Our old friend the Rey parentage discourse, which was seemly settled in The Last Jedi, came rearing back today thanks to Simon Pegg, who’s pals with The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams and played Jakku heavyweight Unkar Plutt in the film.
“I know what J.J. kind of intended, or at least was being chucked around. I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by the last one,” he told Josh Horowitz of the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “I don’t know.” After some jokes about Rey’s dad being Unkar Plutt, he continued: “There was some talk of a relevant lineage for her, but I honestly don’t know, and I don’t know if anybody knows. We shall see.”
I don’t doubt the idea was being thrown around at many points, but since it didn’t make The Force Awakens, it’s just trivia at this point. The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has talked at length of why he chose to make Rey a “nobody.” He told Esquire in December:
In all the things that you mentioned, whether it’s Rey’s parent thing or Snoke, I arrived at those decisions based entirely on dramatic necessity. With Rey, for example, it was all about she was searching for identity; she wanted answers, she wanted a place in this story. The easiest thing she could possibly hear would be you are so-and-sos daughter. And that would be wish fulfillment for her and for the audience. But that would be easy. The hardest thing that both she and the audience can hear is, “No you’re not going to get that. You’re going to have to define yourself in this movie, you’re going to have to stand on your own two feet.” And this is the middle chapter it’s where we have to throw the hardest stuff at the protagonist.
I wouldn’t quite count on Pegg as evidence for yet another round of fan theories. But since when has that stopped anyone?