I went to see The Force Awakens again last night, and I picked up on a few extra little details, so I immediately began searching for the best Star Wars Episode VIII theories online, and it’s absolutely fascinating.
(BEWARE THERE ARE SPOILERS FOR THE FORCE AWAKENS AND POSSIBLY EPISODE VIII – If you want to know nothing about VIII, leave this page now…)
5. Luke Skywalker is Supreme Leader Snoke
Whilst a little outlandish, nothing yet really disproves this theory. There were so many people going into The Force Awakens expecting Luke to be the bad guy, but now that’s been completely dropped. But think about it for a moment…
We estimate Luke has been hiding away since the time when Kylo Ren killed all his Jedi trainees, so that’s around 15 years or so. It’s definitely possible that Skywalker, who has already flirted with the dark side, saw the power in young Kylo Ren and turned to the dark side to clearly fulfil his destiny.
Maybe Luke wasn’t ashamed of Kylo Ren, but wanted him to go out into the galaxy and take over in the name of the First Order, and he’s been in isolation to hide this terrible secret from the Resistance and the Republic.
What we saw of Snoke in Episode VII is only a hologram, and there’s surely the technology around to manipulate his voice and appearance to remain secret to all but his apprentice, Kylo Ren…
And as for the whole search for the map, it’s possible that Luke engineered the situation to draw the Resistance closer to Starkiller Base, and therefore be able to obliterate them once and for all…
4. Rey was once a trainee at Luke’s Jedi school
Taking into account that Luke isn’t a bad guy, and was training Jedi until Kylo Ren killed his trainees, it’s a real possibility that Rey trained with Luke from a young age to become a Jedi.
It would certainly be a convincing way to fill in the fact that she has insta-Jedi powers in The Force Awakens, and is able to face up to Kylo Ren in a lightsaber battle, but still, shouldn’t she remember her training?
Well, it’s all down to that dream sequence in Maz Kanata’s bar. Rey was clearly left on Jakku by someone, and it’s possible that that was Luke, attempting to keep her safe from Kylo Ren’s wrath by sending her to the far reaches of the galaxy.
And as we can tell by some of Kylo Ren’s abilities to basically freeze people and blasts, the Force has clearly evolved from what we knew of it at the end of Return Of The Jedi. Therefore, Luke may have learned to wipe Rey’s mind of all that she experienced at Jedi school, thereby keeping her as anonymous as possible, but due to the nature of the Force, she remained able to pick up her Jedi powers once she thought about it.
It’s a tough one to judge, but we’ll definitely get more answers to this fascinating question in Episode VIII.
3. Maz Kanata, not Luke, is the new Yoda
(Sorry, that’s the only picture of Maz Kanata on the internet…)
This ties in slightly with the idea that Luke could be Supreme Leader Snoke, although it doesn’t have to.
We know from the film that Maz Kanata ‘knows the force’. She says she’s no Jedi, but that may be a trick, similar to Yoda’s initial deception of Luke in The Empire Strikes Back, to stir the force in young Rey.
People have been saying that it’s Luke who will train Rey and be what is effectively the new Yoda. However, he may still be so ashamed of the deaths of his trainees at the hands of Kylo Ren that he cannot train Rey, so she will have to go to the next-best person, which seems to be Maz Kanata.
Or, if Luke does turn out to be Snoke, and begins to train Rey in the dark side before she eventually notices, she’ll likely flee and have to turn to Maz Kanata to complete what’s left of her training to be a Jedi.
It’s a difficult one to believe, but it would tie in nicely with the Luke-Snoke twist, and we’d get more out of Maz Kanata, who, it has to be said, wasn’t the most fascinating character in The Force Awakens.
2. Rey will fall to the Dark Side in Episode VIII
Now, one thing that almost everyone can agree on about The Force Awakens is that Rey, played by Daisy Ridley, is one of the best characters of the entire saga.
However, her story might begin to take an unexpected turn in Episode VIII, as she could fall to the Dark Side…
How is this possible? Well, Luke (AKA Snoke) may begin to train her in the dark arts unknowingly, and with such isolation on that island, Rey will have no way of escaping the power of the Dark Side, and so she’ll become an ally to Kylo Ren intent on bringing order to the galaxy by wiping out the Resistance and the Republic.
Then what? Then, we’ll need a new Jedi hero, most likely in the form of Finn, who clearly isn’t particularly force-sensitive, but something could awaken in him to combat the now evil duo of Kylo Ren and Rey, and any lightsaber battle with those three would definitely have an extreme emotional power to it that maybe the Anakin v Obi-Wan battle in Revenge Of The Sith was lacking.
It’s likely then that Episode IX would be about bringing Rey back to the light side, and then, in similar style to Vader, confronting her former dark master, Luke, to destroy the Dark Side once and for all.
It’s a pretty far-fetched theory, but it’s one that no-one would see coming, and it would silence the critics who say that the entire trilogy is going to rehash Episodes IV, V and VI. We’ll just have to wait and see…
1. Rey’s parents
This is the one that’s got everyone talking after The Force Awakens – who exactly are Rey’s parents?
Put simply, there are two main schools of thought: it’s Han and Leia, or it’s Luke and some other woman, and the evidence is there to support both sides of the argument pretty well.
On the one hand, it’s possible it could be Luke, because Rey is clearly very strong with the Force, R2-D2 senses her relation to Luke when he wakes up at the end of the movie, and Luke’s lightsaber in Maz Kanata’s basement was clearly calling out to her, not Finn, who eventually picked it up. This would make the meeting of Rey and Luke on top of the island all the more powerful, and the subsequent training fascinating to watch – but who is the woman that Luke fell in love with then to give birth to Rey?????
On the other hand, it could be that Rey is Han and Leia’s long-lost daughter, and therefore the sister of Kylo Ren. The evidence for this side isn’t as concrete, and much more speculative, but there is a moment where Maz Kanata tells Rey that the person she is waiting for on Jakku is never coming back, but someone else could, to which Rey replies: ‘Luke’.
Now, it’s possible that that person never coming back was foreshadowing of Han Solo’s death, and seeing as we know Rey is waiting for her family on Jakku, that would imply that she is a Solo.
The only issue is why don’t Han and Leia recognise her? Well, it’s possible she was taken away from them at a very young age to train with Luke, or just to be left on Jakku, and they simply don’t recognise her.
This is a debate that’s going to go on and on until we get Episode VIII in May 2017, but what I personally hope is that she’s the son of Han and Leia, because that would render Han’s death a lot more emotionally powerful, and would make any confrontation between Rey and Kylo Ren (brother v sister) absolutely thrilling, the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
