Star Wars: 10 Ways Rey Got Worse & Worse

As a brand new central protagonist for a brand new trilogy of Star Wars films, it was always going to be a hard task for Rey, getting compared to the likes of Luke, Leia, Anakin, and Obi-Wan. All-in-all, despite some unbelievably bumpy writing and tonnes of controversy to go alongside the divisive movies, Rey is a pretty loved, and great character.

But, despite being the heroine of the trilogy, Rey is far from perfect. While her arc does take itself to a place where a lot of her flaws are solved or worked on, she still gets increasingly worse throughout a lot of the trilogy in various aspects of her character and personality.

10 Below The Surface Anger

Rey truly is a good-hearted person, with the right intentions in nearly everything she does. However, numerous times throughout the trilogy, she displays bursts of anger that are bubbling under the surface.

The Force Awakens does not have much of this, but in The Last Jedi, audiences see her scream at Kylo as well as get angry with and attack Luke, and in The Rise Of Skywalker, she shows her anger consistently in line with her Palpatine lineage.

9 Growing Impatience

Hand-in-hand with that is the fact that regularly throughout each movie of the trilogy, Rey displays immense impatience, the same that runs rife in the Skywalker family.

Her desperation to quickly get back to Jakku, her need for Luke to train her immediately, her desire to have the Jedi of the past speak to her, impatience is a flaw often used in Star Wars heroes, Rey was no exception.

8 Gets Stuck In The Past

A problem that holds Rey back for pretty much the whole of the first two movies is the fact she is either so determined to get back to Jakku or so desperate to find out what she would be waiting for.

Despite being a dreamer who gazed at the stars hoping to be out there someday, Rey almost passed up a chance at joining the Resistance to go back to Jakku pointlessly, determined she was going back until she got kidnapped. She then spends the entirety of The Last Jedi obsessing over who her parents are and who she is, leading to anger, frustration, and impatience.

7 Increasingly Stubborn

Rey’s singular goal of getting back to Jakku, and then to find out her lineage, are both indicative of a stubbornness that never wholly ceases as the trilogy goes on.

Even when The Rise Of Skywalker comes around, Rey argues with Poe out of stubbornness on both sides and a lack of accountability. Even before then, her relentlessness in going after Luke, in going to save Kylo, in getting Finn to go to the Resistance Base. Rey’s stubbornness is by no means always a bad thing, but it certainly never relents.

6 Does Not Understand Other Points Of Views

Touching back on her argument with Poe, Rey has a genuine issue of not being able to understand and see other people’s points of view, even if sometimes she fails to realize her own opinions.

She cannot understand why Luke, Han, or Finn do not want to go back to the Resistance; she cannot understand Poe’s anger in her damaging BB-8 when he damages the Falcon, she cannot comprehend Kylo’s feelings. This all comes at a time when Rey herself cannot decide between going back to Jakku or becoming a hero; it adds a fascinating layer to her character.

5 Always Idealizing People

Having heroes, having people to look up to and respect as well as admire to a large extent is not a bad thing, but in the case of Rey and other characters across all of fiction, idealizing people is not a good thing.

As Kylo points out in his reference to Rey’s admiration of Han, she has become so troubled and obsessed with her parents leaving that she latches on to legends, which she has come to know, later idealizing the people of those legends. She expects the world of these people, particularly Han, Luke, and Leia, with even Luke pointing out to her that her expectations were utterly unfair.

4 Fails To Balance Priorities

One thing Rey consistently struggles with is balancing her priorities and jumping from one thing to another to focus on, or on the flipside focusing so infuriatingly on one thing only depending on the movie.

For the whole of The Force Awakens, she does care about getting Finn and BB-8 to the Resistance, but the entire time gets caught up in the thought of going back to Jakku. Then in The Last Jedi, she struggles to prioritize between Luke and Kylo, unable to figure out who she believes in or trusts more. As we see in The Rise Of Skywalker, Rey has – understandably – got caught up in training to the point where even Finn believes she has cast the Resistance and her friends to the side.

3 Completely Naive

This point harkens back to Rey’s idealization of people and is something that is completely expected of a young woman who has known nothing but sand, rations, and isolation her entire life.

But as Luke said, Rey expected a lot from Luke, perhaps even to come back with a lightsaber and take down the whole First Order himself as he says. Also, her unbelievable level of trust in Kylo to leave Ach-To and head straight for the Supremacy was prime naivety. So too was going to Exegol herself, while Kylo doing so was sheer arrogance in terms his own abilities the first time, Rey was far more heroic but still naive.

2 Cannot Find Peace In Herself

One of the things that a lot of the tragic characters in Star Wars – Darth Vader, Maul, the clones – struggle with is finding peace in themselves, being content, understanding, and confident of their place in the Galaxy.

This is an in-universe trait of Rey that is crucial to her arc, and key to both sympathizing and empathizing with her, and gets worse and worse right until the famous “Rey Skywalker” line in The Rise Of Skywalker.

1 Rey Palpatine

Moving onto something that is a mixture of negative in-universe and out-universe, after years of theorizing and speculating, and after the issue seemingly got put to bed in The Last Jedi, Rey got revealed to be a Palpatine.

Had this been the plan all along, it would have most definitely worked, even if it was an easily predictable thing for many. But, in the way the trilogy got structured into an incoherent, disjointed set of films, the reveal did not work other than to serve as an explanation to Rey’s exceptional powers.