#ok bedtime i gotta wake up mad early tomorrow

[shmisolo]

i’m kind of tired of seeing posts (on tumblr and elsewhere) about how rey didn’t have character development during tlj because i just don’t think that’s true.  i don’t even think that it’s true that her arc was ~~all about kylo~~ which is the underlying (or explicit) accusation of most of those arguments.  and i get very much the gendered nature of her arc with kylo this episode and am skeptical that it will be navigated well during ix, but there’s also a lot in there in rey’s arc that reflected fundamental character growth and strength of character in the face of all sorts of temptations one way or another.

the first is her parents.  part of what i loved about the parent revelation is that it makes rey entirely her own. she is not her bloodline or defined by her heritage the way kylo is.  she walks the lonely road of being the soul definer of her own path.  it’s lonely and it’s hard and she has to do it and does do it in this film.  far from being bestowed with the power that she holds through blood, she came by it through herself and herself alone.  she has to acknowledge that what makes her special is herself--something that she has been grappling with since tfa.  it is her temptation to the dark side, the thing that draws her to that dark part of the island that gets luke so freaked out during her first exploration of the force in his presence.  she can’t let go of her own pain and her own loneliness and her own sense of abandonment and because of that she cannot let herself fully grow because there is a constant ache, a constant fear that she doesn’t and fundamentally should not matter.  this is what leads her to tell luke “i need someone to show me my place in all this.”  she longs for guidance, longs for validation.  she longs for parents.

but even without the revelation that her parents weren’t anyone special in the star wars universe, rey’s arc this film put to bed some of the underlying desire for parental validation that has coursed through her since the first film.  this validation is different from the validation she gets in her friendship with finn: that validation is a mutual one, a friendly one, one that stems from someone where there is no power dynamic beyond caring for one another.   they recognize in one another the incredible talent and strength of the other.  this desire for parental validation was at the core of her relationship with han, and her curiosity about luke that fueled her in both tfa and tlj.  it was what made shared visions with kylo ren so tantalizing: he was validating the loneliness that she felt having been abandoned by her parents--even while challenging her to keep questioning narratives she wanted to believe because she wanted to see the good.  and rey ultimately rejected both her need for luke’s validation (by going off to kylo ren after confronting luke about the perspective difference) and kylo’s validation when she realized that she could have compassion for him and still think that his desire to burn the world to rebuild was too dark for even the darker parts of her own heart.  it was a fascinating juxtaposition: while you have her simultaneously showing kylo ren a sympathy that he clearly hasn’t received in years this film, she also stopped behaving in a way that seemed to care about what others thought about her by the end of it.  she left kylo.  she left luke.  she saved her friends.  she stuck to herself.  and while i don’t necessarily think that--now that she’s back with finn, leia, poe, even rose whom she hasn’t officially met yet--she’ll reject the validation from her friends, she isn’t seeking it from those she wishes to grow from.  she’s not looking for her parents anymore.  she’s not even necessarily looking for perspective from kylo (though it really, really depends how you read driver’s and ridley’s delivery of that final gaze in the last scene because it could go so many ways).  she’s looking to be seen as an equal on the stage, if not a leader, in a way that she did not in tfa.

the second is--and i touched on this above--very intensely related to how she engages with kylo ren in this film.  it’s a tricky temptation to talk about because i don’t think that rey is tempted by the dark side so much as trying to ease the pain of her own loneliness; i similarly don’t think that kylo ren was tempted by the light so much as tempted by trying to ease his own loneliness.  their dynamic in this film to me wasn’t about dark and light--it was about listening.  and therein shows a growth on rey’s part that i don’t think was there on kylo’s, even if people are saying that the arc was all about him and not about her.  rey listened to him and was compassionate to his pain.  he offered to her, and she listened.  it meant that, fundamentally, she was the one who had to challenge the narratives in her life that got her to where she was, the little girl who used to wear a former rebellion helmet in her lair on jakku, dreams of the legendary luke skywalker and the rebellion against the empire.  she not only had to allow herself to shake her foundations but also had to stick to her guns in the end--something that when the temptation isn’t necessarily darkness but rather a balm to the thing that’s hurt you for literally years.  she had to see the ramifications of luke’s failures, she had to try and use her heart to undo them, a front on which she seems to have failed thus far--but ix is still coming and i don’t think you make the hero of the star wars trilogy fail but i digress.  she asked luke “i need someone to show me the place in all this” but “all this” as a narrative is confusing because everyone has a different perspective based on their own experiences--including rey.  so when she ultimately makes choices based on all the information presented to her, it is one that is at the expense of the temptation presented.  she withstood it.  she persevered.  she had to confront her own pain and come out swinging.

rey chose herself this film.  she chose herself in terms of power, she chose herself in terms of psychological validation, she chose herself in terms of being the person she wanted to be when faced with temptation and failure.

she chose to save the world and in so doing chose herself.  and honestly that’s incredible--especially when considering it was in opposition to a man who could not save himself no matter how hard he tried (and is still trying tbh), and certainly failed at saving others.