Alright, this post contains spoilers for the Star Wars Episode 7. It also contains a theory that I feel is pretty solid so could be a spoiler for future episodes. You have been warned.

After seeing Star Wars: the Force Awakens last December I felt pretty confident I knew who Rey was and why and how she’d been abandoned on an isolated desert planet. The clues were all there in the film.

Since then I’ve seen many theories. Several match mine in part, but not entirely. So I thought I’d put it out there.

I believe Rey is Luke’s daughter. Which isn’t much of a stretch. She is strong in the force. His lightsaber chooses her. She’s a gifted pilot. Visually she’s his echo in her costume and the environment we originally see her in. They end the film face to face with Skywalker hero music swelling. Plenty of people have come to the same conclusion.

(Though some think she’s Han and Leia’s daughter, and others think Obi Wan’s granddaughter. I think Luke makes the most sense. Other people really want her not to be a Skywalker or Solo because why does the hero always have to be from one bloodline? I somewhat agree but it’s Star Wars and why else make such mystery of who her parents are? Besides, we’ve got Finn and Poe as our non-Skywalker heroes).

All the other theories I’ve seen conclude that Rey was left/hidden on Jaaku to keep her safe. Some say by Luke, others by her Aunt Leia, others by her as yet unidentified mother. This is where my theory differs.

What we know for sure is that Rey at the age of 3 or 4 was left on a remote planet in the hands of a scavenger. She remembers a ship flying away as she screamed for it to come back and not to leave her. She seems to have grown up on her own, with no one looking after her. Her memories before arriving on Jaaku are pretty much nonexistent, but she believes that the person who left her there was family. And she clings to the belief they will come back.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone who cared about little Rey would’ve thought leaving her to be raised by an uncaring scavenger/merchant, or alternatively raise herself was the safe option. Though it does seem to have worked out.

He did not strike me as a loving foster father.

So here’s my theory. I’ve not looked everywhere so it’s possible someone has already come up with this. It’s based only on evidence in the movie. I’ve thought this since I first left the theater and it still feels right.

Luke has a daughter with someone. I have no theory on who. Things are idyllic for a few years; he’s busily training his new class of Jedi. His daughter, who is probably not named Rey, shows signs of being strong in the force, and he has plans to start training her in a year or two.

Then Leia sends her son Ben to Luke to train. She’s worried because he is drawn to the dark side. Especially troubling is his deification of Grandpa Vader. She believes only Luke can bring him back to the light. Han firmly disagrees, causing a rift between them. None of them know that Ben has already been recruited and is being corrupted by the Sith, Commander Snoke.

To complete Ben’s turn to the dark side, he’s ordered to kill all the potential Jedi, just as his grandfather did before him. He joins the Knights of Ren, taking the name Kylo Ren. It’s worth noting that the only time we see the Knights of Ren in the entire movie is during Rey’s vision.

In fairness, this could be a vision of the future and not the past.
So Kylo and the Knights of Ren kill all of Luke’s students. Kylo then goes to kill the lone remaining future Jedi, his little cousin. He kills her mother and comes close to killing her. But as we’ve seen in the movie, the light side still has a hold on him, and he can’t do it.

So he grabs her, steals a ship, and dumps her on Jaaku, believing she’s as good as dead. And is at least out of his way. He tells his master he killed her.

Kylo is the family she screaming at to come back. A four-year-old who’s seen her mother murdered and has been left to fend for herself could easily forget her past.

Meanwhile Luke comes back from wherever he was when all this went down. He sees the aftermath of a massacre and believes his daughter was killed by his nephew along with her mother and all his students. Despondent, he disappears to atone for his failure as Jedi, teacher, uncle, and father.
(It makes more sense to me that he’d disappear thinking his daughter was dead rather than him knowing she survived and dropping her in the desert before going off to sulk.)

Han and Leia split after learning what their son has done and what he’s become. Each feeling they made the wrong choices and are unworthy of the other.

There are a few moments in the film that back this up that I haven’t mentioned yet.

The first is when the stormtroopers report to Kylo Ren that they traced the droid with the maps to Luke to Jaaku but they lost it again because of a girl. What does Kylo do on hearing about the girl from Jaaku? He flips his shit.

And when his team arrives at Maz Kanata’s castle, who does he capture? Not the droid the First Order has been chasing for the first half of the movie. Not his father who he hates. But Rey. The cousin he failed to kill.

There’s also the matter of Han and Rey’s apparent connection. Sure he could just be admiring the scrappy kid with the excellent piloting skills and an affinity for his beloved Falcon. But there are a couple of moments he seems choked up when talking to her.

Some people take this as an indication that he realizes she is his long lost daughter. I’m not buying it. He and Leia discuss their fallen son but never mention any other children. Even if it’s a painful subject, you’d think it’d come up. After all, their whole conversation is painful subjects.

I think he’s recognizing certain traits in her that remind him of his old pal/brother in law. Plus he probably would’ve known the mother of Luke’s child, and could be reminded of her as well. He sees that Rey may be the child he thought his son had murdered decades ago. Maybe his son isn’t as lost as he thought. What does he do next? Volunteer for a mission that’ll put him right in the path of his son.

So that’s my theory. We’ll have to wait until 2018 to find out if I’m even close.