While Star Wars: The Force Awakens was a (mostly) satisfying experience, the film also left the audience with a number of tantalizing questions. Chief among these was the parentage of the film’s protagonist Rey, played by Daisy Ridley. There are a number of allusions in the movie to exactly who Rey’s parents are, and debate has ravaged on about exactly how close Rey might be related to Luke, Han, or Leia and, by extension, the new trilogy’s protagonist Kylo Ren.
Well yesterday, J.J. Abrams made some comments about Rey’s parents that had the internet abuzz with a potential “revelation.” During a conversation with Chris Rock at the Tribeca Film Festival, for which Collider was in attendance, Abrams said the following during a Q&A:
“Rey’s parents are not in Episode VII. So I can’t possibly say in this moment who they are. But I will say it is something that Rey thinks about, too.”
Now, some took this answer to mean that Rey’s parents don’t appear in Episode VII, which would then take Luke, Han and Leia off the table as potential answers to the Rey question. This would come as quite a shock given Abrams’ penchant for secrecy, and indeed, running with this interpretation of the answer appears to have been incorrect. EW reached out to Abrams, who clarified his previous comments thusly:
“What I meant was that she doesn’t discover them in Episode VII. Not that they may not already be in her world,”
Indeed, Abrams’ initial answer simply meant that he didn’t deal explicitly with Rey’s parentage in The Force Awakens, so he couldn’t possibly answer such a revealing question. That’s up to Episode VIII director Rian Johnson or Episode IX director Colin Trevorrow to reveal, depending on how soon we’ll get an answer to the biggest Force Awakens question.
So yeah, if you read Abrams’ comments yesterday and got excited/dismayed, take a breath. Nothing to see here, move along.
