James M. Okapal
I'm Rey. … Rey Skywalker.
Thus ends the nine‐movie Skywalker Saga. It's the story, in part, of three different children from desert planets and the communities they join. Anakin Skywalker leaves his enslaved mother to join the Jedi Order. He then joins the Sith and helps destroy the Order after years of questionable choices. Luke Skywalker leaves his home after stormtroopers murder his aunt and uncle, embarking on a quest to save the galaxy from tyranny by joining the Rebellion. He then attempts to revive the Jedi Order, but fails. Rey, the granddaughter of Emperor Sheev Palpatine, leaves the battle‐scarred wasteland of Jakku as a matter of self‐preservation. By the time she arrives at the sacred island on Ahch‐To, she realizes her actual quest is to discover her place in all this – the saga, the galaxy, and her own life. And in the end, she seems to defy Lor San Tekka's wisdom that “you cannot deny the truth that is your family” when she makes the choice to claim the Skywalkers as her family and the Jedi as her community.1
To understand Rey's search for relationships and community we can make use of Aristotle's (384–322 BCE) theory of friendship, which has three forms: friendships of utility, of pleasure, and of virtue.2 Each is defined, in part, by the motivation for the friendship. When the relationship is founded on its usefulness or advantage – like any friendship the pirate king Hondo Ohnaka would have – it's a friendship for utility. If it's grounded in having jointly pleasurable activities – like those shared by members of Jabba the Hutt's court – you have friendships for pleasure. If the ground of the friendship is the mutual pursuit of goodness and flourishing – based on the desire for friends to be the best that they can be, as seen in the triads of Anakin, Obi‐Wan, and Padmé, Luke, Leia, and Han, or Rey, Finn, and Poe – then you have a virtuous friendship.
Friendships for the sake of virtue differ from the other two forms of friendship. These imperfect friendships are fundamentally self‐regarding and often short‐lived. In contrast, each member in a virtuous friendship has both self‐regarding and other‐regarding motivations; they want both their friend and themselves to flourish. This other‐regarding element of a virtuous friendship is “a concern on the part of each friend for the welfare of the other, for the other's sake, and that involves some degree of intimacy.”3
The “for the other's sake” part is integral to the entire idea of virtuous friendship: a virtuous friend is willing to ignore their own interests in favor of another's. Paradigmatic examples of this are the sacrificial actions of Jedi Knights Obi‐Wan Kenobi and Kanan Jarrus, who sacrificed their lives so others could thrive. Nevertheless, it can be hard to sort through our immediate motivations to ensure that our actions are actually done for the sake of a friend and not merely for our own welfare. This seems to be the point when Luke prepares to leave for Cloud City. Luke's stated reason for leaving is, “They're my friends. I've got to help them.” But more important is Yoda's reply: “If you leave now, help them you could, but you will destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.” Luke's motivation at this moment seems to be merely the welfare of Han, Chewie, Leia, and C‐3PO, as Luke perceives it. But it is not for their sake, nor for their interests, that he's trying to help them. Luke has not yet learned what Ezra Bridger finally accepts about Kanan's sacrifice in the Rebels episode “A World Between Worlds.” Ezra wants to save Kanan, but Ahsoka points out that “Kanan gave his life so that you could live. If he's taken out of this moment, you all die. … I'm sorry Ezra, but you must see, Kanan found the moment when he was needed most and he did what he had to do for everyone.” Despite appearances, saving Kanan would not truly be acting for Kanan's sake. Friends for virtue must sacrifice their self‐regarding interests: Obi‐Wan must sacrifice himself to allow Luke to fulfill his destiny; Kanan must sacrifice himself to save others who'll help bring down the Empire; Ezra must sacrifice a future with his mentor; and Luke, if he'd listened to Yoda, would've had to sacrifice his friends to continue his Jedi training and not face Vader prematurely.
The motivations of usefulness, pleasure, and virtue do not exhaust the important elements that define our relationships. In addition, Aristotle recognizes the importance of the larger communities in which friendships take place as well as the role of choice in friendships. These choices are more important than just entering into a relationship; they are also choices of a value system. In The Force Awakens (TFA), Finn gives a speech about choices as he tries to convince Rey to leave with him for the Outer Rim:
I'm not Resistance. I'm not a hero. I'm a stormtrooper. Like all of them, I was taken from a family I will never know. But my first battle, I made a choice. I wasn't going to kill for them. So I ran. Right into you. And you looked at me like no one ever has. I was ashamed of what I was. But I'm done with the First Order. I'm never going back. Rey, come with me.
Finn, while not part of the Resistance (yet), knows that the First Order's values – which begin with the destruction of communities, relationships, and people such as the Tuanul on Jakku – do not represent a community to which he can choose to belong. He realizes that Rey is someone who has an ability to connect with others, even droids. Rey exemplifies the value of community building, even though she's an isolated junk trader, while the vast membership of the First Order exemplifies the opposite.
In other words, each friendship includes two communities. Both communities are defined by values. Intimate friendships include values of virtue, pleasure, or usefulness. Background communities provide a larger tapestry of values that influence the intimate relationships which form within them. In the Star Wars universe, characters make choices about both these intimate and wider communities, and in doing so choose a set of values. If the choice of an intimate relationship is also a choice of a wider community and the community's values, the weight of such a choice becomes apparent. Rey's choice to claim the Skywalker name is significant as she's making a choice between two communities with irreconcilable values: the Jedi and the Sith.
What sort of values does she have to choose between? The Jedi have a rich and complex set of values with other‐regarding motivations at their core. In The Jedi Path, Grand Master Fae Coven states that the Jedi Code is “a pledge of protection to the citizens and inhabitants of the Republic.”4 The Jedi Code concerns a Jedi's relationships with wider communities, not merely within the Order itself. A Jedi is oriented to think about the interests of others and interpret all aspects of the Jedi Code in terms of other‐regarding ideals, particularly those that break down the barriers of self and other. The precept “There is no passion, there is serenity” becomes operationalized as “a reminder not to elevate the self above the mission,” which is, according to Chief Librarian Restelly Quist's comment, a vow “to defend its ideals of exploration, knowledge and justice.”5 As Obi‐Wan tells Luke, the role of the Jedi in the Republic was service to others as guardians of peace and justice. The Jedi's purpose is to help create conditions of flourishing for themselves and others. The precept “There is no chaos, there is harmony” requires that Jedi see that all life is united and each life has its own purpose, its own version of flourishing. A Jedi's relationship with the Force is a reminder that all Jedi are “part of an energy larger than ourselves, and we play roles in a cosmic fabric that outstrip our incarnate understanding.”6
There are, of course, other virtues the Jedi find valuable. Courage is tested by the Jedi Trials.7 Morrit Ch'gally, Jedi recruiter, notes that Jedi attire, the outward symbol of the Order, is meant to evoke humility in its simple fabric, colors, and style; the usefulness of Jedi to others is indicated by their utility belt.8 Throughout The Jedi Path are examples that highlight additional Jedi values such as peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, self‐discipline, compassion, tenacity, and loyalty. Each of these values would be easily recognized by Aristotle as important virtues.
The Sith, unsurprisingly, disavow or disfigure these values. Sorzus Syn, a Dark Jedi, constructed the Sith Code as follows: “Peace is a lie. There is only passion. Through passion I gain strength. Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory. Through victory my chains are broken. The Force shall set me free.”9 Perhaps the most significant element of this Code is the use of the singular pronoun, “I.” Unlike the Jedi Code, which uses plural pronouns like “we” and “our,” and which references communities such as all living things, the Sith Code is entirely self‐regarding. There's no wider community of concern, only self‐aggrandizement acquired through exclusion. Strength and power aren't used to help others, but to gain victory over others. A Sith elevates himself to the position of Sith Lord, indicating that all others are inferior. With this victory, the Sith Lord achieves the ultimate goal of freedom for himself at the expense of others, a freedom of pure license, unbound by mores, laws, or even petty concepts such as good and evil.
Consider Darth Bane's comments about the relationships that should be cultivated by a Sith Lord. The wealth amassed by the Sith must be used “to hire spies, scholars, assassins, trainers, guards and thieves. All will prove useful.”10 In other words, the Lord only seeks friendships for use. This is true even for the master's relationship with the apprentice: “This is the Rule of Two: One Sith must contain all the power of the dark side. One Master must decide how that power shall be used. Sharing power is an act of weakness and a violation of the Sith Code.”11 The apprentice, like all other beings, is merely useful, ensuring that the line of Sith continues and grows in power. As Darth Sidious indicates in his marginalia to the Book of Sith, “Darth Maul, Darth Tyrannus, Darth Vader. Each useful in his own way. Each easy to replace when his purpose has reached its end.”12 The Sith apprentice understands all of this and likewise sees the master as merely useful. The apprentice has one goal, to become powerful enough to kill the master and carry on the Sith legacy.13 This is a perversion of Yoda's wisdom that “[Masters] are what [apprentices] grow beyond.” A Jedi master gets out of the way so their apprentice can grow. A Sith apprentice sees their master as an impediment or chain to be removed to achieve freedom. Understanding this contrast between the Jedi and Sith helps us understand events of the sequel trilogy, particularly its conclusion.
Sidious's goal is to achieve unlimited power and immortality so that the Rule of Two can be transformed into the Rule of One. He comes to the precipice of achieving his goal on Exegol. He's been using Sith alchemy to make clones of himself to find a new vessel for his soul. He goads Rey to submit to her hate and anger. If she strikes down his physical form, he'll thereby come to possess her and achieve immortality. To a Sith, even a blood relative is nothing more than a useful vessel, to be manipulated or even destroyed in the quest for immortality and unlimited power.
The sequel trilogy is, in large part, several stories about a new generation of characters – Rey, Ben Solo, Finn, and Poe Dameron – trying to find their place in the world by searching for a community in which they can take an important role. But that choice cannot be made early in one's life, cannot be made for you, and must factor in making mistakes. For example, Finn, once seeing the true nature of the First Order, makes his choice to leave but too closely attaches himself to one person, Rey, and makes poor choices before being saved by Rose Tico in the climax of The Last Jedi (TLJ). But Rey's story emphasizes that “people cannot be friends if they do not choose the friend knowingly and responsibly.” Rey, not knowing who she is at the beginning of TFA, cannot knowingly choose the relationships that'll define her. She must first embark on the hero's journey of self‐discovery.
Rey is constantly confronted with choices of friendship and community. In TFA, Finn offers her the choice of a relationship running from the First Order in the Outer Rim. This scene is bookended by two other offers to form relationships. Han offers Rey a job with him and Chewie as a second mate, an opportunity to trade her life as a junk salvager for that of a smuggler; she declines the offer due to her continued hope of reuniting with her parents. After Finn decides to leave, Rey is offered another choice: to follow the path of the Force. She's drawn to the Skywalker lightsaber which gives her a Force vision of past and future. The vision ends with Obi‐Wan saying, “Rey, these are your first steps.” Maz Kanata explains the experience, “The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. Take the lightsaber.” But Rey, unprepared to make that commitment to a wider world, replies, “I do not want any part of this.” Each offer is a choice involving different values and a different life.
Following the way of the Force requires additional choices. Luke and Leia represent one option: follow the light side and become a Jedi. Ben, Snoke, and Rey's grandfather represent the other option: follow the dark side and become a Sith. Throughout TLJ, everyone keeps telling Rey to forget what came before and find a different path. Luke rebuffs her, telling her that he cannot be her teacher, that the Jedi path is a failure that needs to end. She experiences multiple Force connections with Kylo Ren that turn out to be ploys by Snoke to lure her to the dark side. During another, Kylo tries to convince Rey that she needs to choose, as he did, to forget her connections with others and to kill those who represent the past if necessary – which aligns with the self‐regarding nature of Sith values. Rey rejects Kylo's offer twice, rejoining what's left of the Resistance but, notably, neither of the communities related to the Force.
Rey cannot choose a community yet because she still does not know from where she comes. She cannot choose between the dark and the light sides knowingly because she does not know her own past. When Luke asks where she's from in TLJ, she says “nowhere.” In the cave on Ahch‐To, she wants to see her parents and gain insight into her family connections, but is only shown reflections of herself. Kylo says he knows the truth: her parents were filthy junk traders, nobodies. He says, “You have no place in this story. You come from nothing. You're nothing.” But this is not entirely true, and these gaps in her self‐knowledge mean Rey cannot choose knowingly between the light and the dark.
And so we first see Rey in The Rise of Skywalker chanting “Be with me” repeatedly in the hope of connecting with the Jedi of the past. At this point, she concludes that “They're not with me.” She believes it is not possible “to hear the voice of the Jedi that came before,” indicating that she is not really part of their community despite all her training with Leia and her scouring of the Jedi texts for insight. They're not with her because she still does not know her past. The first clue about her past is the vision she receives during a frustrated training session: she sees an image of herself on the Sith throne. The second clue comes when, in her confrontation with Kylo on Passana, she inadvertently uses Sith lightning to destroy a transport. Eventually, Kylo tells her she's Palpatine's granddaughter. Finally, when she touches a Sith holocron, she confronts her dark self, who says “Do not be afraid of who you are.” It's only after gaining the information about herself and her past, and accepting this as the truth, that Rey can knowingly choose between the light and the dark.
When confronting her grandfather on Exegol, she calls again, “Be with me.” This time she hears Jedi voices. Amidst the welcoming voices of Yoda, Obi‐Wan, Anakin, Luke, Kanan, Ahsoka Tano, Adi Gallia, Aayla Secura, and Luminara Unduli, one stands out. Qui‐Gon informs her that “every Jedi who has ever lived, lives in you. … We stand behind you.” Now that Rey knows her past, she can knowingly choose her path, that is, knowingly and responsibly join the Jedi community and adopt its values. In the grand Jedi tradition, she chooses not to hate, not to kill Sidious directly, but using Luke's and Leia's sabers together, absorbs Sidious's Sith lightning. Sidious's life ends through her other‐regarding sacrifice: a sacrifice for the good of her friends, the Resistance, and the galaxy.
In other words, Rey made her choice knowing why both the light and the dark paths were open to her. By birth, she could follow the Sith. However, she chose the light and, in doing so, she heeded the wisdom of Luke and Leia. Leia trained Rey knowing Rey was a Palpatine because she “saw [Rey's] spirit, her heart” and knew, as Luke did, that “some things are stronger than blood.” Rey's genetics were not her destiny, but instead formed the background of a meaningful choice.
Rey, of course, does not stay dead. After being revived, Rey returns, not to her old homeworld of Jakku or Naboo, where her grandfather began, but to Tatooine, the home of Anakin and Luke Skywalker. She buries the Skywalker lightsabers at the Lars homestead, symbolically putting both Luke and Leia to rest. In this, she claims the Jedi as her wider community. She claims peace, justice, compassion, harmony, and other‐regarding values as her guides in life. She values others for who they are and pledges to make the galaxy a place where virtue can thrive and individuals can flourish. It's at this moment, when asked who she is, that she fully embraces the Jedi and the Skywalkers as her friends, her community, her family. As Lor San Tekka said, Rey “cannot deny the truth that is her family.” She was born a Palpatine. But, because she knowingly chose a different family, a different set of values and ideals, to be the one through whom all the Jedi live, the one who finally defeated the Sith, the one that may finally bring balance to the Force, she is the embodiment of the greatest familial line of the Jedi. She is Rey Skywalker.15