Rey jumps ship from the Millennium Falcon and abandons the remaining Resistance at the very first spaceport. She steals a junky transport after General Leia outright tells her no she can't leave now. You're our only hope, Ben's mother had told her. The tears in her eyes and the impassioned pleas from Finn had tugged at Rey's heart. Look, it's only for a few days, Rey assures everyone as they stand before her with accusing eyes. But you're the last Jedi, the pilot Poe Dameron tells her heatedly. You can't abandon us now.
Looking at their tired, scared, and angry faces, Rey wonders if this is the belonging that she has been seeking all along? Are these few surviving Resistance members the closest thing to a family that she has left? Call them committed or uncompromising? Call them diehards or fools? Rey isn't sure. But their clear disapproval causes Rey to pause a moment before she promises to return. She still has the small tracking device she used to find the Resistance after leaving Skywalker. She'll use it to find them wherever they go to hide and lick their wounds.
Please reconsider, General Leia tells her. We need you more than ever now. But Rey hasn't survived this long on her own without listening to her gut. These people are all doomed, she can't help but think as she looks around one last time. And besides, this trip is something she needs to do for herself.
It's two days journey back to Jakku. Back to the meager comforts of her abandoned AT-AT home. There's nothing here for her now, but still Rey comes back. This homecoming brings her to a simpler place where her struggles were black and white. For survival has a way of making your choices stark. Food, water, shelter and loneliness had been her main struggles here. Not galactic politics, war, Ben Solo and the Force. Rey always knew when she was winning on Jakku because a good scavenging haul meant she would be well fed and she could put another mark on the wall. On Jakku, Rey never agonized over 'what ifs.' She just committed to a course of action and moved on.
She avoids Niima Outpost and lands straight in the ships' graveyard. There Rey wanders her favorite wrecks. She picks up scrap metal and wiring to fix her saber and she ponders her parents' fate. Had they really been junk dealers who sold their daughter for drinking money? Or was it all a lie? Rey isn't sure. But somehow it feels true that she is a nobody. And in her heart of hearts, she knows that Maz Kanata is correct and that—whatever happened—her family isn't coming back.
And so, there's no reason to stay on Jakku any longer. No reason at all. Except that suddenly Rey wants desperately to go back to being anonymous again. She doesn't want the drama of the past few weeks to forever define who she is. She is Rey of the desert, the scavenger survivor throwaway who happens to have the Force. And had she not taken pity on a lost droid in the desert, she might never have known. In some ways, Rey wishes she didn't know. Because she has met four people with the Force: Leia Organa, Luke Skywalker, Ben Solo and Supreme Leader Snoke. As far as she can tell, they all live lives of violence and unhappiness, even if to their admirers they are heroes.
Luke Skywalker may have died at peace with his life choices, but for Rey the last Jedi was a disappointment on the whole. For though she might admire Skywalker's sacrifice, she has no wish to emulate it. The beleaguered Jedi Master might have finally found purpose in a self-sacrificing last stand. But Rey of Jakku is a survivor who is in no hurry to die. She's no coward but she's no romantic idealist either.
It angers her that Luke had spent what precious time they had together rejecting her and screwing around with his supposed three lessons. Leaving her adrift without a teacher and no way to learn the Force. Grumpy old Master Skywalker got his wish in the end, Rey thinks, because now the Jedi surely will end. All she has is a broken lightsaber and some crap about stretching out with her feelings and breathing to go on. And that's not much. There's only one person left alive with formal Jedi training and it's the treacherous, angry Ben Solo, the mortal enemy of her cause. And so, where exactly does that leave her?
Dejected. That's mostly how Rey feels now. Luke Skywalker was neither the hero nor the teacher nor the father figure she had hoped he might be. So too, the phantom parents she had believed in for so long had let her down. Those two realizations in rapid succession really have her disillusioned. Rey knew that there had to be a sad story behind her abandonment. You don't walk away from a four-year-old unless things somehow go wrong. But Rey had believed in her family nonetheless. And it was that hope which had gotten her through some of the darkest, loneliest moments of her short, hard life. But, in the end, that hope was in vain.
There had been a lot of talk about hope among the Resistance survivors on the Falcon. Encouraging, lofty talk about keeping the faith for the cause even at its most desperate hour. Rey had listened to it all silently unmoved. For if Luke Skywalker had taught her anything, it is that hope can be misplaced, even if sincere. Just because you think you're doing the right thing doesn't mean that you are. And it certainly doesn't mean that you will win in the end. And if the disappointment of her parents means anything, perhaps it's that hope must be grounded in reason to be true. Otherwise, hope becomes a willful delusion, sort of a personal fairytale. Rey sees now that her hope in her family had been a childish coping mechanism.
And so, staring out at thirty-year-old battle wreckage from the most recent galactic civil war, pensive Rey wonders if perhaps Ben Solo has a point. Maybe it is time to let the past die and move on. After all, even venerable old Luke Skywalker had known when it was time to quit.
Then, with barely a few seconds warning, the bond activates again. Suddenly, standing a meter away from her in the desert is a Force projection of Kylo Ren.
Tired, frustrated, and thirsty Rey says the first thing that comes into her mind. "Why are you hiding behind that mask again?" She hates that mask. She had hoped it was gone for good after the Starkiller. But apparently not. Maybe Ben had just left it off while his face healed.
His response is indignant. "I'm not hiding. This is who I am. The whole galaxy knows Kylo Ren wears a mask."
Whatever. The mask, the cape, the black outfit, the assumed name. Rey finds all this scary posturing and media branding to be tedious. Especially now that she understands more about the man who she now can only think of as Ben. "Darth Vader needed a mask," she informs him. "You don't. You're just playacting."
"I like Darth Vader," he counters as he crosses his arms. "He's the only hero who has never let me down." But as if to end the argument, Ben reaches up to remove the mask.
She watches as he shakes out his hair. His wound has healed even more, Rey sees. Soon it will only be a faint line. And maybe in the end, it won't even scar.
Ben is doing an inspection of his own. Rey sees him squint at her. No. It seems like he's looking behind her.
"I think this bond is getting stronger. I can see your surroundings now." Ben peers forward. "That looks like sand. Are you on Jakku?"
Rey answers truthfully. "I wanted to go home. But don't even think about coming here," she warns. "Because I'll be gone by the time you arrive."
"I'm not chasing you to the Western Reaches. I've got better things to do," he scoffs. "And besides, I hate sand. It gets everywhere. It makes a mess."
Whatever, she thinks. Hopefully, the bond will shut off soon.
"Why would you want to go back to Jakku?" He clearly disapproves. "Do you still want to be a nobody from nowhere?"
Rey looks away. Those words sting.
His voice softens now. "Rey, I offered you more than that."
"I turned you down, remember?" she snaps.
"The offer is still open," he calmly persists.
"Well, close it. Because I'll never join you."
Ben just shrugs and gives her a condescending look down his long nose. "Think about it."
"I don't need to think about it."
"Well, don't stay there, Rey," he complains. "Jakku makes you lonely. I don't want that for you."
She gives him a knowing look full of contempt. "You want me to rejoin the Resistance, is that it? So you can see where they hide? So you can finish the job from Crait?"
"We already know where they hide. We tracked the Falcon through hyperspace. Rey, you wouldn't be revealing anything," he assures her with maddening truth.
"Oh. Then you want me to be there when you come to wipe them out?" she demands. "Is that it?"
Now, he looks annoyed. "Once I secure the galaxy, I will deal with what remains of the Resistance. But right now, they aren't a big enough threat to get my attention." He cocks his head at her as he reveals, "If I wanted you dead, it wouldn't be too hard. Rey, all you have is a broken lightsaber."
"I'm going to fix it," she informs him tartly. "I'm going to make a new one out of the old. It's why I am here. I can scavenge all the metal and parts I need to supplement what I already have."
Strangely enough, her answer seems to please him. "Good," he approves with a disarming smile. "You should have a weapon of your own. Let the past die and build something new, Rey. Start with a sword."
His mention of the past reminds her. "Luke is dead. You know that, right?"
Ben nods. "He projected himself too far and too long in the Force. It was foolish of him."
There was nothing foolish about it in Rey's opinion. That was selfless Jedi heroism at its very best. "Master Skywalker sacrificed himself so your mother and the others could escape."
"It worked," Ben concedes, "But it won't change anything in the end. The Resistance is doomed. Everyone can see that."
His gloating cynicism gets her down. As does his casual acceptance of his legendary uncle's fate. "You're never going to change, are you?" Rey gripes. She can't believe now that she ever thought he would.
"No. It's too late for me, Rey."
She nods. "Even your mother thinks you are a hopeless case. So did Luke in the end," Rey reveals.
And now it's Ben's turn to look bitterly forlorn. "That's not news. They gave up on me years ago, Rey. When I was just a kid. They were the ones who neglected and betrayed me! And then my righteous uncle tried to murder me in my sleep."
"Luke was ashamed of that. Luke was . . . " And how exactly does she feel about the dead Jedi Master? Rey still isn't sure she's worked it all out. She just leaves the unfinished statement hanging.
Ben sighs and levels with her. "Luke Skywalker would have disappointed you. Han Solo would have done the same. My nagging mother is no different. You'll see." He looks exasperated with her now. "Rey, you need to stop looking for heroes elsewhere and just be the hero yourself."
"Is that what you are?" she challenges. "A hero?"
"Yes," he nods. "You could be one too."
He's asking again about his offer in Snoke's throne room, she knows. And now Rey confesses, "I don't think I can be a hero, Ben. I don't think I'm cut out for it. And there's so much I don't know . . . "
He makes a face. "Then we will both be worse off."
"What do you mean?" She's confused.
Ben wrinkles his nose and sneers, "No one is ever ready for greatness, Rey. You just have to step up. Like I'm doing now."
"G-Greatness?" Did she hear right?
"Yes. Greatness," he snaps back. "The Force keeps bringing us together and this bond remains even after Snoke is dead. You are the Light and I am the Darkness. There's a reason for this, Rey. So stop pushing me away!"
"But—"
"You need a teacher! Now more than ever. Come to me and I will teach you the ways of the Force." He says it like an order. In the clipped, snappish voice of command. He's every inch the Supreme Leader of the First Order now.
"I'll never join you." They've been over this before. Rey is not sure she wants to learn anything that this man has to teach.
And now he softens his terms. "I'm not asking you to join me. I'm asking you to listen. That's all. Think about it, Rey."
She eyes him warily. She does not trust this man.
"Please," he adds after a moment's pause.
And then the bond shuts off.