Rey (Daisy Ridley), fresh off beating Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) with the combined power of every Jedi who ever lived, wanders out to the middle-of-nowhere Lars homestead on Tatooine, buries two lightsabers in the sand, and tells a random passerby her last name is Skywalker.
Fans have been arguing about that moment since Star Wars: Episode IX — The Rise of Skywalker (2019) hit theaters. Some love it as the ultimate mic-drop. Others have spent seven years calling it the exact opposite of what Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: Episode VIII — The Last Jedi (2017) was trying to say — that you don’t need a famous surname to be a hero.
Turns out, multiple pieces of Star Wars media have quietly been building Rey a receipt for that name-drop. And together, they actually hold up.
First Up: Luke Gave His Blessing
The updated edition of Insight Editions’ “The Secrets of the Jedi: The Chronicles of Luke Skywalker” dropped a first-person passage from Rey herself, explaining she didn’t grab the Skywalker name to cash in on a legacy — she took it for Luke:
“I had to continue the fight and finish what he started. I had to stop Palpatine from rising again and regaining power. To redeem Ben Solo once and for all. And to proudly wear my Master’s name while doing so, in honor of his life and his sacrifice. Luke Skywalker may be gone from this plane, just like all the Jedi who came before him… but he will live forever.”
Then she goes bigger: “Because, in the end, I am all the Jedi. And maybe we all are.”
That’s a pretty different vibe than “I renamed myself on the spot.” It reframes “Skywalker” as something you earn by carrying the values forward — not something you inherit or just decide to take.
And honestly, this tracks with everything else Lucasfilm has been doing to patch the gaps Rise of Skywalker left wide open. Marc Sumerak’s “The Secrets of the Sith” dug into where Snoke actually came from. Dave Filoni’s The Bad Batchcovered Palpatine’s cloning experiments. And Marvel’s 2025 five-issue comic adaptation of The Rise of Skywalker — written by Jody Houser, art by Will Sliney — finally gave us a visual of the “All the Jedi” moment. In the movie, those voices were audio-only. In the comic? We actually see Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ahsoka Tano, Luke Skywalker, and the rest standing right there with Rey.
Then: Leia Basically Already Said Yes
Here’s the part that’s newer. “Star Wars: Legacy,” a novel by Madeleine Roux set between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker, reportedly closes with a scene that changes the whole equation — according to Holofiles via The Direct.
In the book’s final chapter, Rey and Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) are repairing the broken Skywalker lightsaber together on the planet Tython. Rey tells Leia the saber “belonged to your family”: “I don’t know if I could have done this without you. And this isn’t just mine; it belonged to your family.”
Leia’s response is the whole ballgame: “Rey, I think you know that it still does.”
The chapter — and the book — ends on one word: “Belonging.”
So Rey wasn’t just naming herself after the movie ended. According to “Legacy,” Leia had already told her she belonged in the family before Episode IX even started. Tatooine wasn’t Rey inventing a connection out of nowhere — it was her finally accepting one Leia had offered first.
Putting It Together
Each piece answers a different complaint fans have had for seven years. The Insight Editions passage handles the “why Skywalker, though?” question — it’s about mentorship and values, not bloodline. “Legacy” handles the “wait, who said she gets to?” question — the family, through Leia, already made the offer.
Combined, a moment that used to feel like Rey crowning herself now reads as the payoff to two relationships the movies never fully closed out.
What This Means for You
Bottom line: the theatrical cut of The Rise of Skywalker hasn’t changed and never will. But the story wrapped around it keeps getting built out, and this is the most convincing patch job yet for that Tatooine scene. If you’ve been side-eyeing Rey Skywalker since 2019, these two additions are worth knowing about before you argue about it again.
And the timing isn’t random — Lucasfilm’s Star Wars output is picking back up. The franchise finally broke its post-2019 dry spell with Jon Favreau’s The Mandalorian and Grogu in May 2026, with Shawn Levy’s Star Wars: Starfighterfollowing in 2027. Three more films — James Mangold’s Dawn of the Jedi, Dave Filoni’s New Republic crossover, and Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s New Jedi Order (rumored to bring back Ridley) — are still sitting in limbo since their 2023 announcement. Former Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy also confirmed in 2024 that producer Simon Kinberg is developing a separate new trilogy. Whether Rey shows up in any of it is still anyone’s guess.
Expect more retroactive world-building like this as “Legacy” reaches more readers. The movies are staying exactly the same — everything around them isn’t.
What do YOU think — does this actually fix the ending, or is it too little too late? Sound off in the comments.
