After 42 years and nine movies, we’ve reached the end of the Skywalker saga. Anticipation, theories and discussions have given way to mixed reactions. While The Rise of Skywalker mostly mirrors the story of Return of the Jedi, the movie also seems to take lessons and inspiration from another big franchise that continued past its initial story until it began contradicting itself. Yes, Star Wars has turned into Harry Potter, and not in a good way.

Spoilers for the entire Star Wars and Harry Potter franchise (including Cursed Child) below.

The Dead Speak!

rise-of-skywalker-kylo-ren-helmet-social
Image via Lucasfilm

With those simple words, the biggest villain in Star Wars returns to life (thanks to a message only available in Fortnite). Though we never really find out how the Dark Lord of the Sith managed to survive not only a pretty big fall but also an exploding Death Star, the fact is that Sheev Palpatine is here once again to mess things up for everyone. As great and operatic as Ian McDiarmid is in the role, and as surprising as this twist is for the audience, it doesn’t really mean anything to the characters – which is a big problem for this movie.

The moment Hagrid said “Harry – yer a wizard,” he also told Harry that his parents were not the victims of a random car crash, but that they were murdered by a Dark Wizard trying to kill Harry as a baby. Early on in the very first book, both the audience and Harry know that this story is going to be one of Harry learning to become a wizard, and of the eventual return of Voldemort who’s hellbent on finishing the job. The eventual return of Lord Voldemort wasn’t just teased at from the beginning, for it was always a part of Harry’s character arc to know that one day he would have to fight him.

By comparison, if the sequel trilogy is the story of Rey just like the original trilogy was about Luke and the prequels were about Anakin, then do we ever get any indication that she knew or even cared who Palpatine was? The people who would actually be mortified and worried about him in a personal level are, of course, Han, Luke and Leia. But, of course, all three are dead by the time Palpatine faces off against Rey. Even Kylo Ren, the one character most connected to the dark side, was – throughout the entire trilogy – obsessed with Darth Vader, not the Emperor. Bringing Palpatine back doesn’t add to any of the character’s development, instead it even lessens Anakin’s 6-film story. If George Lucas started referring to the first films as the fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker, having his ultimate sacrifice be for nothing betrays his entire story, and therefore the films that came before The Rise of Skywalker.

Rey Palpatine?

rise-of-skywalker-daisy-ridley-social
Image via Lucasfilm

Before the final battle against Palpatine turns into Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire where the Force ghosts come to help Rey, we find out the biggest twist since Vader said “No, I am your father,” or at least it would be if it didn’t contradict everything we’ve seen in the franchise up to this point.

Since The Force Awakens, audiences have speculated and theorized as to where Rey’s power comes from and who her parents are. It doesn’t help that Rey herself keeps saying that she’s waiting for someone back in Jakku. The logical conclusions fans drew at the time was that she would be related to someone we know, probably a Skywalker. But after The Last Jedi told us she was a nobody, The Rise of Skywalker takes it all back and reveals that her powers did in fact come from her lineage, as a descendant of the most evil being in the franchise. This rings to mind the big twist in the first direct-sequel to the Harry Potter books, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Yes, both the noseless Lord Voldemort, and the ugly and electrocuted Darth Sidious at one point had sex with someone (good luck not picturing that). We first meet Voldemort’s offspring, Delphi, in the two-part play that debuted in London’s West End in 2016. She pretends to be the niece of Amos Diggory, Cedric’s father. But she later admits that Bellatrix Lestrange is her mother, and that she was the product of a romantic relationship between Bellatrix and the Dark Lord. As surprising a twist as this is, it goes against everything we know of Voldemort from the original series. Even in flashbacks, we see Tom Riddle as a handsome young man who made everyone fall head over heels for, but who never showed any interest in other people except as tools for him to use. Voldemort spent the entire 7-book (or 8-film) saga thinking only of consolidating power, kill a child, and live forever. The last thing the story hints at is that he would be willing to pass power to a child.

Likewise, we never got any hint that Palpatine was interested in sharing power, or even have his name live through anyone other than himself. In an interview with /Film back in 2015, J.J. Abrams talked about how midi-chlorians and bloodlines took away from what makes the Force something special, saying “I really feel like the assumption that any character needs to have inherited a certain number of midi-chlorians or needs to be part of a bloodline, it’s not that I don’t believe that as part of the canon, I’m just saying that at 11 years old, that wasn’t where my heart was. And so I respect and adhere to the canon but I also say that the Force has always seemed to me to be more inclusive and stronger than that.” When Rian Johnson decided to make Rey the daughter of “filthy junk traders,” he talked about how he wanted to challenge Rey by presenting her with the answer she least wanted to hear, similarly to how Luke finding out about Vader was the hardest thing for him to hear. As Johnson told Collider, “It was more a dramatic decision of ‘What is the toughest thing she could hear about her parents? What is the thing for her and for us what will make her have to stand on her own two feet and will make things the hardest for her?’ Because she’s the hero and that’s her job—to have things be the hardest for her.”

If we go by this decision process, then Rey finding out she’s related to Palpatine does nothing for her character. The idea of discovering you are born of evil and meant to be evil is thematically interesting (even if it’s just the same as The Empire Strikes Back) and having Rey fight to reject her heritage and choose her own path sounds good on paper, but as I wrote earlier Palpatine never mattered to Rey’s story. She barely seems to know who he is, and at no point did the movie stablish a connection between the two, or at least a fear of the Emperor on Rey’s part. This plot twist is simply based on her finding out she’s evil, not necessarily that she’s related to Palpatine himself. Again, it’s a reveal that’s meant as a wink to the audience, even if it comes at the expense of the characters. The twist in The Cursed Child doesn’t work because the story hadn’t stablished any reason to care about Delphi’s upbringing, using it as a plot point rather than character development, and neither does The Rise of Skywalker.

Then the movie ends with Rey traveling to Tatooine to pay homage to both of her mentors, before embracing the Skywalker name. It’s an emotional scene that ties everything together for the audience, returning to the place where the story began all those decades ago, but once again it does nothing for the characters themselves. Having Rey seemingly find a new home and placing the lightsabers in the place Luke spent years desperately trying to escape, the same place Leia visited only once and got captured and treated as a slave to a Hutt, feels like an insult to both characters – not to mention Anakin’s complete and utter hatred for the place. The Rise of Skywalker ends with the equivalent of having Harry’s apprentice leave his want not at Hogwarts where he was truly happy, but at the Dursley house where he was miserable for most of his life.