He's not dead.
It's all Rey can think as she goes through the motions of the victory celebration with Rose, Poe, Finn, and the others. They are understandably euphoric in their triumph at Exogol. For the old Emperor Darth Sidious is dead. The new Emperor in the form of Supreme Leader Kylo Ren is dead as well. The last remnants of the Galactic Empire have been swept away, along with the remains of its ideological progeny, the First Order. The lost souls of Alderaan and Hosnia have received justice. At long last, peace will reign again throughout the galaxy.
Or so everyone thinks. All the revelers are fooling themselves, she fears. Because he's not dead.
But she keeps the bad news to herself. She stands a little off to the side of the celebration, watching the jubilant throng. No one is surprised by that posture, most likely. She's not the friendly type and the lightsaber at her waist tends to make people nervous.
Is this how Master Skywalker felt after Endor? Like he was being credited with a win he didn't earn? Like this wasn't the final battle but yet another skirmish? She wonders. Because she's absolutely certainly that Luke knew then what she knows now: he's not dead. Luke knew who Snoke was all along, as well. He had to know. That's the only way his actions make sense.
It's why Luke never confronted Snoke to coax back his nephew from the Dark Side. He knew he couldn't win.
It's why Luke himself never rejoined the fight with his sister. Despite all the pleas to join the Resistance, Luke refused. He knew he couldn't win. The best he would give was a Force projection that ultimately killed him.
Luke knew the whole time what she knows now: that Darth Sidious is not dead and never will be. The Death Star explosion didn't kill him and the fight on Exogol didn't kill him. What does this mean? She doesn't know. But if you can't defeat him, she worries, you have to live with him. This isn't going to go the way you think. Luke's warning turns out to have been a massive understatement. Her sense of futility is only matched by her disillusionment.
So, what now?
In the following days, Poe and Finn take charge. Poe starts setting up a makeshift government and planning elections for a new Senate. Finn takes the lead liberating First Order controlled worlds who want to hang on despite the demise of their leadership. As a former stormtrooper turned Resistance hero, he is the perfect person for the job.
There is so much optimism, so much spirit of possibility, among her young friends. Each is ready to do their part to step up to remake the Galactic Republic a third time. All except her. Rey stands on the periphery of meetings watching as others eagerly volunteer while she remains silent. No one objects, of course. They all expect she's going to play the Master Skywalker role and disappear to some scenic spot with her old books to train a new generation of Jedi. They're wrong, but she's not letting on.
While recent events have helped her understand better why Luke withdrew from the galaxy, she still resents him. Master Skywalker could have explained all this so she understood why he refused to train her. He might have better presented his case for why the Jedi Order should end. If she had known then what she knows now—that you can't win—she would have appreciated why Luke decided to exit the fight. For surely, he saw the cycle of Dark versus Light as a trap. Luke must have realized that by promoting the fiction of a Light Side Jedi triumph as some happily-ever-after, all you do is perpetuate the conflict. It's a fight that consumed three generations of his family and prompted three galaxy-wide civil wars in fifty years. So many people have died and for what? So they can do it all again in a decade or two?
It's discouraging. She wants to help, but she fears perpetuating the problem.
She attempts to talk to Finn about it. He listens and decides that she's suffering from a lack of confidence due to Master Skywalker's lackluster example. Finn doggedly encourages her. Rey's concerns die on her lips in the face of his relentless enthusiasm. Suddenly, she feels like she will be letting him and everyone else down if she doesn't at least try. She ends up feeling very pressured.
Maz Kanata listens quietly to her fears. Then, she starts in on the tough love. Suck it up, Maz tells her with her characteristic bluntness. The Force chose you for this role, she contends, and the Force doesn't make mistakes. Rey ends that conversation feeling resentful. At Maz, at Luke, and at the Force.
Busy Poe doesn't even want to hear her concerns. He summarizes it succinctly: you handle the church and I'll handle the state. He will get the framework for democracy in place and she can handle the religious side of things and it will be like the old days when the Jedi Order advised the Senate and both institutions worked in concert for the furtherance of the values of the old Republic. For Poe, like his mentor Leia Organa before him, is slavishly devoted to remaking the glorious past.
It's a past that has failed twice in rapid succession. But no one pays any heed to that lesson. They chalk it up to the influence of the evil Sith. But now that Darth Sidious is gone, along with the Dark Siders Snoke and Kylo Ren, nothing stands between the galaxy and a lasting peaceful future. But Rey of Jakku, who scavenged among the wrecks of the last final battle of a prior war, worries otherwise.
Let the past die. Kill it if you have to.
Maybe Kylo Ren was right? She wishes he was around to talk to. They did far more fighting than they ever did talking. She regrets that now. She also regrets that she never told anyone about their Force bond. Because then they might temper their gleeful words about his death. No one at the Resistance understands that she and the erstwhile Ben Solo had a strange private relationship that led them to cross swords several times before things somehow things culminated in a dying kiss. He was her enemy but also a friend? He opposed her until he tried to help her. She wishes now that she had taken him up on his offer to approach Darth Sidious together. But she hadn't trusted him and with good reason.
The Resistance knows that Kylo Ren appeared at the eleventh hour to join her to fight Darth Sidious. They believe he did it to protect his position. That he didn't want the old Emperor to steal his new Empire. And maybe his motivation was some of that, but she believes there was more to it. That when Kylo stood with her on Exogol, it was for more than selfish reasons. Was it to help her? Was it to help the galaxy? She'll never know.
It's all so confusing. She wants to do the right thing, but she's not sure what that means. It leaves her paralyzed with self-doubt. She's having a crisis of confidence, Poe and Finn insist as they cajole mightily. But they also allow her to take a ship to Tatooine to get some alone time. They think she misses her desert world, but in truth she has an errand in mind. She's hoping it will help her to move forward.
Tatooine is a desert world, but that's where the similarities to Jakku end. This place is settled, with multiple large urban areas. There is true commerce and some basic infrastructure. Looking around at the Mos Eisley spaceport she has arrived at, Rey thinks that Tatooine is what Jakku aspires to be.
She sets out on a hired speeder bike in search of a place she's only heard about. With minimal information to go off of, she trusts in the Force to show her the way. BB8 is with her but his maps don't seem to help. As she heads east of something called the Dune Sea, she pulls the bike to a halt to scan the arid surroundings. Standing under blazing twin suns, she is bleak. This moment is a very literal depiction of how she feels in the aftermath of Exogol: alone in a wilderness with no sense of direction or purpose. Lost.
You're not alone. She had told Kylo—Ben—whoever he really was—that very same thing. It's one of those comforting statements people make like 'No one's ever really gone.' They are nice words, hopeful words, well-intentioned words. But at least in her case, they are lies. Because she's as alone now as she has ever been. Different world, different desert, different time, but same problems. She has more facts about the past, but she still doesn't know who she is or what her future will be. Because he's not dead. And, she worries, that means he will be coming back for her at some point.
Gulping back those fears, she climbs back on the bike and lets the Force take control. It brings her to an especially desolate spot. Is this the place? She can't be certain as she approaches the remains of a sandy homestead. This isn't her home. It's someone else's. Someone who left it long ago with no intent of ever returning. All the people from here who mattered were gone at that point. So why is she here decades later? She's not really sure. But she wanted to go to a place that had meaning for the family whose trials and tribulations have written galactic history for generations. That their origins are this humble is comforting actually.
She brings with her two swords. She wraps them gently and then buries them in the sand with the Force. After all, there's nothing left of any of the Skywalkers she knew to actually bury. From Luke, to Leia, to Ben, they all disappeared into the Force they revered. This is the best she can do to honor their passing.
Should she say something? It feels like she should say something. But all she can manage is 'May the Force be with you.' Looking up, she sees the faint, shimmering apparitions of Luke and Leia standing side by side. The ghostly sight isn't scary. It's comforting. It helps her feel less alone. It makes her smile. Her eyes linger on the flickering version of her reluctant Jedi Master and she whispers, "I forgive you," aloud. If ever she sees Ben Solo in the Force, she will tell him the same thing. For each of the Skywalkers did their best in their own way, she has realized. And that's all you can ask of anyone.
Rey hears a noise and whirls. An old woman has appeared seemingly out of nowhere. She approaches speaking of the homestead and asks for her name.
"Rey . . . Rey Skywalker," she replies impulsively, after glancing again at the increasingly murky Force mirages of her two dead mentors. She smiles bravely, hoping they don't think she is usurping their legacy. But truthfully, she can't bear to claim the name Palpatine.
The old woman smiles back. Then . . . she morphs into an old Muun with a ruined face. He's seven feet tall with flashy golden robes that are very out of place.
"You!" she shrieks. She lights her new yellow saberstaff and brandishes it as she hotly accuses, "You're dead! I saw you die!"
"Oh, I'm not dead . . . not yet. Not ever, I hope." The towering figure of dead Leader Snoke smiles affably down at her.
Rey answers with a swing.
"Good. Gooood," Supreme Leader Snoke approves of this aggression as the sword passes harmlessly through his Force projection. "So Light and yet so Dark."
She is momentarily confused. "Whaaat?" Then, she grits her teeth and swings again with the same result. Confounded, she lowers her weapon and steps back. She's wary now. "Who are you? You're not Snoke." Could this be her grandfather in disguise? Has he found her already? Or is this just a Force apparition like the ghosts of Luke and Leia she just saw? "Who are you?" she snarls with true menace.
The man with the familiar gargoyle face is a stranger after all. He proudly announces, "I am Darth Plagueis the Wise, Apprentice to Tenebrous and Master to Sidious."
"I killed Darth Sidious!" she hisses, brandishing her sword anew.
The man who looks like Snoke but isn't Snoke looks her over with relish. "Such strength, such power. You are a Skywalker, my dear." He cocks his head to the side and flashes a wry smile. "In all my time, I have yet to take a female Apprentice. You will be the first—"
"Wrong! I'm not a Skywalker—I'm a Palpatine! And I will kill you like I killed him!" She abandons her sword. Instead, she raises a hand and summons the Force as she bares her teeth.
It does nothing against the patient, smiling alien in the gold dress.
"Wanting to kill your father definitely makes you a Skywalker," he chuckles, "but Sheev Palpatine wasn't your grandfather. You're not the child of his rejected imperfect clone or whatever lie he told you. No, my dear, you are something far more special than that. You are a child of the Force. Created by me when Sheev got his hands on the last of my Anakin's bloodline. Welcome home, welcome home, Daughter," Snoke-who-isn't-Snoke exclaims. He beams, "Together, we will finish what Darth Vader started."
Rey takes a minute to process the preposterous news. Then she rejects it. "That's not true! It's impossible!" she sputters.
"Search your feelings. You shall know it to be true. Come now, Daughter. You have longed for a family. And now, you shall have one in me."
She is belligerent and bewildered, but her response is just like every Skywalker come before her in these 'I am your father' moments. "I'll never join you!" she vows. Good Jedi that she is, she will rebuke this Sith devil, whoever he is. Her days of trying to understand Dark Siders are over. Those impulses died when she reached out a hand to Ben Solo and ended up in handcuffs in Snoke's throne room.
"Now, don't be so hasty. Daughter, you need a teacher and you need a friend. I can give you both."
"Stop calling me Daughter! I don't want anything from you!" she snarls back.
"Now, now, we both know better."
"If I wanted to rule the galaxy, I would have accepted my grandfather's offer on Exogol!"
"You mistake me." The stranger is calm in the face of her heated emotion. "I am not offering you power. You already have power. I am offering you guidance and love."
"No thanks!" She doesn't want anything from anyone whose name begins with 'Darth.'
But the man keeps negotiating. "I can raise the dead," he promises. "That means I can bring back the man who died so that you could live . . . for all things are possible in the Force."
She blinks. The next knee-jerk rejection dies on her lips. She blinks again. The possibility he raises arrests her.
"It's alright to want something for yourself," the man encourages quietly. "Forget that Jedi dogma. There is no shame in attachment. Love is a great blessing."
"I don't love anyone," she chokes out bitterly, fighting back a hot rush of tears that is humiliating in the moment. But this is the crux of her plight and the curse of being forever alone. She has no one to love and no one who loves her. It ought to make her the perfect candidate for Jedi training, but it also makes her miserable.
Seeing this, Snoke-who-isn't-Snoke presses his case. "I know you miss him. You were Force bonded to him. I can bring him back. You two never even had a chance."
She is taken aback . . . and—as awful as it sounds-considering. Because if it were possible, would she want to bring back Ben Solo? That would complicate things enormously for the Resistance and the galaxy. And what would it mean for her? She's not sure how she feels about Ben, except she knows she has a lot of feelings about him. But how does he feel about her? She has no idea, honestly. Plus, she did stab him on Endor before she stole his ship . . .
Rey feels put on the spot. Suddenly torn between what she maybe-kind of-perhaps wants for herself and what she knows is right. Because for a galactic democracy to move forward, it has to evolve past the overpowered Skywalkers ruling from throne rooms and plotting civil wars with ragtag bands of revolutionaries. Reviving Ben won't help that cause. But oh, how tempting it sounds to have someone else around who understands her plight. Especially one with such dreamy dark eyes and muscle-bound arms.
No! What is she thinking? Death is the way of things, the way of the Force. It even says so in Luke's old books. This leftover ghostly Sith Lord—who may be Emperor Palpatine in disguise—is just tempting her. He's toying with her. Manipulating her. So, steadfast, she refuses. "Go away! Leave me alone!"
"We both know you don't want to be alone," her persistent tormentor reasons. Sounding like a corrupt version of Master Skywalker, he urges, "Search your feelings, Rey. Take time to think it over. You must do what you feel is right, of course."
Her consternation comes out her mouth. "Why should he get another chance?" she demands. Why not Leia or even Luke? "Ben had so many chances! I stood in that throne room and gave him a way out—and he refused!" She is emotional all over again now at the memory of her bitter disappointment. "He had the chance to make things right and he refused!" In the moment, it had felt every bit as much a personal rejection as a political one.
Her outburst calms and in its wake, she is embarrassed by her display of emotion. But the threatening stranger doesn't ridicule her. Instead, he sounds thoughtful as he observes, "My dear, the stubborn one is you."
Then, the mysterious figure disappears into thin air.
Spooked, she stands there a full five minutes before she raises a hand to exhume the lightsabers she just buried. What was she thinking abandoning them here? She's too much a scavenger not to realize that they may come in handy. She has a new enemy, it seems.