Star Wars: The Last Jedi delivers a soaring blend of drama, action, and comedy—while
also tying up a few loose ends left in the wake of The Force Awakens.
Writer-director Rian Johnson's chapter successfully and perhaps controversially thrusts the franchise
forward in a number of meaningful ways, and it does so largely by answering a few lingering
questions along the way.
Warning: Major spoilers ahead.
Who are Rey's parents?
It seems that in the Star Wars universe, all our favorite characters are related in some
way: Darth Vader was Luke's father, Leia is Luke's sister, Han Solo and Leia were married
for a time, and Kylo Ren — also known as Ben Solo — is their angsty villainous son.
So when Rey was introduced in The Force Awakens, questions regarding her true lineage ran rampant.
After years of speculating that Rey was somehow related to Luke Skywalker or Obi-Wan Kenobi,
The Last Jedi put all the rumors to bed.
In one of the film's most subversive plot twists, Rey faces a deep truth about her parents'
identities: her parents were just a couple of heartless nobodies who sold her off as
a child.
Of course this bombshell could just be a red herring.
But in a series that has become notable for secret familial ties, the notion that Rey
could be special just because she is makes for a delightful change of pace.
Can Leia use Force powers?
During the credits of The Last Jedi, "In loving memory of our Princess, Carrie Fisher" appears
on the screen.
While that heartfelt goodbye acknowledges Fisher's untimely passing, the Last Jedi's
story does not… but it does give her some awesome powers.
Early on, Kylo Ren leads an attack on Leia's ship.
There's a moment when Leia senses her son's presence.
But while he successfully disposed of his father in The Force Awakens, Kylo finds himself
unable to fire on his mother.
Instead, his minions do the dirty work and Leia's body is thrown into space.
But it turns out that Leia is as tapped into the Force as her brother, and, as unbelievable
as it seems, she uses the Force to navigate through the crushing vacuum of space and back
to safety.
Back on her ship, Leia falls into a deep coma, which she remains in for the majority of the
film.
Why does Luke want the Jedi to end?
The ending of The Force Awakens found Rey finally facing Luke Skywalker, the legendary
Jedi who'd gone into hiding.
While fans were expecting an emotional meeting between the two, things don't go down as planned.
When Rey finds him on the planet where the first Jedi temple was built, Skywalker takes
his old lightsaber and tosses it off a cliff.
Why is he so disdainful of the Jedi?
It seems that Skywalker took the blame for Kylo Ren's turn to the Dark Side.
This all stems from Luke's failure to train Ben Solo in the ways of the Force.
When Solo was his student, Luke came close to murdering him in his sleep, because he
was frightened by the deep well of darkness he sensed in the boy.
Ben woke up to find Luke staring down at him with lightsaber in hand, and responded with
a fiery rage.
Ben destroyed the Jedi school, many of its students, and assumed he'd ended Skywalker
in the process.
Following these events, Luke decides he wants the Jedi to end because theirs was a legacy
of hubris and failure—capped by Luke's own epic failure, which turned Ben Solo into Kylo
Ren and helped fuel the rise of the First Order.
Does Snoke's identity even matter?
When The Force Awakens hit theaters, speculation ran rampant regarding Supreme Leader Snoke's
real identity.
Appearing only as a giant ominous hologram, Snoke was presented as essentially the trilogy's
new Emperor.
His motivations for turning Kylo Ren into the next Darth Vader helped fuel the burning
question: who is this guy?
As frustrating as it may be, The Last Jedi doesn't deliver any new revelations on that
front.
What the movie does do is finally give us Snoke in the flesh as he dishes out pain to
Kylo, Hux, and even Rey … before a surprise twist puts Kylo and Rey on the same team,
destroying Snoke and his flashy guards.
When all's said and done, it seems Snoke's true identity is … well, just Snoke.
While it's likely his backstory will be explored elsewhere, as far as the sequel trilogy is
concerned, it seems we've learned all we need to know about Kylo Ren's former master.
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