutsu. She is also the best melee fighter of the three sequel trilogy main characters. She quickly adapts to using the Skywalker lightsaber to best (an admittedly injured and deeply unstable) Kylo Ren in a desperate duel. In The Last Jedi, she not only outwits Luke in a brief duel by using her Force powers after being disarmed but also neatly destroys Snoke's Praetorian Guard with the help of Kylo Ren. By the time of The Rise of Skywalker she is essentially the Token Super of the team, cultivating into her growth as the strongest Force user in the galaxy.
Afraid of Their Own Strength: She tells Luke in The Last Jedi that something inside her is awake and she's afraid. In The Rise of Skywalker, that fear of her Force abilities has returned, especially when she finds out she's Palpatine's granddaughter and sees visions of herself on the dark side. She is so terrified of losing control of herself and hurting people she even temporarily exiles herself until Luke persuades her that she has the inner strength and virtue to resist the dark side.
All-Loving Heroine:
- In The Force Awakens she is quick to come to the defense of BB-8, after witnessing two other scavengers trying to scrap the droid for parts.
- Likewise in The Last Jedi after learning more about Kylo Ren's past, she begins to sympathize and connect with "Ben Solo", and makes it her personal mission to bring him back to the Light after feeling the conflict within him. She gives this up after he kills Snoke and takes his place, but she is overjoyed in The Rise of Skywalker she sees Ben has turned.
- When confronted by a Vexis snake on Paasaana in Rise of Skywalker, she notices that it is injured, and puts away her lightsaber so she can use the Force to heal its wounds. Later, when facing Darth Sidious, she says that she can't hate him even in spite of the misery he's caused to her and her friends.
Anti-Anti-Christ: Rey turns out to be Palpatine's granddaughter, who Palpatine attempts to goad into killing him in order to turn her to the dark side and make her the Empress. Rey however refuses the offer and kills Palpatine without giving into her anger by reflecting his own power back into him. At the end of the film, she takes Skywalker as her family name instead of Palpatine.
Anywhere but Their Lips: She kisses the comatose Finn on the forehead as a gesture of farewell. In the novel, she is described as kissing him, but it doesn't specify where.
Armor-Piercing Response: When she finally tells Kylo Ren why she didn't join him even though he sensed she wanted to, it leaves him in a state of Stunned Silence:
"I did want to take your hand. Ben's hand."
Ascended Demon: As the granddaughter of Darth Sidious, who himself is the premiere Satanic Archetype of the saga, Rey was believed by him to be destined to act out his will, and she's been noted by Luke to have natural tendencies to lean close to the dark side. In spite of all of that, Rey proves herself to be nobler than her blood and commits fully to heroism in the end.
Ascended Fangirl: She's a fan of the main characters from the original trilogy. To her, they are legends. Having Han offer her a job serving on the Falcon within a day of teaming up with him and Chewie makes her light up. Luke and Leia both become her teachers in using the Force, though her fangirling of Luke fades upon interacting with him.
Audience Surrogate: Rey was absolutely giddy to meet the heroes from the Original trilogy, citing their legendary accomplishments. She also doubles as a Wish-Fulfillment to female audiences.
Back-to-Back Badasses:
- She teams up with Kylo Ren to take on Snoke's Praetorian Guards in The Last Jedi. At one point, she even jumps onto his back to give herself leverage to kick a guard away.
- Attempted against Palpatine with Ben Solo in The Rise of Skywalker before being instantly overwhelmed by his singular mastery of the Force.
  Darth Sidious: (To Rey and Ben) Stand together, die together!
Bad Powers, Good People: In a desperate attempt to pull a First Order transport holding Chewie captive back down to the ground, she ends up destroying it with Force Lightning, foreshadowing her lineage before The Reveal.
Badass Adorable: Cute as a kitten and tough enough to single-handedly take down both of Unkar Plutt's thugs in close combat, and that's before her Force potential awakens. And much like Luke, she is an endearingly childlike dork with a kind heart and an insatiable lust for adventure, who is able to derive her own effective (if crude) personal Lighsaber-Form from bojutsu (staff-combat) within days of even holding one for the first time and defeating a dark-lord with it. Even with the caveat of said dark-lord being injured and psychologically unstable, that's impressive as hell.
Badass Bystander: Despite being The Heroine, she starts the movie as this. Finn tries to save her from an attack and is surprised when she's able to fight back and kick ass.
Badass in Distress:
- When she is brought to Snoke in The Last Jedi, she quickly realises she's gotten way in over her head. Snoke is vastly more skilled in the Force, easily overpowering and outmaneuvering her, and she's surrounded by his Praetorian guards and Kylo Ren to boot. Snoke very easily (and painfully) extracts Luke's location from her mind (when Kylo tried it, she was able to resist him). It doesn't stop her from trying to fight back, but she's no match for Snoke. The moment Kylo takes Snoke out, she's immediately back to being badass again against his guards.
- During her re-match with Kylo, who is at the top of his game this time, she puts up a fight, but Kylo eventually overpowers an exhausted Rey, requiring Leia's intervention to momentarily distract him.
Battle Cry: She utters a surprisingly guttural and savage one before facing off against a Praetorian Guard.
Beauty Is Never Tarnished:
- Rey is the only main character in The Force Awakens not to suffer any serious injuries or show visible wounds. Her right shoulder gets grazed by a Vibro Weapon in The Last Jedi, but that does nothing to detract from her looks, either.
- Averted in The Rise of Skywalker; she comes out of the final showdown with Palpatine with several visible injuries and completely filthy. That said, she still never suffered any permanent damage like Anakin and Luke did.
Be Careful What You Wish For: All her life, Rey has wanted to know who she really is, to reunite with her family and to know her place in the universe. The Rise of Skywalker finally gives her the answer: she's the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, one of the most evil men in the galaxy. Needless to say, she's not thrilled to find this out, and her grandfather's first lines to her spell out exactly why what she wanted ends up being the exact opposite of what she wanted in the preceding two movies.
Darth Sidious: Long have I waited... For my grandchild to come home. I never wanted you dead, I wanted you here... Empress Palpatine.
Befriending the Enemy: Towards Kylo Ren. Though their bond initially develops due to their mutual loneliness and empathy for one another, Rey becomes convinced she can turn Kylo back to the light, going to meet him aboard the Supremacy and offering him help. Unfortunately, Kylo has other ideas, prompting her to flee and return to seeing him as her Arch-Enemy until his Heel–Face Turn.
Believing Their Own Lies: Rey constantly tells other people (and herself) that her parents are coming back when it's obvious that this is not true. Maz Kanata calls her out on it, and she is forced to face the truth.
Beneath the Mask: Rey keeps up a somewhat stoic demeanor and insists that her family is coming back for her, but, as her interactions with Maz Kanata and Kylo Ren reveal, she suffers from terrible loneliness and knows, deep down, that her family is never coming back to Jakku. Her outwardly kind and calm demeanor is also frequently broken to reveal a woman with deep-seated anger issues, easily provoked into lashing out when the right buttons are pressed or when under significant stress.
The Berserker:
- When fighting Kylo Ren in the climax of The Force Awakens, she goes from scared to vicious. In the novelization, Kylo Ren is surprised by her raw power and aggressive behavior. Rey is so involved in the combat that the only thing that stops her from killing Kylo Ren is the ground splitting open between them.
- In The Last Jedi, this comes up again as she displays rage in all of her fight scenes, but special credit has to go to when she forces Luke to the ground in a fit of rage, and later utters a frankly terrifying Battle Cry before engaging a Dual Wielding Praetorian Guard.
- Once again in The Rise of Skywalker. She is visibly furious in every instance she encounters Kylo Ren, her words filled with hostility and venom. Most readily apparent during her final duel with Kylo Ren, where her furious expression stands in stark contrast to Kylo Ren's calm and serene expression. Culminates when she mortally wounds a distracted Kylo Ren in anger, her face clearly illustrating that she fully intended to kill him.
Beware the Nice Ones: Rey is not above resorting to violence or acting with deadly intent. Case in point, she leaves a nasty scar on Kylo Ren's face after the latter injures Finn without remorse and murders Han Solo. In The Last Jedi, the first thing she does when she sees Kylo again is to pull out a blaster and shoot at him. This didn't hurt or kill him, as he wasn't actually present, but it's still a rather jarring shift from her usual demeanor. She also goes so far as to physically attack Luke after finding out about his role in Kylo's fall to the dark side. Later, during the confrontation in Snoke's throne room, she gets downright vicious in fighting the Praetorian Guard after Kylo has killed Snoke. Even more during The Rise of Skywalker where she frequently demonstrates a proclivity to violence and anger, even going as far as to lash out at Finn, one of her closest friends.
Big Eater: Finn can only marvel at the amount she eats at Maz Kanata's castle in the novelization. Not surprising considering she's been used to barely eating all her life. It's implied in the novelization that she is hungry more often than not.
Big Sister Instinct: Well, Little Sister Instinct.
- BB-8- She saves BB-8 in The Force Awakens and always checks his antennae in subsequent films.
- Finn- Saves and protects Finn in all three films.
- Poe- She saves him when his ship is being attacked by buzz droids, saves him from aliens who kidnapped BB-8 in the short story Through The Turbulence in Tales of Jedi and Sith, and in the TROS novelization, she was about to call on the Force when Zorii holds a blaster to Poe's head.
Blue Is Heroic: She ends up wielding the blue-bladed lightsaber once owned by Luke and built by Anakin Skywalker. At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, however, she fashions a new yellow lightsaber.
Brainy Brunette: Not so much in the manner of books this trope implies, but Rey's very handy with mechanics, somehow fixing the "Falcon" when Han himself couldn't. Kinda of required given her means of survival was searching crashed starships for vital parts to sell for food. She also displays on-the-spot ingenuity while fighting the Praetorian guards, such as escaping an armlock by dropping her lightsaber, then catching and reigniting it in a Reverse Grip.
Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: She defeats Palpatine by deflecting his Force-lightning back at him, but the effort of doing so kills her. Luckily, Ben's around to revive her.
Broken Ace: Rey knows a lot about mechanics, is a decent pilot, skilled enough in melee combat to hold off multiple opponents and pick up the basics of lightsaber-duelling within only minutes of holding one, and is also one of the most naturally powerful Force-users of her generation. However, she was forced to learn many of her skills simply to survive on Jakku after being dumped there as a child— she has abandonment issues because of this, as well as intense feelings of self-doubt and isolation, which she tends to cover up with naïve optimism.
Broken Bird:
- Being an abandoned child made her one. Despite her naïve optimism, she has abandonment issues, judging by the look on her face when Finn announces his plan to leave and the vision it triggers.
- Despite being exceptionally proud of having fixed the Falcon, when Han gives her a non-response, her glee turns on a dime to almost abject disappointment.
- This becomes even more evident in The Last Jedi. When Kylo bluntly points out her parents threw her away like garbage, she furiously and tearfully denies it, and uses the dark side cave Luke had warned her about to try and get information about her parents. When it fails to give her the answers she desperately wants, she's devastated. She later admits that she had deluded herself into thinking her parents were better than they were, admitting they were "no one" and she meant very little to them. Good thing that was later proven wrong.
- Expanded upon further in The Rise of Skywalker; not only does Rey finally discover that her parents indeed loved her and only abandoned her to protect her but she even finds the weapon used to murder them. It gets even worse when she finds out that she's the granddaughter of one of the most evil men in the galaxy, the Emperor himself, which puts a lot on her psyche.
Broken Pedestal: Played with. A big portion of Rey's story in The Last Jedi is her exasperation at Luke's quitter attitude and and eventual shock from learning about his history with Kylo Ren. That said, when she confronts Snoke, she declares that he underestimates Luke and her faith in him seems to be restored when he turns up on Crait to help save the Resistance.
Daisy: As a lot of people know: it's difficult when you meet your heroes, because they might not be what you expect.
The Cameo:
- Her voice, specifically her speaking to the unconscious Finn at the end of The Force Awakens, can be briefly heard alongside many other pivotal characters in the Star Wars canon as Ezra walks through the World Between Worlds in Star Wars Rebels, about 16 years prior to her birth.
- She appears briefly in the final issue of The Rise of Kylo Ren; when Ben kills Ren and cements his turn to the dark side, she senses this on Jakku, stating she feels "cold".
Captured on Purpose: Near the climax of The Last Jedi, Rey delivers herself to the First Order via escape pod out of the belief she can turn Kylo Ren back to the light (mirroring Luke's actions in Return of the Jedi).
Cardboard Box Home: Not your "traditional" cardboard box, though. Rey lives in a half-destroyed AT-AT walker.
Changeling Fantasy: She and Kylo Ren believe in The Last Jedi that her years of "waiting for her parents" and wanting them to be someone important was just repressing that her actual parents were a couple of jerkass junk traders who sold her for drinking money and ended up buried in a pauper's grave god knows where ages ago. However, The Rise of Skywalker revealed this to be untrue. While they did abandon her, it's to keep her safe from her grandfather, Palpatine.
Character Development: She starts out as a loner intent on waiting for her family to come back, and she maintains this mindset in insisting she has to go back to Jakku once she helps BB-8 complete his mission. Even after Maz Kanata flat-out tells her that whoever left her on Jakku is never coming back and she has to go forward, she refuses to accept it to the point of running away. It takes the discovery of her Force powers to convince her of her destiny and to find Luke, the person she realizes she has to go to. Over the course of The Last Jedi, Rey struggles with her past and current situation, but her gradual acceptance allows her to start forging her own path as a Resistance heroine and the last Jedi after Luke's death.
Chekhov's Skill:
- Climbing and scavenging through destroyed military equipment means she knows her way around Imperial/First Order technology/architecture, and it helps her twice: when piloting the Falcon through a crashed Star Destroyer to escape two TIE Fighters, and when escaping the Starkiller Base by herself.
- Also, her skill in staff-fighting, given that she ends up wielding another kind of melee weapon.
- Her power to heal living beings with the Force in The Rise of Skywalker, though for a different character besides herself. After she uses this ability to heal Kylo, he himself uses it to revive Rey in the climax.
Choice of Two Weapons: Rey uses the NN-14 blaster gifted to her by Han Solo and a lightsaber as the situation requires. This is notable because most people who get a lightsaber do away with keeping a blaster on hand.
The Chosen One: The Rise of Skywalker turns Rey into this, with every Jedi assisting her fight against Palpatine to restore balance in the galaxy. Art director Rick Carter even opined that she was the one who ultimately fulfilled the ancient Jedi prophecy, rather than Anakin himself.
Combat Pragmatist: Even after she gets a lightsaber, Rey is still not fully proficient with it at first. Thus, she also uses her reliable quarterstaff, blasters, and other weaponry. In The Rise of Skywalker, after Rey recovers Chewbacca's confiscated items from Kylo Ren's chambers, she briefly uses Chewie's bowcaster to take out a few nearby troopers.
Contrasting Sequel Main Character:
- Unlike the previous female leads Leia and Padmé, Rey doesn't have a privileged background, starting out as a poor scavenger on a backwater world.
- Unlike the previous Force-sensitive heroes, Luke and Anakin, Rey doesn't jump at the call. In fact, she rejects it until the final act of The Force of Awakens. Where Luke and Anakin both dreamed of a greater adventure, Rey's greatest hope was for her family to come back for her. She also grew up almost completely alone, unlike the two Skywalkers (Luke was raised by his aunt and uncle, and Anakin was brought up by his mother). There's a visual contrast between them as well: Anakin and Luke were both light-haired men, while Rey is a dark-haired woman ^note. And unlike the two Skywalkers, she did not lose any body parts in the course of her adventure as Anakin lost his right arm to Count Dooku and Luke lost his right hand to Darth Vader. ^note
Converse with the Unconscious: Briefly with Finn after he's left comatose fighting Kylo Ren. She assures him she's certain they'll see each other again before she leaves for Ahch-To.
Cool Bike: Her speeder is a futuristic variant that hovers above the ground, carries her gear, and has customizations for speed and electrocuting would-be thieves.
Cool Starship: Rey inherits the Millennium Falcon after Han's death, taking it on her mission to find Luke and when paying her respects to the Skywalker family.
Cool Sword: She feels the Force calling her towards Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, and later uses it to fight Kylo Ren. She then inherits Leia's lightsaber in The Rise of Skywalker. At the end she buries both weapons at the abandoned Lars homestead, and has crafted her own lightsaber, one of the only one-handed lightsabers we see in the franchise (and it's yellow).
Cope by Pretending: This is generally how she deals with being abandoned by her parents. She tells everyone and herself that her parents are coming back eventually, marking the days on the wall of her AT-AT walker, avoiding leaving Jakku for too long so she'll be there when they return and wears her hair in the same style she had as a little girl so they'll recognise her. She's been doing this for nearly fifteen years, unable to face the fact her parents didn't want her and left her forever in a wasteland (for extra drinking money, at that). When Kylo finally gets her to admit this to herself and tells her they're long dead, she breaks down, but also seems to start accepting that she cannot keep living this way and that it's time to move on.
Costume Evolution: By The Last Jedi, Rey has gone from her white and tan outfit to a grey and dark brown one, to visually reflect her growing conflicted feelings over her abandonment on Jakku and the suffering the First Order has caused the people she's come to care about. As of The Rise of Skywalker, she's wearing an outfit similar to traditional Jedi garb while including elements of her original scavenger outfit, but now in all white, reaffirming her status as The Heroine and acknowledging her scavenger past.
Crazy Survivalist: In Rey's Survival Guide she talks about gathering resources and layering traps around her AT-AT walker to protect herself from other scavengers.
Cute Bruiser: Don't let her looks fool you. She's more than capable of handling herself in a fight and WILL kick your ass if you mess with her or her friends.
Curb-Stomp Battle: Suffered one against Snoke, until Kylo Ren saved her.

D-G

Daddy Had a Good Reason for Abandoning You: Rey herself invokes this, telling herself and others that her family genuinely care about her and are coming back for her eventually, so they must've had good reasons for leaving her alone on Jakku. However, given they've been gone for fifteen years, it's starting to look a little suspect, with both Maz Kanata and Kylo Ren pointing out her parents are unlikely to be coming back. It's ultimately subverted; it's revealed in The Last Jedi that Rey's parents didn't have altruistic reasons for abandoning her, they just didn't want her, and she was in denial as a coping mechanism. Then The Rise of Skywalker revealed that they actually did — they were hiding her from her grandfather, Emperor Sheev Palpatine.
Daddy's Girl: Kylo Ren learns through their Force link that she secretly yearns for Han Solo to be her father.
Damsel out of Distress:
- Finn finds out she's one of these when he finds her under attack by a group of thugs on Jakku and rushes in to help her, only for her to soundly beat them all before he can even get there. She later uses a Jedi Mind Trick on a stormtrooper in order to free herself from Kylo Ren's clutches and defeats him in a lightsaber duel on Starkiller Base.
- Averted in The Last Jedi; she's utterly helpless against the far more powerful Snoke, who subdues her with a flick of his wrist and orders Kylo to kill her. Luckily for her, Kylo kills Snoke instead.
- Played straight when she fights the Praetorian guards, though she's got Kylo as back-up. Everytime she gets into trouble with a guard she's able to figure a way out of her predicament using some quick-thinking; she also saves Kylo by throwing him her lightsaber when he's disarmed.
Dark and Troubled Past: She was abandoned by her family when she was only a child and has spent her life alone, fending for herself. It's eventually revealed her parents left her on Jakku in an effort to hide her from her grandfather, Palpatine, who would have tried to corrupt her to the dark side.
Dark Is Not Evil: In the third act of The Last Jedi, Rey switches to a dark grey and brown outfit in place of her usual lighter-colored ones, but is still definitely one of the good guys— in fact, her resolve to become a Jedi Knight is stronger than ever.
Deadpan Snarker: Not as much as Han Solo, but Rey throws around her fair share of snark. One of her first remarks, in response to BB-8 citing his origins as "classified", is a dry, "Classified, really? Me too. Big secret." Humorous in hindsight, given that her true identity was being kept hidden from both her and the galaxy at large. Much later, when she's imprisoned by Kylo Ren and he orders her to "Tell [him] about the droid", she responds by listing off BB-8's model and features.
Deathly Dies Irae: "Rey's Theme" incorporates Dies Irae in the part played with chimes, along with additional allusions to "The Imperial March" and "The Emperor's Theme."
Deconstructed Trope: Rey deconstructs Luke, I Am Your Father and Quest for Identity. Her desire to learn her background and destiny leads her to stay on Jakku waiting for the answers which is called out as preventing her from actually finding them, and once forced to leave she makes reckless decisions to find them. It's then revealed Rey knew all along her parents were nobodies who sold her off for quick money and her obsession over those tropes were her being in denial over her perceived lack of worth. It's then revealed her grandfather was Palpatine, her parents being nobodies and their abandonment were to protect her from Palpatine's planned destiny for her as part of his Evil Plan. This is an even worse revelation that causes Rey to flee to reclusion rather than risk partaking until Luke reveals Leia knew this but trained her anyway knowing she could do good despite this which convinces Rey to confront Palpatine defying what was set up for her. In short rather than those tropes giving her a "place in this story" and destiny they were obstacles to overcome to such as they prevented her from realizing and acting on her own worth, which she achieved by rejecting her circumstances to make her own worth and identity.
Decoy Backstory: Enforced. In The Last Jedi, Rey confronts Kylo Ren, who tells her that her missing parents were "nobodies" who sold her as a baby for drinking money. In The Rise of Skywalker, Rey is told—once again by Kylo Ren—that she is actually the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine by a son of his (explained in tie-in material to have been a clone). Needless to say, she does not take it well. The lack of planning for the sequel trilogy was responsible for this trope: J. J. Abrams reportedly just decided to try to one-up the shock that Rian Johnson had given Rey in the second film of the trilogy.
Defiant Captive:
- After being abducted by Kylo Ren, she's frightened but remains defiant. She refuses to tell him anything about BB-8, snarks at him and not only resists his attempts to extract the map to Luke from her mind, but manages to get inside his head as well and taunts him with his fear of not being as strong as Darth Vader. She eventually manages to escape after figuring out how to use a Jedi mind-trick on a guard.
- When she's brought before Snoke aboard the Supremacy, despite being hopelessly outmatched and outnumbered, she remains defiant towards him and keeps trying to attack him. When she can't reach her own lightsaber, she even uses the Force to swipe Kylo's saber right off his belt instead.
Despair Event Horizon: Rey's lowest point in the saga is after her duel with Kylo Ren on Kef Bir. She exiles herself to Ahch-To out of guilt and fear for mortally-wounding Ben Solo in rage and realizing how close she was to falling to the dark side. It takes a pep talk from Luke Skywalker to get her out of her slump.
Desperately Craves Affection: Downplayed. Rey can take care of herself and is not portrayed as overly clingy, but having lived relatively alone and unloved since she was a small child, she strongly desires companionship and grows attached to people who show her kindness rather quickly. She longs for her parents to come back for her, even though, by her own admission, they abandoned her, and as Kylo points out, she "looks" for her parents in people such as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker. Part of the reason she bonds with Kylo, of all people, in The Last Jedi is because she feels he understands her deep loneliness. Rey also quickly becomes fiercely loyal to her friends in the Resistance and joins their cause.
Determinator: Rey doesn't seem to know how to quit. She spent years on Jakku stubbornly maintaining that her family would come back for her, and in The Last Jedi, she keeps on trying to attack Snoke despite being hopelessly outclassed against him. Even Snoke is impressed by her grit and determination, complimenting Rey on having "the spirit of a true Jedi". In The Rise of Skywalker, she faces off against the Emperor himself, and though he effortlessly manhandles her with the Force and nearly drains her life away, she doesn't stop fighting until he's dead.
Didn't Think This Through: In The Last Jedi, she apparently didn't have a back-up plan in case she couldn't turn Kylo Ren away from the dark side; she had no way of escaping the Supremacy and severely underestimates Snoke. She only gets away due to some lucky breaks (Kylo tricking and killing Snoke, Holdo's Suicide Attack which enables her to steal Snoke's escape craft etc); beyond that, her plan hinged around her belief that Kylo could be redeemed, partly based on a vision she had (which she may have misinterpreted).
Dies Wide Open: Her eyes remain open when she dies until Ben revives her.
Disapproving Look: Gives one of these to Kylo Ren in their final scene in The Last Jedi, he having spurned her offer to join the Resistance in favour of becoming Supreme Leader and trying to kill them all.
Disaster Scavengers: She lives in a fallen AT-AT, and most of what she owns is scavenged from the wreckage of a great battle between the New Republic and the Empire.
Disney Death: Her final battle with Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker claims Rey's life, but Ben Solo sacrifices his own life to revive her.
Distaff Counterpart: To Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy. She starts out as an impoverished orphan on a desert planet, is swept up into the war thanks to an astromech droid she salvages, later discovers her proficiency in the Force, and eventually even uses Luke's old lightsaber and seeks training under a previous-generation Jedi (Luke himself) on a remote planet. By the end of The Force Awakens, it's clear that she's The Hero of the sequel trilogy, just as Luke was to the original trilogy. This is especially the case in The Rise of Skywalker, where she's revealed to be related to one of the main villains and is tempted by the dark side to save her friends, but ultimately defies this and is saved by a redeemed villain.
Dreaming of Things to Come:
- When Rey touches Anakin's lightsaber, she has visions from the past of events she wasn't present for, such as Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker's duel on Cloud City and the aftermath of Ben Solo's destruction of the Jedi temple, followed by a vision that soon after comes to pass of Kylo Ren stalking her in the Takodana forest.
- It's implied in The Force Awakens and confirmed in The Last Jedi that she used to dream of the island on Ahch-To where Luke now lives as a hermit.
Dual Wielding: In the climax of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey wields both Luke and Leia's lightsabers, using both to push back Palpatine's Force lightning and destroy him.
Dude Magnet: Downplayed. The series doesn't delve too heavily into romance, but she has been ship teased with three men — Finn, Kylo Ren, and Poe. On a squickier note, the novelization of The Force Awakens suggests that Plutt lusted after her too.
Establishing Character Moment: She needs rations and could sell BB-8 for a ton of them. She doesn't. This is a droid she has just met and has no connection to, so the gesture should tell you a lot about what kind of person she is.
Evil Me Scares Me: Her vision of her being corrupted by the dark side and siding with her grandfather terrifies her.
Evil Rey: Don't be afraid of who you are... (she then lunges at Rey revealing her monstrous visage)
Expository Hairstyle Change: In The Last Jedi, Rey has switched to a new hairstyle where more of her hair is down, to reflect her growing force abilities. It also signifies that she's stopped waiting around for whoever left her on Jakku to come back, and is ready to move on. In The Rise of Skywalker, she has gone back to wearing her hair in three buns, but the buns are larger and tidier-looking.
Face, Nod, Action: During the climax on Exegol, Ben and Rey connect through the Force and silently communicate a plan; Ben nods once to confirm it and Rey then passes him one of her lightsabers through their bond. Cue the Curbstomp Battle.
Fallen Princess: It's revealed that she is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, but her parents gave up their position and became junk traders, while Rey herself lived most of her life as a lowly scavenger. Considering the kind of person her grandfather is, it's probably better for her than she didn't grow up around him even if she would've lived more comfortably.
Falling into the Cockpit: Rey proves extremely adept at flying the Millennium Falcon and evading TIE fighters even though by her own admission she has limited piloting experience. She's not quite perfect out of the starting gate though, as she initially has some trouble with handling and tends to scrape the ship along the ground a lot. It's very likely that this stems from her potential with the Force.
Family of Choice: She ultimately chooses to identify herself as a Skywalker and not a Palpatine, which Luke and Leia's Force ghosts show approval towards.
Fashionable Asymmetry: A downplayed example. Rey wears a leather cuff around one wrist, but not the other. She later adds a leather binding around one forearm to cover the scar she got in The Last Jedi. The dark grey outfit she wears in The Last Jedi's climax also falls unevenly, while still looking cool and practical.
Fatal Flaw: Downplayed, but her stubbornness counts. In a sense, she wasted years on Jakku hoping to see her family, remaining adamant even after becoming a wanted fugitive. She refuses the call multiple times because she cannot accept the fact no one is coming back for her. Even in The Last Jedi, she clings to her goal of reuniting with her parents, which leads to her attempting to use the dark side for answers. She also comes to firmly believe that Kylo Ren can be changed; a mindset that, in spite of Luke's warnings, leads to her getting captured, tortured, and nearly killed by the First Order. Ultimately, it takes extreme circumstances in order for her to change her mindset.
Fire-Forged Friends: Escaping from stormtroopers in a piece of "garbage" with Finn leads to them becoming quick friends.
Fish out of Water: Having spent her whole life on a desert planet, Rey, unlike Anakin and Luke, is awestruck when she sees a forest for the first time, even putting her hand underneath the rain to catch it.
Five Stages of Grief: Goes through these in The Last Jedi, albeit not perfectly in order.
- She at first expresses a lot of Denial over her parents abandoning her and Luke Skywalker not being the instant magical solution to all her problems.
- She then tries Bargaining with the dark side cave, trying to get it to show her parents to her.
- When this doesn't work, she breaks down and enters a state of Depression, crying to Kylo that she feels utterly lost and alone. And she has another breakdown near the end when Kylo forces her to admit the possible truth about her parents and she realizes he's still on the dark side.
- Then she expresses Anger with Luke for not telling her the whole truth and for shutting her out repeatedly, even physically attacking him. She also gets pretty angry with Kylo whenever she sees him until the third act.
- By the end of the film, she finally seems to be moving towards Acceptance; she admits to herself that her parents are gone (and never intended to return for her) and that she can't rely solely on Luke to save everyone. She is ready to move forwards with her new life as a Jedi and Resistance fighter.
Flaw Exploitation: Snoke exploits Rey's naivety and her compassion for Kylo to lure her to him in The Last Jedi. He would've succeeded... if Kylo hadn't exploited his flaw of arrogance and offed him.
Foe Romance Subtext: With Kylo Ren, mostly in The Last Jedi. They have a Force Bond which they use to communicate, argue, and eventually confide in each other. She gets flustered when she inadvertently sees him shirtless through said bond, they touch hands through their bond, and he re-extends his We Can Rule Together offer to her by holding out his hand. In the finale of The Rise of Skywalker, he sacrifices himself to save her, and she initiates their kiss just before Ben dies and becomes one with the Force.
Foil:
- Rey and Kylo Ren have a number of interesting parallels and contrasts. While he is an infamous enforcer for the First Order who began as a Jedi student, she is a seemingly random scavenger who becomes aligned with the Resistance and becomes a Jedi student at the end of The Force Awakens. They both have rather stoic exteriors that give way to strong emotion (glee and sorrow for Rey, rage and angst for Ren), hiding deeper insecurities and fears (Rey has abandonment issues and has lived a very lonely life; Kylo fears never living up to the image of Darth Vader and is tempted by the Light Side). They both saw Han Solo as a father figure, but to opposite results: Rey bonded quickly with Han, and mourned his death while Ren saw Han (his biological father) as a disappointment and, although conflicted before and after the fact, murdered him. Ren embraces the dark side, while Rey follows the Light, but both struggle with inner Light and Dark. Rey wears white, Ren wears black. They were both sent away by their families, are both strong in the Force, and they each had/will have Luke Skywalker as a teacher in the ways of the Force. Even their roles in the story contrast, but are equal in importance; she's The Heroine, while he's The Heavy. The Last Jedi introduces another contrast between them: Kylo's parents were Living Legends who sent him away to be trained by Luke. Rey's parents were thought to be nobodies, before their connection to Palpatine was revealed.
- Taking it to the almost literal extreme, the Star Wars Oxygen podcast, in their breakdown of the The Force Awakens soundtrack, noted that when you play the notes in Rey's theme in reverse, you get Kylo's theme.
- Rey and Finn are both effectively nobodies who are dragged into the Resistance's war with the First Order and initially just want to get away from it, but grow to become loyal and dedicated Resistance heroes. Rey is a Force-sensitive who learns to become a Jedi, whereas Finn is a Badass Normal ex-Stormtrooper. Rey's family abandoned her and she longs for their return, while Finn was taken from his by the First Order and doesn't seem overly concerned about the family he never knew.
- Rey is poor, heroic, female, a Jedi, and finally a Messianic Archetype. Her grandfather is the former Emperor of the Galactic Empire, as evil as you can get, male, a Sith of course, and a Satanic Archetype.
- Rey and Snoke both came from obscurity to become major figures in the Sequel Trilogy, both are powerful Force-users who become important influences on Kylo Ren, and both of their origins are connected to Palpatine. Unlike the deformed, malevolent Snoke, who dresses in golden robes and owes his allegiance to The Dark Side, Rey is a beautiful, kind young woman who dresses modestly and never truly falters in her connection to the Light. Snoke was The Corrupter to Ben Solo, while Rey serves as a redeeming influence on him, though in The Last Jedi, both Rey and Snoke overestimate their influence on Kylo (he murders Snoke and rejects Rey's offers of redemption), but whereas Snoke's cruelty leads Kylo to kill him, Rey's kindness eventually leads him back to the light. Snoke was the opulent dictator of the First Order, while Rey grew up in poverty and becomes a Resistance hero. Finally, while Snoke lived and died as nothing more than a puppet to Darth Sidious, Rey proves able to grow beyond her evil grandfather's influence, destroying him once and for all and freeing herself to choose her own destiny.
Forced to Watch:
- In The Last Jedi, Snoke uses the Force to physically drag her over to a window to watch the Resistance transports being blown up one by one. She responds by grabbing hold of Kylo's lightsaber and charging at Snoke.
- The Emperor blows the Sith Temple's roof off so she can see the Resistance Fleet getting decimated by the Final Order.
Four-Temperament Ensemble: The phlegmatic. Kind and optimistic, but also stubborn and naive.
Fragile Speedster: She prefers fighting using her agility. She struggles if she's forced to fight using strength. She overcomes this enough in the climax of The Force Awakens to overpower Kylo Ren in a struggle over their lightsabers. Enforced in Rise of Skywalker, where Kylo Ren overpowers an exhausted Rey at the climax of their final duel.
Friendless Background: Rey was alone on Jakku for over a decade, and appeared to spend most of her time scavenging the wrecks of old ships. Based on her initial reaction to having her hand grabbed by Finn, she was not used to being touched either.
From Zero to Hero: The child of lowlife scavengers who sold her off for drinking money, and who spent most of her life on a planet that's essentially a junkyard in the middle of nowhere, Rey grows to become a Jedi Knight and a powerful enemy for the First Order. However it's also inverted: She's the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, one of the most purely evil men in the franchise, and her mother and father willfully abandoned their family name and became nobodies in an effort to hide her.
Gadgeteer Genius: According to supplemental materials, she built her speeder herself, and deliberately made it top-heavy and difficult to fly so that no one would want to steal it. Plus, she makes a living scavenging ship parts, so she'd naturally have some facility with machines. She even booby-trapped the area surrounding the AT-AT she lives in to keep rival scavengers out.
Gamer Chick: The novelisation of The Force Awakens claims she spent her free time on Jakku playing flight simulators on a computer she had salvaged.
Gender-Blender Name: Rey is Spanish for "king" and is a common male name in Spanish speaking countries as well as the United States. Rey sounds like the English male name "Ray", and also coincidentally the Japanese androgynous name "Rei".
The Gift: Even moreso than any other Jedi shown in canon; she had subconsciously used the Force for years (such as her dreams of the future and being able to pilot the Falcon). Once she begins experimenting with her gift by outright copying what Kylo does, Rey can instantly use abilities like mind-tricks and telekinesis. By age 20, her skills, raw power, and adaptability were enough to pull back a massive flying spaceship, as well as destroy it via Force Lightning. Likewise, Rey can levitate in the air and perform Force healing, something never shown before in the original six movies.
Gold and White Are Divine: By the end of the Sequel Trilogy, she wears mostly white and has built herself a lightsaber with a golden blade.
Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: In The Last Jedi, Rey admits that she can't understand why Kylo Ren would murder his own father. Having longed for her family for her entire life, Rey struggles to comprehend why Kylo would forsake and destroy his own.
Good Counterpart:
- To Kylo Ren. Snoke even describes Rey as the light that rises to match Kylo's darkness.
- To her grandfather, the Emperor. She embraces the full power of the Light Side, through the lineage of the Jedi Order, to face off against his thousands of generations of Sith.
Good Girl Gone Bad: Downplayed and ultimately defied. She's a plucky All-Loving Heroine and aspiring Jedi Knight, who in spite of her harsh upbringing is determined to help others and do what's right. However, the Trauma Conga Line she goes through puts a lot of pressure on her in The Rise of Skywalker. She begins thoughtlessly lashing out in anger, pushes her friends away, nearly kills one of her friends when she loses control and wants to "destroy" Palpatine for killing her parents. She also sees visions of herself as a Sith Lady, who tells her this is who she really is. This culminates in her stabbing an unarmed Kylo after he triggers her Rage Breaking Point. However, she immediately regrets this, healing Kylo's wound and even taking a 10-Minute Retirement out of fear she'll fall to the dark side until Luke Skywalker encourages her. She ultimately remains on the side of good.
Good Is Not Soft: Rey is nice to everyone, except the bad guys (as Kylo Ren can attest). Or people she mistakes for bad guys (as Finn can attest).
Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Inverted. They can adjust, but Rey prefers to fight using her staff, while Finn prefers to fight using blasters. She later upgrades to a lightsaber, though she keeps the NN-14 blaster Han Solo gave to her as her primary weapon for ranged combat.

H-L

Had to Be Sharp: A lifetime alone on Jakku has forced Rey to become extremely self-reliant in order to survive in a world where nearly every facet is capable of killing her, down to the sand itself. Intimate knowledge of spaceships, advanced survival skills and combat skills being a few of the skills Rey learned to survive.
Hairstyle Inertia: She's shown to have her trademark three buns in a flashback as a child of five. In Rey's Survival Guide, it's explained that she keeps the same hair in the hope that her family will recognize her after over a decade. Notably, by the end of The Last Jedi she's started wearing her hair down, symbolizing her acceptance that her family is long gone and it's time for her to carve out her own destiny. She does go back to a three-bun hairstyle in The Rise of Skywalker, but it's not completely identical to her earlier style.
Happy Place: At night when she was feeling especially alone and unable to sleep, she would imagine herself on an island in the middle of an ocean; she would also dream about the place. It later turns out she was actually seeing the Temple Island on Ahch-To, which she travels to at the end of The Force Awakens.
Hates Being Alone: One of her greatest fears is that she will always be alone and unwanted; this stems from being abandoned by her parents as a child and growing up with no one who truly cared about her. She can survive relatively alone if she absolutely has to (she did just that for over a decade), but she doesn't like it and is much happier when she's with friends. When Finn admits he lied to her about being a Resistance fighter, she appears more upset that he might leave her, begging him not to. She's even willing to have conversations with Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi just to have someone to confide in, especially when she realises he's just as lonely as her.
Hates Being Touched: Rey actively dislikes it when Finn tries to hold her hand twice while running, and is not pleased when he uses her head as a support in the Millennium Falcon. She grows to move past this, reaching out to take Finn's hand twice while fleeing enemies, taking the initiative by hugging Finn when he comes to rescue her, hugging Leia, and cradling Finn while holding his hand near the end of The Force Awakens. She also offers her hand to Kylo Ren so they can touch hands, or as much as they can via Force-bond, and embraces Finn happily in The Last Jedi. In The Rise of Skywalker, she's even more physically intimate with people: hugging Leia again; putting her hand on Ben's chest to heal a wound, touching his face, and kissing him; offering a hand to Zorii Bliss; and sharing a long group hug including hand-holding with Poe and Finn.
Healing Hands: As of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey can mend wounds through the Force via giving her own life force away to the injured, even when they have been skewered by a lightsaber. All the more impressive when you consider that no other Jedi has replicated such a feat in the prequels.
Heartbeat Soundtrack: Rey's signature Force sound is a heartbeat, in contrast to Kylo Ren's feline growl.
Held Gaze:
- Has this with Luke at the end of The Force Awakens and her first scene in The Last Jedi when she arrives on Ahch-To and presents his old lightsaber to him.
- She and Kylo share a lot of intense looks, especially in The Last Jedi. Depending on the context, it's types Antagonistic, Platonic and Supernatural (sometimes all three at once). When they touch hands through their Force bond, they gaze intently into each other's eyes until Luke interrupts.
- She and Kylo share a lot of held gazes again in The Rise of Skywalker, especially when she heals him and confesses she wanted to take Ben's hand, when she sees that he came to help her defeat Palpatine, and in the moments building up to (and after) their kiss.
The Hero Dies: Subverted. After defeating Palpatine, the exertion kills her but Ben sacrifices his own life to revive her.
Heroic BSoD: She has a few of these throughout the trilogy, which isn't surprising considering the amount of trauma she experiences.
- She has a very understandable one after watching her first real friend "abandon" her, being shown a traumatic Force Vision of loss and death, forced to confront the truth that whoever left her on Jakku is never coming back for her, and encouraged by someone she just met to give herself over to the Force and fight the dark side (a frightening thought for someone plagued with doubt, fear, and abandonment issues). She gets better upon seeing that Finn, Han and Chewbacca came back for her, and that it was Finn's idea to mount a rescue.
- She can barely move when Kylo Ren kills Han, and Finn has to pull her away before Stormtroopers fire on them.
- After the dark side cave on Ahch-To shows her only her own reflection rather than her parents, she sinks to her knees, looking utterly distraught. She ends up huddled under a blanket in her hut, tears spilling down her face as she laments how alone she feels. Kylo, of all people, comforts her after she confides in him.
- She has a minor one when she realises Kylo is still on the dark side and is finally forced to face the Awful Truth about her parents and past, standing there sobbing for a few moments before snapping back into action.
- The rapid punch of learning that she's Palpatine granddaughter in her duel with Kylo Ren through their Force bond, receiving a Force premonition aboard the wreckage of the second Death Star of her destiny as Empress of the Sith, and nearly killing Kylo Ren afterwards, leads her to a 10-Minute Retirement on Ahch-To.
Heroic Sacrifice: She fully embraces the legacy of the Jedi Order and the Power of the Light Side to fight the Emperor, giving her life in the process. Subverted when Ben Solo revives her soon after.
Heroic Second Wind: During her duel with Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens, he has her pinned against the edge of a cliff and she's clearly being overpowered. However, it's at this moment Kylo offers to train her, reminding her she has the Force. She's able to calm herself, access the Force and promptly gains the upper hand against him. Receives another one in Rise of Skywalker, where the spirits of multiple jedi (including Obi-wan, Anakin, Qui-gon Jinn and Yoda among others) encourage her to rise one more time in her struggle against Palpatine. Stating that all the Jedi that ever lived stand behind her, and giving her the will to continue the fight.
Hero Protagonist: Rey is the main protagonist of the sequel trilogy, and upon awakening her Force powers, takes up the Skywalker family lightsaber and brings down Kylo Ren and eventually Emperor Palpatine himself.
History Repeats:
- Like her male predecessors from the other two trilogies, she's a desert nobody who, in a matter of days, becomes involved in a galaxy-wide fight, has untapped Force-sensitivity, and winds up as the beacon of hope to uphold what little is left of the light side.
Holding Hands:
- She initially doesn't like it when Finn tries to take her hand, possibly because she's not used to being touched. When she takes his hand willingly later on, it's a sign she's come to trust him and views him as her friend.
- In The Last Jedi, there's a scene where she offers her hand to Kylo Ren, during one of their Force-bonds. Kylo reciprocates and although they're not quite holding hands, they are able to touch each other through the bond despite being lightyears apart. As well as being a symbol of their growing friendship and empathy for each other, it's also Ship Tease.
- In The Rise of Skywalker, she holds hands with Poe Dameron during their group hug with Finn.
Hope Bringer: Rey's presence ultimately gave hope to Luke that the Jedi Order will rise again. Becomes one for The Resistance, as their strongest warrior and last surviving Jedi she gives them the hope that through her strength they can prevail against the tyrannical regime as her erstwhile master Luke once did before her.
Horrible Judge of Character: Zig-zagged in regards to Kylo Ren. On one hand, she's proved dead wrong when she thinks he's going to turn back to the light and join the Resistance. On the other, she was right about him not killing her on Snoke's orders and Snoke underestimating him. She also senses he still feels conflicted about his choices and the ending of the film implies this is still the case. In The Rise of Skywalker her faith in him is validated when he makes a Heel–Face Turn and helps her defeat Palpatine.
Humble Goal: Far from the grand dreams of adventure that defined both Anakin and Luke Skywalker, in The Force Awakens, all Rey initially wants is for her family to come back for her. Sadly, this is an impossible dream; both Maz Kanata and Kylo Ren come to realise that Rey's parents would never return for her, and Rey herself finally accepts in The Last Jedi that her parents are truly dead and gone.
Humble Heroine: Almost to the point of Heroic Self-Deprecation. She often states she doesn't think she's anything special, even saying she's "no one" from "nowhere". When Finn is grabbed by a rathtar, she rewires the ship's doors to slam shut on the rathtar's tentacles, saving Finn. When he comments on it, all Rey says is "That was lucky."
I Am Very British: She speaks with a Received Pronunciation accent, which is appropriate considering as of The Rise of Skywalker, she's Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter. Daisy Ridley was asked to adopt RP because her natural, less posh accent was difficult for Americans to understand.
Iconic Outfit: One of her most well-known outfits is her shinobi-like scavenger outfit with arm-bindings and her iconic, three-bun hairstyle, which she wears throughout The Force Awakens. Come The Rise of Skywalker, her updated outfit still contains elements of her original scavenger outfit as an acknowledgement to her past.
If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!:
- In the novelization of The Force Awakens, this is the main reason why Rey doesn't kill Kylo Ren at the end of their duel.
- Explicitly invoked in the climax of The Rise of Skywalker; Palpatine wants her to kill him so that he can merge his Force essence with hers and make her into the new Sith Empress.
I Just Want to Be Loved: Her defining character trait is her desire to be needed and loved, like the Rebel heroes she heard about in stories, after spending years abandoned on a desert junkyard in the middle of nowhere. This has negative sides to it. For instance, she deludes herself into a Changeling Fantasy, and attempts to refuse the call multiple times because she thinks a "nobody" like her is less worthy of it than others, like Luke or even Kylo Ren. But, it also drives her to help BB-8 and Finn reach the Resistance, be willing to stand up to the First Order regardless of odds, volunteer to try to bring Luke back, and constantly try to do what's right.
I Knew There Was Something About You: In the novelization of The Force Awakens, Kylo Ren feels something strange about Rey in the Takodana woods and kidnaps her. After Rey summons the Skywalker lightsaber, Kylo Ren says almost in awe, "It is you," recognizing her as the "awakening in the Force" he felt.
I Know Mortal Kombat: According to supplemental materials, most of her pre-movie piloting experience came from a flight simulator she salvaged.
Instant Expert: Within about a year of Jedi training, Rey has surpassed almost (if not all) of her predecessors in "Rise of Skywalker", displaying feats that most Jedi masters can only dream of.
I Will Wait for You:
- She spent fifteen years waiting for her parents on Jakku. Even though she knew they were never coming back, she still waited out of misplaced hope and delusion that they would.
- The novelization for The Last Jedi establishes that this is why she spares Kylo; although she knows things would be easier if she killed him, she also realizes she made a mistake by expecting him to be ready to reject the dark side just because he turned on Snoke. So she'll wait, and let the future unfold however he—and the Force—wills it.
Implausible Deniability: She keeps saying that her family will return for her, even though she's been stranded on Jakku for years and has had to learn to survive with little to no help. Maz tells her bluntly that her parents aren't coming back, and she needs to learn how to move forward.
Improbable Piloting Skills: Rey is able to do pretty bold acrobatics with the Millennium Falcon even without formal training. It's strongly implied she was subconsciously using the Force to fly the Falcon.
Improbable Age: She's only 19-20 years old throughout the entire trilogy. Yet, she easily learnt to fly the Millenium Falcon, take on the First Order's soldiers, and master advanced Force abilities in seconds. Within a year of training, Rey has performed feats far beyond what other Jedi showed in the prequels. For extra context, this includes an 22 year old Anakin himself, despite his 13 years of training by Revenge of the Sith.
Improvised Training: In The Last Jedi, Rey uses a tall rock formation as a target while training with first her staff, then her lightsaber. Then she accidentally swings too hard with the latter and cuts the rock in two, smashing one of the island caretaker's wheelbarrows in the process.
In the Hood: Rey's costume in The Rise of Skywalker adds a hood, evoking the Jedi Knights of old.
Incompletely Trained: Luke didn't teach her much in The Last Jedi before she left Ach-To to confront Kylo Ren and Snoke. She already has much more raw Force power than the Jedi of old, but still has room for growth, especially in lightsaber combat. By The Rise of Skywalker, Leia completes Rey's training, helped by the Ancient Jedi text.
Incorruptible Pure Pureness:
- Downplayed in The Force Awakens; Rey shows some of the visceral rage associated with the dark side of the Force while dueling Kylo and nearly killing him, but isn't tempted by it past that moment.
- Played straight in The Last Jedi. Although Luke is shaken when she's immediately drawn to a cave practically drenched with the dark side, she's able to enter it and emerge without turning. Snoke realizes her commitment to the light side when she's brought to him, and his intent instantly changes from trying to turn her to his side to killing her himself or making Kylo do it. Later, despite her empathy for Kylo and her hope that he would turn, she rejects his offer to join him by turning to the dark side and stands firm in her commitment to the Jedi.
- In The Rise of Skywalker, she struggles with being tempted by the dark side. Her inner narrative in the novelization reveals she is aware of how powerful she'd be if she turned to join Kylo, and she fears she could be The Corruptible despite Leia's words. She wants to kill Kylo and tries more than once, almost succeeding when she succumbs to her fury and mortally wounds him. Sensing Leia's death and horrified at her own actions, she heals Kylo and flees into would-be exile before Luke's spirit urges her to keep fighting. Palpatine attempts to provoke her into killing him and ascending to the Sith throne. Although momentarily tempted by his claims that it's the only way to save her friends, she senses Ben's presence and his return to the light. This gives her hope and the strength to refuse as she proclaims herself to be a Jedi.
Informed Attribute: Given how a Jedi is supposed to strive for discipline and wisdom, it's pretty wierd for Snoke to refer to Rey as having "the spirit of a true Jedi" when sensing her fierce anger and reckless intent to attack. Then again, Lucas himself did previously explain that "the Dark Side is not a reliable narrator."
The Ingenue: She often acts very naïve towards the world around her, and can even come across as somewhat childish when interacting with others. It's justified, since she has been more-or-less alone since she was five. She's also very kind and pure-hearted, even showing compassion towards Kylo Ren.
Insistent Appellation:
- By the third act of The Last Jedi, she constantly refers to Kylo Ren as Ben Solo or Ben thanks to their growing bond and her hope that he'll return to the light and truly be Ben. This stops when he makes clear he's still committed to the dark side.
- She keeps calling Luke 'Master Skywalker' even though he's initially not interested in training her.
Instant Expert: Her aptitude in the Force make Anakin and Luke look "normal" in comparison. Likewise, Rey is so shockingly good at lots of things even before she's aware of her Force powers and after spending her life disassembling junked starships on a lawless desert planet.
- She applies knowledge of ship schematics and parts, a one-time flight of a different ship, flight simulator hours, and a dash of Force premonitions into expertly flying the Millennium Falcon.
- She figures out how to reverse a Mind Probe from Kylo Ren after being exposed to it twice thanks to Kylo inadvertently sharing some of his understanding of the Force. Subsequently, she's able to manage the Jedi Mind Trick on a Stormtrooper (after two failed attempts) and do a Force pull, all without formal training or even time to practice on her own. Even she's shown to be surprised by this, telling Finn after she pulls off the mind trick that he wouldn't believe what she did to escape and looking shocked when she pulls the lightsaber to her hand.
- During The Last Jedi, she wields the Skywalker lightsaber fairly proficiently, despite being a complete novice with it (she's experienced in wielding a staff, but doesn't have formal training in that weapon, either, and they're different enough that it wouldn't help much).
Internal Homage: Like Anakin and Luke before her, Rey is a major character living a hard-scrabble life on a desert planet, and has dreams of leaving of her world behind to explore what lies beyond in the galaxy. Like Anakin, she also has a natural talent for technical skills, piloting, and the Force, which makes her something of a Gender Flip.
It's Personal: What her motivation for killing Palpatine becomes after she learns that he had her parents killed and is the cause of her miserable existence.
I Work Alone: She declined offers to work with scavengers' groups because she preferred being alone and realized that she would be better off on her own.
Jack of All Trades: By having to survive in the desert, Rey managed to learn a wide variety of skills.
Jedi Mind Trick: After realizing she's Force-sensitive, she figures out how to use a mind trick on a stormtrooper to get him to free her from her shackles and drop his weapon. In her Age of Resistance issue, she also uses one on Ara-Nea to make him surrender peacefully and free his slaves.
Jerkass Ball: In The Rise of Skywalker she becomes a lot more prone to aggression and anger, especially after finding out her grandfather is Darth Sidious and had her parents murdered. After her rage leads her to endanger her friends and wound Kylo Ren in a blind fury, she's horrified at herself, fearing that she will end up falling to the dark side until Luke gives her a pep talk. Afterwards, she's back to her usual Nice Girl self.
Journey to Find Oneself: At the beginning, she just wants to help BB-8 and deliver the map to the Resistance and then return to Jakku to wait for her family. By the end of the movie, she discovers her latent Force powers and decides to find more about it, finding herself in the process.
Journey to the Center of the Mind: In the novelization, this is what Rey does when finds herself inside Kylo Ren's mind.
Juggling Loaded Guns: Downplayed example, more than once she unthinkingly points a blaster at Han before he hurriedly pushed the barrel away from him.
Justified Criminal: She and Finn technically steal the Millennium Falcon from Plutt to escape First Order TIE-fighters on Jakku. Given the circumstances though, she was completely justified— she and Finn needed to get BB-8 and the map to Luke Skywalker away from the First Order, who probably weren't just going to ask them nicely for it. Also, the Falcon didn't really belong to Plutt either— he bought it off a guy who stole it from Han Solo and Rey eventually returns the ship to its rightful owner. That, and Plutt's such a Jerkass you don't feel too bad for him.
Kick the Dog: Twice, during her duel with Kylo on Kef-Bir; first, she violently Force-pushes Finn away from the fight when he tries to intervene, and later, she stabs a distracted and unarmed Kylo through the stomach with his own lightsaber. The second act makes Rey realize how close she's come to the Dark Side, and she heals Kylo before leaving with the intent of exiling herself.
The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Rey is astounded when she's told that Luke Skywalker is real, and she's quite bowled over when she realises that the scruffy old man who has captured her ship is legendary smuggler Han Solo, and more so when she realises that the ship in question is none other than the Millennium Falcon.
Last Kiss: Her first kiss with Ben Solo is also their last, as he dies shortly afterwards.
Last of Her Kind: By the end of The Rise of Skywalker, she becomes the last remaining inheritor of various legacies:
- After Luke Skywalker's passing in The Last Jedi and Leia Organa's passing in The Rise of Skywalker, she becomes the last known Jedi in the galaxy.
- She is the last remaining descendant of Emperor Palpatine, a legacy she renounced to ensure that Darth Sidious and the Sith remain dead and forgotten for good.
- Though not by blood, she is officially blessed by Luke and Leia's Force spirits to be the last Skywalker in the galaxy.
Leeroy Jenkins: In The Last Jedi, Rey cuts her Jedi training short and goes straight to the Supremacy to try and turn Kylo to the light and defeat Snoke. She fails on both accounts—Snoke is killed, but by Kylo; Rey herself is telepathically thrown around and tortured, highlighting just how unprepared she was. She was minorly impulsive in The Force Awakens as well, like attacking Finn because BB-8 said he had Poe's jacket instead of just asking why he had it.
Leitmotif: Rey's fairytale-ish Establishing Character Music is present whenever she fights or searches for purpose.
Levitating Lotus Position: She is seen doing this in her first scene in The Rise of Skywalker, while attempting to communicate with the spirits of deceased Jedi.
Light Is Good: Rey is one of the nicest characters of the saga, and constantly associated with the Light side. Her name can be interpreted as "ray of light", she always wears white-ish clothes and Maz Kanata tells she has "the light" within her. Her new outfit in The Rise of Skywalker is also almost entirely white.
Like a Daughter to Me: Leia comes to think of her as a daughter, treating her in a caring, nurturing manner and training her as a Jedi. In the novelization of The Rise of Skywalker, it's explicitly stated that she thinks of Rey as the daughter she never had.
Limited Wardrobe: She only has one outfit in The Force Awakens and wears it day after day, save for her final scenes right at the end. It's justfied as due to being a poor scavenger, she's likely unable to easily obtain other clothing. After joining the Resistance, they supply her with a few new outfits, though she still tends to stick to the same one for days on end.
Lineage Comes from the Father: It turns out she gains her Force abilities from her paternal grandfather; however, she rejects everything else he tries to pass down to her, including his surname, empire and the dark side.
Literal-Minded: During her first lesson with Luke, when he tells her to "reach out", Rey physically holds her hand out as far as she can. After Luke messes with her for a moment, he makes it clear that he meant for her to reach out with the Force.
Lonely Doll Girl: A doll dressed as a Rebel pilot is seen at Rey's house back in Jakku. Considering her Friendless Background and her loneliness, it's implied that the doll was her only company.
Lonely Together: Kylo isn't the only one she has, but in The Last Jedi he is the only one who seems to understand and share her deep loneliness, which they end up bonding over.
Loner-Turned-Friend: Rey's instant connection with Finn is made more poignant by the fact that he might be the first human being to take an active and benevolent interest in her in over a decade.
Long-Lost Relative: In The Rise of Skywalker, it's revealed she is Sheev Palpatine's long lost granddaughter, who was hidden from him by her parents so he wouldn't subject her to a Sith upbringing, or worse.

M-R

Machine Empathy: She has a feel for the Millennium Falcon's temperamental maintenance needs before she even realizes it's the Falcon. It impresses Han as well, convincing him to give her a job offer as second mate. She also learns the Falcon's flight handling quirks quite quickly after some early mishaps (also caused by a groggy Falcon that hadn't flown in years).
Magnetic Hero: Rey is able to persuade several people during the events of The Force Awakens. She convinces BB-8 to show her the map to Luke Skywalker. Finn becomes her friend almost instantly. Han Solo helps her with BB-8 and offers a job to her in the Millennium Falcon despite barely knowing her. By the end of the movie, even Kylo Ren is impressed by her Force powers to the point where he asks to be her teacher. In The Last Jedi, she restores Luke's faith in the Jedi and helps him in forgiving himself for his past failures.
McNinja: In her first appearance, she's mostly dressed like a shinobi and does Le Parkour when scavenging.
Meaningful Name: Rey, as in ray of hope and/or light. Additionally, 'Rey' is the Spanish word for King (from the Latin Rex). Fitting, given the reveal that she's Palpatine's granddaughter and, by extension, heir to the Empire. It's also a play on Rei which means spirit in Japanese, and it's pretty damn useful as she channels the spirits of past Jedi to bring down Palpatine once and for all. Rei can also mean zero in Japanese which fits how she started as a nobody or a zero. Rey is also just a G away from grey, which fits how she dabbled between the light and the dark in the trilogy. Her production name was "Kira", which is a Shout-Out and close to the Sanskrit name "Kiran", meaning "sunbeam".
Meaningful Rename: After defeating Palpatine, Rey adopts the surname of "Skywalker", symbolising her dedication to the legacy of Luke Skywalker, her own destiny as a Jedi Knight, and having considered the Skywalker family as her true family.
Meditation Powerup: Rey briefly meditates during her duel with Kylo Ren, which allows her to turn the tide of the battle and win.
Meet Cute: Downplayed; she first met Finn after BB-8 mistook Finn for a thief that robbed Poe of his jacket. Then she chased down Finn, who was coming to help her fend off attackers, and beat him to the ground. Their subsequent interactions are much smoother and they soon become very close friends.
Mentor's New Hope: What she hopes to be, and what Leia Organa desperately needs her to be, by training under Luke Skywalker. Just before Luke dies, he proclaims her a Jedi.
Merlin and Nimue: In a sense, she is the Nimue to Luke's Merlin, though there's no romance between them whatsoever. Rey ends up ignoring Luke's warnings and steals the Jedi texts from him, but unlike many examples of this trope she never truly loses faith in him.
Messianic Archetype: Rey comes from a poor background but eventually becomes the Galaxy's final hope in combating the dark side of the Force as embodied by Palpatine, who is the Satanic Archetype of the franchise. Along her journey, she is able to inspire people to help in the battle against the First Order, such as changing Finn's mind to fight for the Resistance, rekindling Luke's faith in the Jedi Order, and even successfully turning Ben Solo back to the light side. In The Last Jedi, she rescues the Resistance by lifting and dividing the rocks blocking the escape path, similar to Moses parting the Red Sea. In her battle with Palpatine, Rey forms a cross with two lightsabers while blocking Palpatine's attack. Though she dies to save the galaxy, she's brought back to life by Ben as he holds her body across his lap in a Pietà Plagiarism.
Messy Hair: She usually wears her hair in three untidy but practical buns, ideal for a scavenger. In The Last Jedi, the buns become progressively looser and messier to reflect her emotional state, until they finally come completely undone when she jumps into Ahch-To's sea cave, after which she wears her hair down for the rest of the film. Come The Rise of Skywalker she styles it in a much tidier version of her signature triple hair bun, though her hair becomes progressively messier over the course of the film.
Metaphorically True: Kylo Ren attempts to break her in The Last Jedi by forcing her to acknowledge that her mother and father were nobodies, then dismissing them as junk traders who sold her off for drinking money. However The Rise of Skywalker reveals this is absolutely not the case, as Rey is Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter. Kylo Ren notes that his earlier remarks are still technically true, because Rey's mother and father foresook their family name and status to become nobodies in an effort to protect her from her grandfather (Kylo himself also didn't know about her relation to Palpatine at the time, so what he told her in The Last Jedi was true as far as he knew).
Mind over Matter: After Finn is defeated and Kylo Ren tries to claim it for himself, Rey summons Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber to her hand to fight Ren. By the end of The Last Jedi, she's grown powerful enough with this ability that she can clear a landslide's worth of rock away from a passage to clear an escape route for the survivors of the Resistance. Come The Rise of Skywalker her mastery of the Force has grown even further, being able to block lightsaber strikes and redirect blaster bolts.
Minor Living Alone: Rey is around nineteen at the start of the story, and has survived alone on Jakku since she was a child.
Misery Builds Character: Rey's life on Jakku could only be described as miserable. Forged into someone capable of making hard choices, even violence, she has still grown to be kind at heart and a believer of the goodness in others.
Morality Pet: In The Last Jedi, she tries to be this for Kylo Ren, but while he does have a great deal of interest in bringing her to his side, he's so devoted to the dark side that Rey is ultimately unable to turn him. Eventually her expressing she did want to take Ben's hand, as well as Leia and Han's love, does truly turn him back to being Ben Solo.
Multiple-Choice Past: The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker differ in the details of Rey's family and childhood. In The Last Jedi, Kylo confronts her denial about her parents, whom she'd hoped would someday come back for her. He says they were junk traders who were "nobody," sold her for drinking money, then died. In The Rise of Skywalker film, Kylo reveals to her that she's Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter; her father was Palpatine's son, her parents became "nobody" to hide from Palpatine, and they sold and abandoned her on Jakku to protect her from the assassin that killed them. The novelization states that Rey's father was a "not-quite-identical" clone of Palpatine rather than his biological son, making the terms "grandfather" and "granddaughter" inexact.
Multi-Melee Master: She initially uses a staff, which doubles as a walking stick for trekking across rough terrain and reflects her humble roots. She later starts using a lightsaber— Anakin and Luke's old saber to be exact - as she begins her journey to become a Jedi. She eventually crafts her own lightsaber, one of the only one-handed lightsabers in the franchise. Even better, the saber she crafts for herself is clearly made with pieces of her staff, showing her transformation into a jedi has come full-circle.
Mundane Object Amazement: Having been raised on a desert planet, Rey is very touched when she sees trees for the first time in her life when she arrives at Takodana. On Ahch-To, she's also seen admiring the rain, putting her hand out to touch it.
The Musketeer: She uses a variety of blasters throughout the trilogy, most prominently the NN-14 blaster pistol given to her by Han Solo, and later gets Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, but she only opts for blasters in ranged fights and uses the lightsaber in close-quarters combat.
My God, What Have I Done?:
- Downplayed Trope. The first time Rey shoots a stormtrooper on Takodana— implied to be the first time she's ever (directly) killed someone— she's briefly frozen in shock and glances at the blaster with a horrified expression. However, she quickly snaps out of it and begins fighting back in earnest.
- In The Rise of Skywalker, when she thinks that she's just killed Chewie by accidentally crashing a First Order transport, she shrieks his name while wearing an utterly horrified expression. It even sends her into a brief Heroic BSoD.
- After stabbing Kylo in a rage during their final duel, she instantly regrets her choice made in anger and is horrified in the realization that she had just mortally wounded him as Leia died to reach him.
My Significance Sense Is Tingling:
- She senses Luke's death in The Last Jedi and Leia's death in The Rise of Skywalker while they're on different planets.
- The Rise of Kylo Ren reveals that when Ben Solo fully embraced the dark side by killing Ren, thirteen-year old Rey sensed this all the way on Jakku, although she didn't understand it, simply saying she felt cold suddenly.
Mysterious Waif:
- In The Force Awakens, Rey is a young woman living in a state of extreme poverty on a desert planet after being abandoned by her parents in her childhood. She suffers from a serious case of Mysterious Past, where even she is unaware of her own background. Kylo Ren senses something about her, and inadvertently awakens her Force abilities when she blocks him from further invading her memories.
- Subverted in The Last Jedi, where it's revealed Rey invoked this trope to block out her childhood memories as part of her own personal Changeling Fantasy, as she preferred to believe she had a mysterious past instead of accepting the reality of a traumatic one. Kylo tells her she's hidden from himself that her parents were junk traders who sold their own child for drinking money and eventually died in a ditch. No one knows about her past because she really is a nobody with "no place in this story" before her decision to help BB-8.
- Double Subverted when it's revealed in The Rise of Skywalker that her parents didn't selfishly abandon her, but tried to hide her because she's Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter.
Neutral Female: Justified and then subverted. Kylo Ren tosses her into a tree and knocks her out, rendering her unconscious and unable to intervene during his fight with Finn. It's subverted when she gets up after he defeats Finn and takes him on herself.
Nice Girl: Even as a loner at the beginning, she's kind enough to be willing to rescue a droid she's never met before from a net, keep him rather than sell him for a large profit, and defend him from thieves. She even shows compassion to Kylo Ren, a mass murderer who killed his own father, believing that she can turn him back to the light and being heartbroken when she fails. In The Rise of Skywalker, Luke Skywalker tells her that one of the key things that set her apart from her grandfather is her heart.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
- Downplayed in The Force Awakens. When two gangs Han owes money to corner him in his ship, Rey attempts to hack into the ship's computer to shut the doors in the corridor, trapping the gangs. However, she instead accidentally opens the cargo doors, unleashing the rathtars Han had been transporting into the ship and causing utter chaos, although the main characters are able to use the distraction to escape.
- A much more serious case of this occurs in The Last Jedi, where she goes to the Supremacy hoping to turn Kylo Ren back to the light. This only gives Kylo the help he needs to kill Snoke and the Praetorian Guard and take over as the new Supreme Leader. Snoke also managed to extract Luke's location from her mind once she was brought to him and intended to destroy Luke and the island on Ahch-To (including the civilian caretakers and all those cute little porgs) once the Resistance had been dealt with. Kylo's assassination of him and the subsequent events were the only things that prevented this happening.
- In The Rise of Skywalker she tries to stop a First Order transport from flying away with a captured Chewie, and somehow accidentally unleashes Force lightning, crashing the transport and seemingly killing Chewie. Although she later learns that Chewie was actually on a different transport and helps rescue him, she, Poe and Finn did genuinely believe at the time that Chewie was dead.
The Nicknamer: Initially bestows the nickname "Classified" on BB-8, but later starts using his proper name. This is only after she actually hears said name, so it was probably more out of necessity than anything.
No-Sell: In their first Force connection in The Last Jedi, Kylo attempts to use a Jedi mind-trick on her to get her to bring Luke Skywalker to him. However, as mind-tricks only work on the weak-minded, Rey just stands there, glaring at him and looking somewhat confused. He doesn't bother trying again.
No Social Skills: Downplayed. Given that she lives alone and rarely interacts with others, it's understandable she is not very polite to Finn when they first meet, until they become Fire-Forged Friends at least. She can also come off as a bit blunt at times and especially doesn't bother with social niceties if there's a crisis or injustice afoot. This is exaggerated almost to the point of flanderization in the novel Resistance: Reborn, where she is very awkward and stuttering in most of her scenes, though in the majority of her appearances she can hold conversations.
Not With the Safety On, You Won't: The first time she tries firing the NN-14 blaster at a Stormtrooper, nothing happens. She's initially confused, before exclaiming "Safety!"; she then has to quickly look the blaster over and flip a switch to turn the safety off, while dodging enemy fire. In The Last Jedi, she's learned from this; the first time she sees Kylo through their Force bond, she immediately turns off the safety before firing at him.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: After Rey learns of her true heritage as the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, she declares that she intends to find Palpatine and not just defeat him, but destroy him. Finn immediately remarks that what she is saying does not sound like the Rey that he knows. Her angry dismissal of Finn's concerns is also unsettling given that she has never lashed out at Finn, her first friend and ally.
Oh, Crap!:
- In The Force Awakens, she has this reaction the first time she sees Kylo Ren in person, seemingly coming out of nowhere to stalk her through the forest on Takodana.
- In The Last Jedi, when she learns Snoke intentionally let her think she could turn Kylo to lure her into a trap.
- She has this reaction in The Rise of Skywalker when she unwittingly unleashes Force lightning on a First Order transport, bringing it down. Particularly because she believed Chewbacca was on it at the time.
Omniglot: She knows Droidspeak, Teedospeak and at least other few alien languages, a useful skill to have on a Scavenger World.
One-Handed Zweihänder: Downplayed. Though certainly not the size typical of this trope, lightsabers are nonetheless traditionally shown to primarily be two-handed weapons. Rey is one of the few characters shown to habitually user hers one-handed.^note By the end of The Rise of Skywalker she has constructed her own lightsaber that's designed with a one-handed hilt to fit her fighting style.
Only Friend:
- For a brief time in The Last Jedi, she effectively serves as this for Kylo Ren. Everyone else in Kylo's life has either let him down (his parents, Luke), exploits and abuses him (Snoke), hates him (Hux, the Resistance), or is indifferent towards him (Phasma, the stormtroopers). Rey, on the other hand, learns more about Kylo and starts to see him as someone worth saving, showing him compassion, calling him by his birth name, and imploring him to be a better person. Kylo, for his part, treats Rey with more respect and kindness than he shows to almost anyone else. Some of their interactions have a Foe Romance Subtext.
- Upon Kylo's Heel–Face Turn in The Rise of Skywalker, she becomes this again; the redeemed Ben Solo doesn't live long enough to form a bond with anyone other than Rey, and he spends his final moments fighting by her side and giving up his own life to save hers.
Only Known By Her Nickname: Within the ranks of the First Order and on Jakku she is only ever referred to as "the scavenger" or "the girl", rather than by her actual name. Though it is possible that they simply didn't know her name.
Only One Name: She's only known as "Rey", until the very final seconds of the saga where she adopts the name "Rey Skywalker".
Only the Chosen May Wield: Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber calls for her twice, even when Kylo Ren, Anakin's grandson, is trying to summon it.
Orphan's Ordeal: Growing up without parents on Jakku wasn't idyllic for Rey; she lives a lonely, dangerous and depressing life as a scavenger, collecting junk day after day for fewer and fewer portions of food. Her upbringing has given her self-doubt and abandonment issues, though in spite of this, she remains a good and selfless person. She also starts adopting her newfound friends as a surrogate family once her adventure begins.
Parental Abandonment:
- Rey was left on Jakku by her family when she was five years old, has no idea why, and is still waiting for them to return for her in The Force Awakens.
  Rey: I know all about waiting.
  BB-8: [beeps question]
  Rey: For my family. [smiles] They'll be back. One day.
- In The Last Jedi, Kylo confronts her with the "truth" that her parents are ordinary junk dealers who sold her for drinking money and died. She decides to let go of her past and move on.
- The Rise of Skywalker flips the script by revealing that her parents had a very good reason for abandoning her: she was Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter, they had to hide her somewhere he'd never find her, but they had to mislead one of his underlings who'd caught up to them.
Le Parkour: She's very comfortable jumping over large distances using the force and climbing through walls. Justified in that a lifetime of scavenging derelict spaceships would require a high level of dexterity to safely navigate.
Platonic Declaration of Love: She promises a comatose Finn that she'll come back to him before kissing his forehead.
Platonic Life-Partners: Despite some Ship Tease she had with Finn in Force Awakens, Finn described their relationship as this in Resistance Reborn.
Please, Don't Leave Me:
- When Finn announces he intends to leave, she begs him not to go, distraught.
- In her Force vision, she is shown desperately screaming for her parents to come back when they abandoned her on Jakku.
Plucky Girl: Despite being abandoned by her parents on a desert planet, working as a slave for Unkar Plutt, and going through several traumatic events in The Force Awakens, Rey stays very brave and optimistic. She is hopeful that her parents will come back for her, and also tells a comatose Finn that she believes they'll see each other again. In The Last Jedi she has a lot more moments of doubt and despair, but even when all hope seems lost she keeps going. With some encouragement from her friends, she's able to stay positive that the fight isn't over yet.
Possession Implies Mastery: It only takes her a few shots to become a passable marksman with a NN-14 blaster pistol she's never used. She also has natural skill with a lightsaber from the moment she picks it up, but initially isn't as good as the formally trained Kylo Ren — and when the two finally fight on equal footing, he bests her in combat, only being defeated while he's distracted and she attacks him with a lethal blow in a Moment of Weakness.
Poverty Food: Rey works as a scavenger to exchange mechanical parts for very few portions of unappetizing and bleak breads. Elaborated on in the supplementary materials, where it is revealed that the food she works for are old Imperial, Rebellion and New Republic military rations of varying states of quality.
Power Copying: Kylo Ren tries to probe her mind, and she blocks him, then reverses it. Then she uses the Jedi Mind Trick. Later in the film, she uses a Force Pull right when Kylo is trying to do the same.
Protagonist Title: She is this for both The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, in the former she becomes the sole remaining Jedi once Luke dies and in the later the Skywalker family becomes extinct with Rey ultimately taking up their last name as her own.
Psychic Block Defense: When Kylo Ren probes her mind to find the missing star chart, she manages to block his attempts, and eventually gets into his mind. Unfortunately, she's unable to resist Snoke's mind probe, he being far more experienced with the Force than Kylo.
Psychic Link: Has a Force bond with Kylo Ren which they communicate through in The Last Jedi and Kylo uses to stalk her in The Rise of Skywalker. It starts off with being able to see and talk to each other from across vast distances, sense each other's emotions, and eventually physically interact. They learn in The Rise of Skywalker that they form a "dyad", which is (according to the visual dictionary) a special kind of Force bond that essentially makes them one in the Force. When it grows stronger, they can transfer matter; Kylo takes a necklace from her across the galaxy while hunting her, and Rey passes a lightsaber to Ben to help him fight his former knights. Their combined bond was so strong that Palpatine was able to absorb its energy to physically restore himself back to his prime.
Psychometry: When she first touches the Skywalker lightsaber in The Force Awakens, she receives a series of visions seemingly of both past and future events. Upon first picking up a Sith dagger in The Rise of Skywalker, she instinctively senses it has been used to commit terrible acts and it triggers multiple visions, including one of the dagger being used to murder her parents.
Quest for Identity: Her lack of family left her without connections to anyone, and she was adrift after Maz gently urged her to accept that they weren't coming back. This Story Arc is seemingly resolved in The Last Jedi; she has been chosen by the Force and she chooses to do good as part of the Resistance, and her parents were just some lowlifes who sold her for a few coins. Except they weren't, as The Rise of Skywalker reveals. She is Emperor Palpatine's granddaughter, his chosen heir to the legacy of the Sith and the Empire. However, Rey rejects this as she has already forged her own identity as a Jedi Knight and an adopted daughter of the Skywalkers.
Rage Against the Mentor: After Luke disrupts a bonding moment between her and Kylo and she learns that he had contributed to Kylo's fall to darkness, she finally has enough and outright attacks him, even managing to overpower him, and demands to know the truth. She calms down pretty quickly once she hears Luke's side, though.
Randomly Gifted: She was born to ordinary parents with no known Force sensitivity, but is a powerful Force user. In The Rise of Skywalker, however, while her father isn't revealed to be a Force user, her paternal grandfather is, as he's actually the Sith Lord himself, Sheev Palpatine.
Really Royalty Reveal: It's eventually revealed she's the granddaughter and heir of Emperor Palpatine (and thus is also descended from Naboo's nobility).
Rebellious Princess: Turns out she is Palpatine's granddaughter and she rebels against him, rejecting his intention to have her become the new Sith Empress.
Recurring Element: Like Anakin and Luke before her, Rey is a Force-sensitive outcast in the desert who joins the heroes in the first film of a trilogy.
Refusal of the Call: She's the heroine of the Sequel Trilogy, but she doesn't want to be, preferring to return to Jakku to wait for her family. The horrifying vision she experiences after finding Luke's old lightsaber doesn't help. It takes seeing Han Solo die at the hands of his own son to finally snap her out of it.
Replacement Goldfish: When Han sees how capable Rey is at flying and repairing the Millennium Falcon, he offers her a job as a member of his crew. If Ben Solo had not become Kylo Ren, the ship would have been his birthright. Rey ends up flying on ship when Han dies, as Chewbacca defers the pilot's seat to her.
Reunion Vow: She makes a one-sided one to a comatose Finn at the end of The Force Awakens, telling him she believes they'll see each other again before leaving to find Luke Skywalker. They are reunited at the end of The Last Jedi when she comes to save the Resistance on Crait and they share a big hug.
Reverse Grip: She alternates between using her lightsaber this way and a standard grip since she's used to fighting with a staff (where she would be using a standard and reverse grip simultaneously). In The Last Jedi, she escapes from a Praetorian Guard's armlock while holding her lightsaber in a standard grip by dropping her lightsaber from one hand to the other and catching it in a reverse grip, then quickly dispatching him. During her final battle with Kylo Ren in The Rise of Skywalker, she alternates between standard and reverse grips.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
- Kylo's slaying of Han Solo and severe injuring of Finn prompts this — during their fight, Rey is visibly furious and seriously injures Kylo before backing down from the lure of the dark side and sparing him.
- Within the ruins of the second Death Star, Kylo destroys the Sith holocron (the only map leading to Palpatine) and she immediately attempts to kill him. She gives him what would've been a mortal wound before realizing how close she came to the dark side and that his mother just died.
Room Full of Crazy: Rey scratches marks into the rusty wall of her AT-AT walker home, one for each day passed, probably as a way to hold on to sanity. By the time the story begins, there are thousands of scratches, and in the novelization she admits not even bothering with the correct number anymore.
Rules of Orphan Economics: After being abandoned by her parents, she lives by herself in a downed AT-AT walker and toils away as a scavenger for meagre portions, while also having to teach herself to fight to protect herself from less savoury characters on Jakku. No one else on Jakku cares about her; Unkar Plutt only values her for her usefulness to him. On the plus side, her self-sufficiency and adaptability serves her well once the Call to Adventure arrives.

S-Y

Save the Villain: After she stabs Kylo Ren with his own lightsaber while he's distracted by his mother's death, Rey quickly regrets it and uses the Force to heal the wound. This is partly what prompts Kylo to have a Heel–Face Turn.
The Scapegoat: After Snoke's death and Rey's escape from the Supremacy, Kylo Ren claims that Rey had murdered Snoke in order to cover up his own assassination of the Supreme Leader.
Screaming Warrior: Rey comes out with some downright visceral noises in battle.
Series Mascot: Following the release of the The Force Awakens and a well-received role, she's been recognized as the true protagonist of the Sequel Trilogy and is front and center in most advertisements after the film, which is quite impressive considering the other Series Mascot is Darth Vader himself.
She-Fu: She prefers using her agility in combat over raw strength, sometimes incorporating her Le Parkour skills.
Shed the Family Name: Rey eventually discovers that she was born a Palpatine, as the granddaughter of Sheev/Sidious, one of the most evil entities the Galaxy has ever seen. After ridding the Galaxy of him once and for all and being revived thanks to the sacrifice of the last living member of the Skywalker bloodline (Ben), she goes to the Lars homestead on Tatooine to bury the last relics of the Skywalkers (the blue lightsabers used by Anakin, Luke, and Leia). An old woman of the neighborhood passes by, and asks her name. She answers "Rey Skywalker", with the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia kindly watching her, shedding the "Palpatine" name that's been tainted with too much infamy.
Ship Tease:
- With Finn in The Force Awakens. They develop a close friendship in a short span of time, Finn asks her at one point if she has a boyfriend, Rey is heartbroken when he tries to leave, Finn goes deep into enemy territory to rescue her, they reunite with a long embrace, and she kisses him on the forehead in the end while he's in a coma. They become Platonic Life-Partners afterward.
- With Kylo Ren. In The Last Jedi, they communicate through their Force Bond, empathize with each other's loneliness, she sees Kylo Ren shirtless and is flustered by it, they briefly hold hands, etc. Their bond is more powerful in The Rise of Skywalker, they kiss after he transfers his life force to revive her, but then he immediately dies.
Shock and Awe: In The Rise of Skywalker, she loses control in a telekinetic struggle with Kylo Ren and produces a burst of Force lightning powerful enough to destroy the transport they'd been fighting over. Rey is horrified by this power and refuses to use it again for the rest of the film. It's also a big hint that she's connected to another Star Wars character who loves using Force lightning— her grandfather, Emperor Palpatine.
Shout-Out: The character's production name, "Kira", was a nod to Akira Kurosawa, a major influence on the movies. "Rey" is likewise a nod to the longtime publisher of Star Wars books, Del Rey.
Shut Up, Hannibal!: When Kylo Ren is mind probing Rey and starts to read her dreams and feelings aloud, she fights back with ferocity and tells him to get out of her mind. Then she gets into his head and silences the Knight of Ren by revealing his worst fear.
Rey: You're afraid... that you will never be as strong as Darth Vader!
Skilled, but Naive: A downplayed example, as Rey has a broad range of useful skills, is from a rough, backwater place, and has a degree of ignorance of the wider galaxy that this trope usually embodies. However, unlike this trope being played straight, she adapts quickly, doesn't do anything dangerous out of ignorance, doesn't display much social ineptitude, and has some knowledge of outside events (even if they are passed to her as legends/myths or unimportant in the context of her life as a scavenger).
Slave Liberation: In Star Wars: Age of Resistance, she discovers that some "workers" are actually slaves. She uses a Jedi Mind Trick to force the person enslaving them to release them, and to hand himself over to them to be punished for his crimes.
Sleeves Are for Wimps: She wears short-sleeved outfits because Jakku is a hot desert world, whilst wearing a shoulder-covering wrap and bindings around her arms that end at her biceps, presumably to protect her skin from sand, the sun or dangerous machinery.
Spin-Offspring: Although it's not revealed until the final film of the Sequel Trilogy, she's the granddaughter of Palpatine, the Big Bad of both the Original and Prequel Trilogies.
Staring Down Cthulhu: Does this to Snoke when they finally meet. Snoke isn't intimidated in the slightest, though he is impressed by her determination.
Starcrossed Lovers: In an echo of the relationship between Anakin and Padmé, Rey and Kylo Ren begin developing a romantic attraction for each other. Much like Padmé, Rey denies it at first, albeit because Kylo is her enemy instead of bound to a monastic order like Anakin, but the Force dyad between them inextricably links their fates together. It takes a Heroic Sacrifice from Kylo once he turns back into Ben Solo for her to fully accept her feelings for him with a kiss. He dies and becomes one with the Force right after.
Stepford Smiler: This has been a coping mechanism for her Parental Abandonment — she claims that she hasn't given up hope with a smile on her face to BB-8 — but when Maz bluntly but gently tells her that she's known all along that they're never coming back, she is driven to tears. She eventually lets go of this and stops insisting that she has to get back to Jakku.
Stunned Silence: Kylo Ren has a habit of inducing this in her.
- The first time Kylo removes his helmet in front of her, she looks shocked and confused by how outwardly normal he appears; in the novelization, she thinks that he could be any other scavenger she met on Jakku (save for his eyes).
- In The Last Jedi, this is her reaction when Kylo admits she's right about him being a "monster". She wasn't expecting that kind of response and she subsequently begins to view Kylo from a different, more sympathetic perspective.
- A more humorous example of this occurs when they connect through the Force and she turns towards him to interrogate him...only to realise he's not wearing a shirt.
- Once more in her final duel with Kylo Ren on the destroyed Death Star after she mortally wounds him and senses the demise of Leia through the Force.
Suddenly Always Knew That: She reveals in The Rise of Skywalker that she now knows how to heal injuries with the Force when she, Finn and Poe are faced with a wounded Vexis snake on Pasaana. It's not explained on screen how and when she learned this ability (though it can be inferred Leia may have taught her and the Visual Dictionary says she learns techniques in the sacred Jedi texts).
Superior Successor: Unlike Anakin or Luke, Rey never suffers any crushing defeats in her entire trilogy, successfully stopping the First Order in about a year. Also, with just self-learning, she swiftly mastered advanced Force techniques that both men required years of training to use. In fact, by The Rise of Skywalker, Rey has mystical powers that nobody ever demonstrated in the six original films.
Sword over Head: Thrice, Rey has an opportunity to kill Kylo Ren whilst he's down— in The Force Awakens he's too injured to keep fighting, whilst in The Last Jedi he's out cold. Both times, she spares him. One final time in The Rise of Skywalker, she mortally wounds Kylo Ren by stabbing him with his own lightsaber in anger. She immediately realizes her mistake and heals him before leaving, rather than allowing him to die. In the first case, it's If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!; in the second case, it's because she still has hope he might redeem himself, as confirmed in the novelisation. In the final case, it's implied that she realized she struck him down in anger and that she sensed the death of his mother, Leia Organa.
Sympathy for the Devil: Eventually towards Kylo Ren, to an extent. She comes to empathise with his sense of isolation, disappointment, and abandonment, assuring him he's not alone and tries to turn him back to the light, promising she'll help him. During their battle against Snoke's guards she openly expresses concern for his well-being and saves his life by throwing him her own weapon when he's disarmed. However, she quickly ditches him when she realises he's still on the dark side. Though she does sympathise with him, she makes it plain she doesn't agree with what he's doing in the slightest.
That Liar Lies: When Kylo tells her about Luke trying to kill him, she immediately calls him a "Liar", though she doesn't seem certain. She later confronts Luke about it directly, demanding to know if it's true.
There's No Place Like Home: During the events of The Force Awakens, Rey's main goal until being kidnapped by the First Order is to go back to Jakku.
These Hands Have Killed: She freezes in shock the first time she kills a Stormtrooper on Takodana and can only stare at the NN-14 blaster pistol she used to shoot him with. BB-8 has to snap her out of it so that she can try to escape.
This Is Something She's Got to Do Herself: Attempts to pull this on Finn and Poe early in The Rise of Skywalker, initially insisting that she must face Kylo Ren and Palpatine alone. Naturally, Finn and Poe disagree and go with her anyways.
Time-Shifted Actor: Five year-old Rey is portrayed in visions and flashbacks by Cailey Fleming in The Force Awakens and Josefine Irrera Jackson in The Rise of Skywalker (presumably because by the time Rise was made, Fleming was too old to believably play a five year-old).
Token Super: She is this to Poe and Finn, meaning that her deployment on a mission increases the odds of success. She is one of the best pilots and the best fighter of The Resistance, and one of the most powerful Force users alive. Freely acknowledged by Poe, who states that she is their best fighter and needs to be on the front lines.
Tomboy: Especially when compared to the previous female leads. Rey never wears dresses, she has a deep voice, her hairstyle is three messy buns that are practical in combat, her face is described as "grimy" in the novelization, she is very interested in mechanics and piloting, and she's also very good with flight simulators. On top of that, she is also able to defend herself pretty well and kick ass.
Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Despite her tomboy mannerisms, in Rey's Survival Guide it's mentioned that she likes flowers and in-universe fairytales. In The Force Awakens, she's shown to have dried flowers in her home; she also apparently used to play with dolls, as she's shown to have a ragdoll modelled after a Rebel pilot.
Too Hungry to Be Polite: Rey eats her food the same way you'd expect any person who spends most of their time eating alone to—chewing with her mouth open, eating with her hands, licking the plate.
Took a Level in Badass: As she uncovers her potential in the Force, Rey goes from tough scavenger to self-taught Jedi with a few advanced Force skills. She takes another over the course of The Last Jedi, becoming powerful enough to threaten the First Order's strongest soldiers and clear a path for the Resistance to escape from Crait and live to fight another day. By The Rise of Skywalker Poe openly refers to her as their "best fighter".
Tragic Dream: At the start of the trilogy, she longs to be reunited with her long-lost parents. However, it's made obvious that they're never coming back to Jakku and the revelation that they died years ago is the final nail in the coffin.
Tragic Keepsake: Throughout her journey, Rey keeps the NN-14 blaster pistol Han handed to her on Takodana. Her ownership of The Millennium Falcon also qualifies after the demise of Han Solo.
Tranquil Fury: After she taps into the Force properly in the middle of a duel, her face is eerily calm. Then she uses her newfound power to beat down Kylo Ren. Averted in The Rise of Skywalker, where she is shown to rarely be in control of her anger.
Traumatic Superpower Awakening: Although she was always subconsciously aware of her latent Force-sensitivity, it's not until Kylo Ren captures her and forcefully reads her mind that the true extent of abilities surfaces; in fear and desperation she actively resists him and mentally fights her way into his mind to prevent him from seeing the map to Skywalker. Subsequently, she finds she can consciously tap into the Force, later describing it to Luke as feeling as though something inside her that was always there is now finally "awake".
Tyrannicide: In "Rise of Skywalker" Rey ultimately kills a revived Emperor Palpatine, thus stopping the First Order itself.
Unholy Matrimony: In The Rise of Skywalker Rey tells Finn she had a vision of herself and Kylo Ren on the Sith Throne, implying this trope if she were to fall to the dark side. However, she ultimately refuses to join him and he ends up turning back to the Light Side.
Unkempt Beauty: Mostly in The Force Awakens. She's portrayed by Daisy Ridley, who is quite attractive, but tends to wear rather practical, dirt-smudged and scruffy clothing, with untidy hair and scuffed knuckles. In the novelization, Rey is specifically described as a beautiful young woman with a "grimy" face.
Unpleasant Parent Reveal: Her parents have not only been dead for years but also sold her for drinking money and never intended to come back for her. Downplayed because Rey knew this deep down, but was in denial. When Kylo finally spells it out plainly for her, she's reduced to tears. She later finds out that they only abandoned her to keep her safe, but that they were then brutally murdered on the orders of her grandfather, who is Emperor Palpatine.
Unskilled, but Strong:
- How Kylo Ren describes her to Snoke after she resists his Mind Probe and pushes it all the way back into his mind. Despite being untrained in the use of the Force or lightsaber combat, she not only manages to beat Ren's at his own game, but is also able to use the Jedi mind trick to escape the interrogation room. Finally, she holds her own against Ren (who is admittedly badly wounded and emotionally-unbalanced) and by the end of the duel knocks him on his ass, with a nasty scar across his face as icing on the cake. She also is able to use the Force Pull.
  Kylo Ren: She's strong with the Force! Untrained, but stronger than she knows.
- Her ability to use a lightsaber as a weapon is somewhat understandable, given her experience with melee weapons, but her form is fairly reckless and amateur (she uses several awkward thrusts when lightsabers are more suited to swings and slashes) — at least until she taps into the Force.
- Furthermore, in The Last Jedi, she falls to a brief moment of anger that puts her at odds with Luke who she then fights: her form is all right but for all her raw power, Luke disarms her of her staff with a stick - she only manages to best him when she Force pulls Anakin's lightsaber and breaks his stick. Then a bit later, when fighting alongside Kylo Ren after killing Snoke, her still somewhat clumsy lightsaber form gives her issues with Snoke's elite guard.
Universal Driver's License: Not only does she immediately know how to fly the Millenium Falcon despite flying it for the first time, she also knows how to pilot Ren's TIE-silencer and Luke's old X-Wing.
Unwitting Pawn: In The Last Jedi, Snoke exploits the Force-bond between her and Kylo, as well as her compassion and naivety, to get her to empathise with Kylo and give her hope she can turn him back to the light. Rey does indeed go to meet Kylo aboard the Supremacy, believing she can turn him, and is horrified when Snoke mockingly informs her he planned this, allowing him to get Luke's location and kill her in one move. Unfortunately for Snoke, he didn't anticipate Kylo (who was also being unknowingly manipulated) developing actual feelings for Rey and turning on Snoke to save her.
Upbringing Makes the Hero: Played with. Rey was abandoned by her parents (and what little is known about them suggests they were not good people^note) and the closest thing she had to a Parental Substitute was Plutt, a greedy, self-centered asshole who treats her like a slave. However, Rey herself is a very compassionate and brave woman, who will go out of her way to help others in spite of, or perhaps even because of, her upbringing - her harsh childhood is what makes her so empathetic to the suffering of others.
Watching the Sunset: The final shot of the Skywalker Saga, the newly self-proclaimed Rey Skywalker watches the setting binary suns of Tatooine, just like her master once did decades ago. The saga ending how it once began.
Weapon Twirling: While practicing with her melee weapons in The Last Jedi, she briefly twirls her lightsaber like a baton, presumably to better familiarize herself with it as she's only ever used it once before.
"Well Done, Daughter!" Girl:
- She has shades of this towards Han, who she quickly grows fond of and views as "the father [she] never had." She is very eager to help him with the Millennium Falcon and is quite disappointed when he doesn't react much beyond a surprised "Huh" to her bypassing the ship's compressor. She is also thrilled when he tells her he's thinking of offering her a job, though she politely declines as she feels she has to get back to Jakku. Given the fact she's an abandoned child, her desire for affection and approval from a parental figure is very understandable.
- Her relationship with Luke has shades of this too. She constantly addresses him as Master Skywalker and spends most of The Last Jedi trying to get him to open up to her, train her, or at least come with her back to the Resistance. She insists that while Kylo might have failed him "[she] won't", is eager to learn about the Force from him and is upset when he expresses concern over her being drawn to Ahch-To's dark side cave. By the end, she no longer seems as concerned about gaining his approval, though she still believes in him.
What the Hell, Hero?: She is furious with Luke when she learns he allegedly tried to kill his own nephew in his sleep, for no discernible reason beyond fearing him and thus pushed him to the dark side, especially considering Luke had made it seem to her that Kylo attacked him unprovoked. However, after Luke explains clearly what truly happened, she is sympathetic, gently telling him that his true mistake was believing Kylo's choice was already made and that he might still be redeemable.
What You Are in the Dark:
- In The Force Awakens, Rey could've easily killed Kylo Ren after defeating him; she would've been more than justified in doing so considering what had transpired between them. She chooses not to. In The Last Jedi, she could also have killed him while he was unconscious, but again decides against this. Again in The Rise of Skywalker, where she mortally wounds Kylo in anger, but then heals him rather than leaving him to die as she easily could have.
- It's strongly implied and later confirmed that part of Rey wanted to join Kylo when he offered her his hand in The Last Jedi. They were alone at the time and no one in the Resistance ever learned of it (at least until Rey confides in Leia of her own free will). She ultimately refuses him, later clarifying that she didn't want to take his hand while he was on the dark side.
Wide-Eyed Idealist: She is one in certain situations, especially when it comes to her parents. Despite the fact they abandoned her, she stubbornly insists they're coming back for her one day. She also has a romanticised view of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi, which is justified when one considers all she knows about them have been passed down to her as myths and legends. By the end of The Last Jedi, she has adopted a more realistic outlook, including finally accepting the truth about her parents, while still remaining a virtuous and optimistic person. The Rise of Skywalker reveals they had sacrificed themselves for her protection, and only sent Rey off to do this, restoring her romantic ideal somewhat.
Workplace-Acquired Abilities: Many of her skills, such as climbing, fixing machines and some knowledge of flying ships comes from being a scavenger for over a decade. Her combat skills could also count, seeing as she needed them to protect herself from hostile scavengers.
World's Strongest Man: By "Rise of Skywalker", she can Force pull a flying spaceship, match Kylo Ren in a duel, and even endure an empowered Palpatine's attacks. With all other known contenders for this title dead, she is now likely the most powerful individual in the galaxy.
Worthy Opponent:
- To Kylo Ren. In their final duel on Starkiller Base, he's impressed by her power and instead of killing her while he had the upper hand, he offered to be her teacher.
- To Snoke, who was positively delighted with admiration when she not once but twice drew sword (first Anakin's, then Kylo's) to defy him, complimenting her courage with sincere respect before ordering Kylo to execute her.
  Snoke: Ooh. And still that fiery spit of hope. You have the spirit of a true Jedi! And because of that... you must die.
Would Harm a Senior: She fights and kills the very elderly Palpatine (who is also her grandfather). Considering this is Palpatine we're talking about, though, she's definitely justified.
Wrecked Weapon: Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber, which Rey had been using as her own, is torn apart when she and Kylo Ren struggle over it in Snoke's throne room. She repairs it by The Rise of Skywalker.
Wrench Wench: Her technical skills impress Han Solo, and she gets irritated when Finn has no idea what tool she is looking for.
You Are Not Alone: On the giving and receiving end in The Last Jedi. Kylo, after listening to her pour her heart out about how alone she feels, tells her she isn't. She then looks softly at him and says he isn't either. It becomes more poignant in The Rise of Skywalker, when she's joined by the spirits of all the Jedi who came before her to defeat Palpatine and destroy the Sith once and for all.
You Killed My Father: After learning her real heritage, Rey is enraged that Palpatine had her parents murdered and vows to kill him for it. She manages to overcome the rage and hate, but she never forgives her evil grandfather for his actions and still kills him for it.
You Monster!: She calls Kylo Ren this twice. In The Last Jedi, Kylo admits that he agrees, leaving her visibly stunned. Notably, it's after this admission that she becomes less antagonistic towards him.
Your Worst Memory: One of Rey's worst memories is the day her parents left her on Jakku as a child, never to return. When she finds the Skywalker lightsaber, she has a number of disturbing visions and one that horrifies her the most is seeing her child self being restrained as her family's ship flies away, screaming for them to come back. Shortly after, Maz Kanata tells Rey that deep down she knows her parents aren't coming back, but she's so distressed by this she initially goes into denial and runs off in tears. The vision in fact seems to have been partly triggered by Finn, her first real friend, telling her he's leaving, which brought up her old memories and fears of abandonment.

"Be with me."

Characters / Star Wars – Rey

All spoilers regarding the Skywalker Saga and The Clone Wars are unmarked. Examples relating to Disney's EU and the new movies can be spoiler-tagged if deemed necessary.

Species: Human

Homeworld: Hyperkarn; Jakku (adopted)

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Characters / Star Wars – Rey

Edit Locked

All spoilers regarding the Skywalker Saga and The Clone Wars are unmarked. Examples relating to Disney's EU and the new movies can be spoiler-tagged if deemed necessary.

Species: Human

Homeworld: Hyperkarn; Jakku (adopted)

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