Rey's Visions
In each film of the sequel trilogy, Rey enters a cave and has a vision of herself. That image of herself reflects a fear that Kylo Ren will try to exploit in a subsequent conversation.
In The Force Awakens, Rey follows a little girl’s cries down into the dungeons of Maz Kanata’s palace, where she has a vision of herself on the day her parents left her on Jakku. This vision of Rey’s past reflects her fear of abandonment. Maz tries to help her face this fear when she says, “You already know the truth. Whoever you’re waiting for on Jakku, they’re never coming back… The belonging you seek is not behind you. It is ahead.” But later, Ren will try to exploit her fear of being abandoned again by saying that Han Solo, instead of becoming “the father [she] never had,” “would have disappointed [her].”
In The Last Jedi, Rey descends into a cave on Ahch-To, where she has a vision of a long line of identical Reys. She asks to see her parents, only to be shown yet another image of herself. Besides exposing her fear of abandonment again (“I never felt so alone”), this vision of Rey’s present identity crisis reflects her fear of being only one in a trillion people in the universe, just as she is only one in a hundred Reys in the cave. She had told Luke, “I need someone to show me my place in all this,” but later Ren will play on this fear when he tells her “You know the truth… You have no place in this story.”
Finally, in The Rise of Skywalker, Rey ascends to the Emperor’s throne room in the wreckage of the second Death Star, where she is confronted by a vision of herself as a Sith. This vision of Rey’s potential future reflects her fear that her identity must be defined by the dark side. Immediately afterward, Ren gives voice to this fear when he says, “The dark side is in our nature. Surrender to it.”
In the last of these scenes, Ren tells Rey to “Look at yourself.” Each of these visions force Rey to do just that, but for a different reason. Ren would have Rey believe that the partial truths reflected in the visions are the whole truth and that she must live in fear of them, but the visions show her these truths so that she can recognize her fears and overcome them.
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Films: Episode VII: The Force Awakens / Episode VIII: The Last Jedi / Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker
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Concepts: ascent and descent / caves / dreams and visions / fear / identity / truth and falsehood
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