Episode IX: Spoilers and Rumors

Humour me in discussing the leaks for a second as if they are real.

So, one plot beat that's really bugging me in the leaks is the Palpatine/Rey's grandfather/Rey's parents reveal. I just don't understand the narrative purpose of Rey finding out not only that a) Palpatine is her grandfather, b) that he orchestrated the death of her parents. Like... what external conflict does that facilitate? If Palpatine presumably wants Rey on his side (which I'm going to guess he does), isn't the info about her parents' death the LAST thing he would want her to know (that he was responsible)?

So I'm thinking: is it possible that there are two different reveals at play here, to the two different characters? What if Palpatine tells Kylo that Rey is his granddaughter so that Kylo won't kill him (or be extremely conflicted about killing him), while at the same time he tells Rey that her parents are dead because someone in the Resistance killed them. And then he allows those two disperate pieces of information to cause chaos (like Kylo thinks Rey knows what he knows, while Rey thinks Kylo knows what she knows). Or something. You know what I mean though? Doesn't the "assassin" being someone other than a Sith sent by Palpatine to kill her parents make way more sense (in terms of conflict I mean). Otherwise, it's just: "The evil guy did what evil guys do."

I'm probably not explaining myself well, it's just that the part about her parents being murdered by a hired hand who happens to be a Sith, or associated with Siths, or hired by Palpatine, who happens to be murdering his own son is so nonsensical and pointless that if that one thing alone was changed or misinterpreted I feel like the whole thing would read a whole lot better.

californiagirl wrote:A retail poster of the whole ST. Even smaller characters get a go here. The one thing I find weird is Rey being no bigger than Luke, and of course they use younger-looking Luke, and they both have the blue saber. I like how their sabers in the snow fight make a purple flash. Interesting seeing the movies all together.

@californiagirl

Also, sorry just to note. Notice how Rey and Kylos sabers are joining and in fact making PURPLE?

well:

What is the Meaning of the Purple Lightsaber? ... Purple is a blend of red and blue. In Star Wars, traditionally blue lightsabers were used by the Jedi, the heroes of the galaxy, and red lightsabers were used by the Sith, the villains. The shading purple speaks to moral uncertainty, reconstruction, and recovery.

Don't worry, folks about Kylo being in the villain spot..There is a reason he is there with his full mask and not without his mask.

He resembles the villain in the ST until he is redeemed.

The purple is covering Kylos heart, Moral uncertainty, reconstruction and then RECOVERY. There is the heart of the story there. Literally COVERING kylos HEART in the image. That snow fight is literally the moment she started to make Kylo reconstruct!

@Gemini

Wow Obikin in da house and showing out

@nickandnora This is very legit theory. Leaks look so stupid because leakers 1. Can't guess Palpatine's plan and where and to whom he lies 2. Force Bond makes it very hard to guess Rey-Kylo plot.

It does look right now that there is some plan from Palpatine's where he can use both Rey and Kylo, and especially Kylo's feelings towards Rey and Rey's weakness to her family/past. Also, it looks like Kylo kind of doesn't want Rey to have direct contact to Palpatine (when he destroys wayfinder) so he is likely has his own plan against Palpy.

Poor Rose got left out of most the merchandising, it would seem, even some of the things they showed she would be on in the live stream last week. There are those Topps trading cards, including one of Connix, but not her. Yet I don't actually think Connix is getting more screen time than her, given how Billie and Connix have been almost absent from promotion thus far. Rose is in a couple of the kid's books that came out today as well (she's naming the porgs on the Falcon! And she and Rey like each other, but Rey and Poe don't totally like each other, lol). Advertising and merchandising is just being bizarrely bad to her, like she was there and they manually removed or left her out. Toys etc. are not always a good way to judge the extent of a character's role, let alone a film's plot.

Also, what character is this? Is that Dominic? I think I found him, guys.

Our good friend Lindsey Romain takes note of #wheresrose. She points out there was once a #wheresrey, when TFA's own main character barely had any toys of her. Another reason why I'm hesitant to place too much value on who and what gets chosen for merchandise, it really doesn't always correlate to the actual film. https://nerdist.com/article/rose-tico-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-merch/

Another article from last week: https://thedisinsider.com/2019/09/26/worried-star-wars-fans-launch-whererose-campaign/

@californiagirl
I checked the German Amazon and Rose’s Funko is not in, but Connix is, which is WTF?!

And for those out there who wondered if the ship in the desert is Kylo’s in the trailer, Funko seems to confirms it’s his.



I will wait the after-TRoS merchandize in the hope we’ll get unmasked Ben Solo. I am still not happy that there is zero unmasked Kylo merchandize for TRoS right now.

@SanghaRen I feel like they realize this is the last time they can market purely villainous Kylo, which is a big moneymaker. Clearly Vader is still a huge draw, but he died in ROTJ and there wasn't really redeemed Vader to market at at all. Nor is he young and good-looking like Kylo. Combined with the new mask, they know they can make all the $$$$ from that.

The publishing panel is going on right now. Rae Carson is writing the TROS novelization. She wrote Most Wanted, the Han/Q'ira YA novel last year. Interesting pick They really did get a woman to do the novelization, so happy! Speaking of maskless Kylo....



I think we're gonna be fine with her.

From NYCC2019.







Source: StarWarsNewsNet, FriendsOfForce

@californiagirl @Atenais Thank God for a woman! Fingers crossed she doesn’t have a history of eyeroll-worthy tweets equating Kylo with alt-right or condescending towards reylos.

@nana7marie She doesn't. She actually quite likes Kylo and has written from Qi'Ra's perspective for another SW novel.

That’s the other novel she has written, it was a YA romance/fantasy novel.

Oh look at that image, what on Earth could it possible resemble?


Speaking of "what does it resemble?" finally realized why I keep getting Deja Vu for Dark Rey. Rian used the Pressberger and Powell movie Black Narcissus as an influence for the Ache-to scenes and looks like JJ's running with it because Dark Rey's dress and makeup along with the shot is 100% meant to look like Sister Ruth reveal as her darkest self



No idea what it means for TRoS other than it makes it more likely in my mind that Dark Rey isn't a vision but something which actually happens. In Black Narcissus, Sister Ruth's transformation is shown visually in her changing appearance (nun's habit to wearing fashionable clothing & lipstick to black clad wraith) over the course of letting out the deepest wishes and jealousy/desire/rage she's been keeping bottled up inside of her. I don't think this means that Rey goes darkside or falls into madness as much as it means she's going to finally let out everything she's been holding in. Especially whatever happened with her parents which left her abandoned and alone on Jakku as a child.

What's interesting about this is that Rian and the production team talked about this movie as an influence for the Ache-to part of the story (ostensible sacred place which is actually setting for psychological/psychosexual drama), especially in the Art of The Last Jedi book. You could also definitely see the influence of other Pressburger and Powell films, The Red Shoes and Tales from Hoffmann, on the Throne Room scene and proposal. So JJ and the production team picked up that ball and are still running with it in TRoS - which referencing Sister Ruth for Dark Rey is brilliant & now I'm even more curious how that moment will play out.



@nickandnora I think there's a fair chance given the # of times they've shown a theme of "parents sacrifice themselves to ensure survival/a better future for their children" theme (which includes also teachers and even Qi'ra's sacrifice to protect Han) which has been shown over the course of all three trilogies and the mirroring between characters that we may find out something like her parents abandoned her and then were murdered by the people they were trying to protect her from. Hard to say definitely yet since they've also shown that Han was abandoned by his father, who was an alcoholic (but that abandonment in turn eventually prompts him trying to save Ben). But if they want to have a thread to tie Rey into the larger picture of what's going to be revealed as the Emperor's long con over the course of the entire Saga/3 trilogies, my best guess is that it'll have to do with whatever destroyed her family. Whether or not the Emperor is her granddad (or potentially evil suitor) is irrelevant IMO - the actor playing him has said he thinks of the character as Iago so he's there to try to tempt/manipulate her to take her out as an opponent and get what's he's after.

@arlath_ma has just posted another vague and encouraging tweet:

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And now @GeekFurious:

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@nana7marie
I also saw GF saying that Rae Carson writing the novelization meant that Reylo is confirmed, but I didn't post it because I thought he was just being sarcastic.

nana7marie wrote:And now @GeekFurious:

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@nana7marie

Who is this guy? Is he someone legit? Don't want to get my hopes up!

snufkin wrote:Whether or not the Emperor is her granddad (or potentially evil suitor) is irrelevant IMO - the actor playing him has said he thinks of the character as Iago so he's there to try to tempt/manipulate her to take her out as an opponent and get what's he's after.

Just want to point out that the main way that Iago manipulates Othello is by convincing him his innocent family (Desdemona) is deceitful. Which is... exactly what I speculated above with the Resistance. So, he tells Rey that someone in the Resistance is a secret Sith who killed her parents so that she'll destroy them once and for all from the inside, he tells Kylo he's Rey's grandfather because it's possibly the ONE thing he could say to him to prevent him from trying to destroy him (Palpatine). Bonus if Kylo and the Knights' secret purpose all along has been to destroy Palpatine for good; the info would turn his own allies against him. See what I mean? That's how "Iago" would work. He doesn't tell the truth, lol.

ETA: Remember how Paxis said something like Ochie was the Sith assassin/loyalist who killed Rey's parents and was dead himself, but then some official information came out recently that Ochie is part of the Resistance and very much alive which threw his leaks into question? What if that mistake and that connection is not an accident?

nana7marie wrote:@arlath_ma has just posted another vague and encouraging tweet:

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@nana7marie

omg guys remember when last trailer for 8 came out and we all freaking eXpLoDeD after kylo hand scene. I was screaming and jumping up and down. Dear God wonder what gem they are giving us in this one.

@Atenais
kylo has a look ...I'm terribly worrying. it seems that the dark side is corroding him ..

compared to the image on the left there is an abyss
I sincerely hope that he returns as he was before



It's from the book Secrets of the Jedi .

I know I keep ranting about this, but it's sad, and my timeline is very unhappy about it. Another article about the absence of Rose. https://www.slashfilm.com/rose-missing-from-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-merchandise/

I did see a few things people managed to find in some corner of the internet. Also multiple people have pointed out that Boba Fett got a minimal amount of screentime, and no development to speak of, yet has been everywhere for almost 40 years and got all the merchandise and EU stories. SW marketing and the actual films aren't always on the same page as each other.

There’s nothing surprising about the lack of Rose considering that, even you put aside the truly ugly reactions to her character in TLJ, Rose and her storyline got a tepid reaction overall; it makes no sense from business perspective to push an unpopular character. Finn and Poe at least still have some leftover good will from TFA where lots of people loved their dynamic and look forward to see more of it.

I guess it depends on where you're looking. My feed loves her, other people don't. What's really representative of the whole? Who knows. Have just learned that they weren't allowed to add her into the early designs until recently, so she's not in the first wave but will be coming in a later wave.

It had been giving the impression they were deliberately taking her out of things that originally had her in, Jenny did a good thread on it. https://twitter.com/JennyENicholson/status/1180209933154840576

rey09 wrote:

nana7marie wrote:@arlath_ma has just posted another vague and encouraging tweet:

source

@nana7marie

omg guys remember when last trailer for 8 came out and we all freaking eXpLoDeD after kylo hand scene. I was screaming and jumping up and down. Dear God wonder what gem they are giving us in this one.

@rey09

Silly Reylos. That hand was actually Hux’s. Duh.

nana7marie wrote:@arlath_ma has just posted another vague and encouraging tweet:

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@nana7marie

I'm out of the loop. Who is this and what credibility do they have? Or is it just a fan?