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Simon_Jester wrote:

Elheru Aran wrote:I think when you put it into those terms, you're missing the big picture. Yes, Anakin Skywalker and his fall, and the rise of Luke as a Jedi, were important events... on an individual scale. The scheming of the Sith Lords to bring about the downfall of the Republic and the Jedi,[snip] ROTS, if Anakin had failed to stop Dooku again on the Invisible Hand Palpatine could quite possibly have escaped anyway, and he had plans for the Jedi Purge regardless of whether he managed to turn Anakin into Vader or not.

I guess my thing is that I blame Anakin heavily for how things played out in Episode III. He, personally, played a critical role in stopping the Jedi from averting Palpatine's takeover of the Republic, betraying them purely on speculation that Palpatine could save his wife.

If he'd just been loyal, or done literally anything except betray everything he'd ever stood for and cared about, events would have unfolded very differently.

Made a separate post since this is a different issue.

Yeah, Anakin is pretty responsible for how things went in ROTS. He finds out Palpatine is Sidious, tips off Mace Windu, who goes to arrest him, then intervenes in the arrest, keeping Palpatine alive, becomes Vader, and the Jedi Purge begins immediately.

But for all that. Say Anakin had, I don't know, caught a blaster bolt during the Clone Wars. He's not there to save Palpatine on the Invisible Hand-- that was seriously somewhat of a gamble on Sidious' part, counting on being rescued by Anakin-- so maybe Palpatine is "taken hostage" by Grievous and Dooku. Following this, a Jedi rescue force is decimated in a "successful" rescue effort which kills Grievous and brings the Separatists to the point of asking for peace. Dooku then eliminates the Separatist head command, Palpatine executes Order 66, and the Sith win. Palpatine gets to stay charmingly handsome in a senior-citizen fashion.

See how that works? It's just one possibility, but the Sith were going to win, one way or another. Anakin was merely being groomed by Palpatine to succeed Dooku. If he dropped out of the picture... Palpatine shrugs, grumbles about where he's going to find someone else, and starts going through his space Rolodex.

I guess my point is that while Anakin specifically was critical to how events happened in the film, the overall course of events wasn't significantly altered by his presence, unlike when Luke blew up the Death Star or Anakin destroyed the droid control ship.

Elheru Aran wrote:My take on it:

Rey seems *very* fixated on the idea that her "family" is coming back for her on Jakku. That suggests she was abandoned there by relatives, though kidnapping is also a possibility.

Could be a bit of both.

What if Kylo was ordered by Snoke to kill all of the Jedi, even the younglings, but he couldn't bring himself to murder his own little cousin?

He may have surmised that his only choice was to maroon her on some backwater and lie to Snoke. Little Rey, as a trusting young child and unaware of his fall to the dark side, may have even gone with her big cousin willingly and believed him when he said he would come back for her one day. He may have even used the Jedi mind trick to influence her against ever leaving Jakku.

Everyone else would believe she was dead so her entire family may have mourned her for years, but they accepted that Rey (if that's even her real name) was gone forever. This might be why Han and Leia didn't recognize her as Luke's daughter or tell her anything about her past.

Personally, I prefer for Rey to just be some unconnected girl to the original heroes, and she got called by the force or whatever. I also don't like the idea of Luke as a deadbeat Dad whose idea of a good place for his daughter is scavenging wrecks for crumbs the rest of her life.

As for Luke being gay? Eh, it'd be like Dumbledore from Harry Potter, such a footnote because of his age and role in the story that it might come off as rather bad tokenism. Now if they want to make Rey, Finn, or Poe gay, that'd be cool, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Call me crazy but personally I would very much love to have Rey be a Skywalker. It would just be so very fitting.

Purple wrote:Call me crazy but personally I would very much love to have Rey be a Skywalker. It would just be so very fitting.

"We have a family tradition: treat your kids like absolute shit. Kill their mom, blow up their planet, leave them to die on some arid backwash on the Galactic Rim, stuff like that."

Khaat wrote:

Purple wrote:Call me crazy but personally I would very much love to have Rey be a Skywalker. It would just be so very fitting.

"We have a family tradition: treat your kids like absolute shit. Kill their mom, blow up their planet, leave them to die on some arid backwash on the Galactic Rim, stuff like that."

The force works in meritorious ways.

Elheru Aran wrote:Apart from that however, my big issue with Rey being Luke's daughter is that Han and Leia don't seem to recognize her at all. There's absolutely no issue as far as that goes with Kylo Ren-- Han recognizes him even from a distance, masked and hooded and all-- but you would think that they might have recognized their own niece.

Depends. Was she abandoned at, say, thirteen, or at, say, four? If I hadn't seen my niece since she was four I might very well NOT recognize her if I saw her fourteen years later. It's a big galaxy, I'm sure there are a lot of people who bear a (false) family resemblance to Luke Skywalker.

Now Kylo, on the other hand, does certainly react to the news of "a girl" on Jakku, and seems uncomfortably familiar with Rey. Maz Kanata... well who the hell knows what she's going on about? She seems to think Rey is related to Luke, but she's never explicit about it other than saying she's seen similar eyes.

Which could also just mean Rey has Force potential, since Kanata seems to know a fair amount about the Force and the Jedi.

One theory I've seen was that Rey's parents may have been among Luke's Jedi students. When Kylo Ren turned bad, she was dumped on Jakku before he could kill her. But that notion works well enough if she's Luke's daughter, or unfortunately enough, a sibling of Kylo's.

I like the idea that Rey's parents were among Luke's students, though. That's much more compelling to me than "Luke abandoned his own daughter or allowed her to be abandoned on a world that had to remind him of Tatooine, which he ain't exactly fond of even if he doesn't hate it like Vader did.'

Elheru Aran wrote:I guess my point is that while Anakin specifically was critical to how events happened in the film, the overall course of events wasn't significantly altered by his presence, unlike when Luke blew up the Death Star or Anakin destroyed the droid control ship.

You're not wrong, but I don't think you being right makes me wrong. My criticism is that the idea of 'dynasties' of Force users is not necessarily a good thing, especially if the Jedi are at least partially correct about family attachments being a potential path to the Dark Side. And the evidence suggests they might be- of the three Force users we know of in movie canon who had any close relationships with their family and loved ones, two went dark. In Anakin's case specifically because of his attachment to Padme*, and in Kylo Ren's case... we don't really know except that we DO know Ren's obsession with living up to the standards of "grandpa" is in play.

So there's at least some evidence that it is actively dangerous for Force users to be too attached to other people, so large, long-lasting families of Force adepts who persist generation after generation may well be bad for the peace and stability of the galaxy.

____________

*Though, yes, this could have been avoided if the Jedi weren't so inflexible about the 'no attachment' rule.

Galvatron wrote:Could be a bit of both.

What if Kylo was ordered by Snoke to kill all of the Jedi, even the younglings, but he couldn't bring himself to murder his own little cousin?

He may have surmised that his only choice was to maroon her on some backwater and lie to Snoke. Little Rey, as a trusting young child and unaware of his fall to the dark side, may have even gone with her big cousin willingly and believed him when he said he would come back for her one day. He may have even used the Jedi mind trick to influence her against ever leaving Jakku.

Everyone else would believe she was dead so her entire family may have mourned her for years, but they accepted that Rey (if that's even her real name) was gone forever. This might be why Han and Leia didn't recognize her as Luke's daughter or tell her anything about her past.

Ooooh, I LIKE this one.

Especially since we already see it being made a plot point that Ren is (or at least was) too 'weak' to make a 'real' Sith- he lacks self-discipline and isn't fully comfortable with his own evil deeds.

Elheru Aran wrote:
Apart from that however, my big issue with Rey being Luke's daughter is that Han and Leia don't seem to recognize her at all. There's absolutely no issue as far as that goes with Kylo Ren-- Han recognizes him even from a distance, masked and hooded and all-- but you would think that they might have recognized their own niece. Now Kylo, on the other hand, does certainly react to the news of "a girl" on Jakku, and seems uncomfortably familiar with Rey. Maz Kanata... well who the hell knows what she's going on about? She seems to think Rey is related to Luke, but she's never explicit about it other than saying she's seen similar eyes.

Maybe Han and Leia just assumed Luke was gay.

APlayerHater wrote:

Elheru Aran wrote:
Apart from that however, my big issue with Rey being Luke's daughter is that Han and Leia don't seem to recognize her at all. There's absolutely no issue as far as that goes with Kylo Ren-- Han recognizes him even from a distance, masked and hooded and all-- but you would think that they might have recognized their own niece. Now Kylo, on the other hand, does certainly react to the news of "a girl" on Jakku, and seems uncomfortably familiar with Rey. Maz Kanata... well who the hell knows what she's going on about? She seems to think Rey is related to Luke, but she's never explicit about it other than saying she's seen similar eyes.

Maybe Han and Leia just assumed Luke was gay.

apart from the as it's been pointed out being homosexual doesn't exclude having children, second why would they think so, we got remember that Galactic Republic/Empire is not in the end modern day USA so the culture would be different. I mean a lot of the false positives as well as the false negatives when it comes to identifying who is homosexual or not comes from "doesn't fit the masculine stereotype therefore they must be gay!" or the reverse "fits the msculine stereotype therefore they can't be gay!". I really hope I don't need to explain why using that assume actions of people from different cultural background (real of fictional) is unwise at best, hell it's even unwise to use that judge someone's sexual preference in the modern western cultural background as people don't always fit stereotypes.

While there's a lot of reasons for Han and Leia to assume Luke didn't have children "he's probably gay" is pretty low on that list.

Lord Revan wrote:apart from the as it's been pointed out being homosexual doesn't exclude having children

My main issue with this argument is that it would imply a very ugly thing. That being that Luke made a kid and than later realized his homosexuality and ran off to contemplate leaving the kid behind.

Except his reasons for leaving are already implied in the film to have much more to do with guilt/grief over Kylo Ren murdering his students.

It may also be that he didn't want to face Kylo because felt he could not turn him back to the Light Side but wasn't sure he could kill him without falling himself. Just a personal theory.

Purple wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:apart from the as it's been pointed out being homosexual doesn't exclude having children

My main issue with this argument is that it would imply a very ugly thing. That being that Luke made a kid and than later realized his homosexuality and ran off to contemplate leaving the kid behind.

Only if his homosexuality was the reason for leaving Rey, there's far too many unknowns to make such an overreaching conclutions yet. For all we know Rey's parents (who ever they were) had no choice but to leave her, for her own safety.

we don't have anywhere near the whole picture yet.

The Romulan Republic wrote:Except his reasons for leaving are already implied in the film to have much more to do with guilt/grief over Kylo Ren murdering his students.

It may also be that he didn't want to face Kylo because felt he could not turn him back to the Light Side but wasn't sure he could kill him without falling himself. Just a personal theory.

Maybe Luke was the only person who refused to believe that Rey was really dead and that's the reason for his quest. The map would therefore be the route he took is his search to find wherever Kylo left her.

Lord Revan wrote:While there's a lot of reasons for Han and Leia to assume Luke didn't have children "he's probably gay" is pretty low on that list.

Han and Leia lived with Luke and worked closely with him for years, even if we restrict ourselves carefully to the movie canon.

If he were gay, there would be a LOT of ways for them to find out about it definitively.

And if he were gay, it wouldn't guarantee that he wouldn't have kids... but it would make that less probable.

Galvatron wrote:

The Romulan Republic wrote:Except his reasons for leaving are already implied in the film to have much more to do with guilt/grief over Kylo Ren murdering his students.

It may also be that he didn't want to face Kylo because felt he could not turn him back to the Light Side but wasn't sure he could kill him without falling himself. Just a personal theory.

Maybe Luke was the only person who refused to believe that Rey was really dead and that's the reason for his quest. The map would therefore be the route he took is his search to find wherever Kylo left her.

So how did he wind up leaving the map with a guy on Jakku, the very planet Rey was living on, without finding her?

Or did the guy take the map, then go to Jakku himself? I'm confused.

Galvatron wrote:Maybe Luke was the only person who refused to believe that Rey was really dead and that's the reason for his quest. The map would therefore be the route he took is his search to find wherever Kylo left her.

No, we got explicit dialog that Luke's map was his search for the first Jedi temple, not his quest for Rey.
I am liking the idea that Rey is a sibling/child of one of Luke's students, though. And Ben Ren responded to "a girl on Jakku" like he knew about her. Not killing her (and her escaping his Jedi purge and/or being dumped on Jakku) could very well have been his earlier failing that's been plaguing him. "Grampa Vader could kill younglings, but I couldn't." kind of thing.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:While there's a lot of reasons for Han and Leia to assume Luke didn't have children "he's probably gay" is pretty low on that list.

Han and Leia lived with Luke and worked closely with him for years, even if we restrict ourselves carefully to the movie canon.

If he were gay, there would be a LOT of ways for them to find out about it definitively.

which was my point. In fact the reason Leia and Han would probably know if Luke was gay or not means that "he's probably gay" is so low on the list of possible reasons for Luke not havings kids, as far as I know GFFA doesn't have the truly dreadful (and incorrect) stereotype of "gay=pedophile" that modern day america sadly still has so one of the major reasons why gay men don't have children of their own wouldn't exist in GFFA.

However it doesn't seem to fit Luke's character that he'd hide the fact that he had children from his sister and brother-in-law, even if he was gay.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Galvatron wrote:Maybe Luke was the only person who refused to believe that Rey was really dead and that's the reason for his quest. The map would therefore be the route he took is his search to find wherever Kylo left her.

So how did he wind up leaving the map with a guy on Jakku, the very planet Rey was living on, without finding her?

Or did the guy take the map, then go to Jakku himself? I'm confused.

Khaat wrote:

Galvatron wrote:Maybe Luke was the only person who refused to believe that Rey was really dead and that's the reason for his quest. The map would therefore be the route he took is his search to find wherever Kylo left her.

No, we got explicit dialog that Luke's map was his search for the first Jedi temple, not his quest for Rey.

Okay, nevermind then.

Khaat wrote:I am liking the idea that Rey is a sibling/child of one of Luke's students, though. And Ben Ren responded to "a girl on Jakku" like he knew about her. Not killing her (and her escaping his Jedi purge and/or being dumped on Jakku) could very well have been his earlier failing that's been plaguing him. "Grampa Vader could kill younglings, but I couldn't." kind of thing.

It works whether or not Rey is a Skywalker. Another possibility is that she's not a Skywalker in name if Luke and some as-yet unidentified woman had a love child, but never married.

Duplicate post. Please delete.

Lord Revan wrote:which was my point. In fact the reason Leia and Han would probably know if Luke was gay or not means that "he's probably gay" is so low on the list of possible reasons for Luke not havings kids, as far as I know GFFA doesn't have the truly dreadful (and incorrect) stereotype of "gay=pedophile" that modern day america sadly still has so one of the major reasons why gay men don't have children of their own wouldn't exist in GFFA

Yes, but the other reason (lack of lasting relationships with women capable of bearing those children) is still in play.

I mean, I'm not saying I'd rule out "my gay brother-in-law who I haven't seen in years has a kid." But it wouldn't be my first assumption, I wouldn't take for granted that yes of course he has kids.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Lord Revan wrote:which was my point. In fact the reason Leia and Han would probably know if Luke was gay or not means that "he's probably gay" is so low on the list of possible reasons for Luke not havings kids, as far as I know GFFA doesn't have the truly dreadful (and incorrect) stereotype of "gay=pedophile" that modern day america sadly still has so one of the major reasons why gay men don't have children of their own wouldn't exist in GFFA

Yes, but the other reason (lack of lasting relationships with women capable of bearing those children) is still in play.

I mean, I'm not saying I'd rule out "my gay brother-in-law who I haven't seen in years has a kid." But it wouldn't be my first assumption, I wouldn't take for granted that yes of course he has kids.

there's a whole host of reasons for Luke not have had kids besides being gay, obviously being gay could be a reason, it wouldn't put it very high on the list of possible causes for lack progeny.

Also regardless of his sexual preference there's no character points we do know about Luke one being that family is important to him, so to me it would seem odd for him to not mention having a child and we do know there was at least some degree of contact between Luke and Leia as Ben Solo was trained for a while by Luke.

All this is of course assuming that Rey is Luke's child.

At this point making Luke gay is toothless and spineless. It's like making Dumbledore gay. So what. Just another gay wizard in the tradition of dubledore/gandalf/magneto.

Unless we get a Mark Hammil/John Boyega onscreen kiss in episode 8 it's not gonna matter. Luke was always pretty much asexual. Romance and sex just kind of aren't relevant to the character

Also I don't know why Anakin's lightsaber would call to her (as stupid as I found this plotpoint to be) if she weren't a skywalker.

You realise that Gandalf and Magneto aren't gay right? Just because they're played by a gay actor doesn't say anything about the character.

Just another gay wizard in the tradition of Mr. Spock

I'd like to see you evidence for Spock, Magneto or Gandalf being homosexual if you don't mind.

Gandalf arrived precisely when he meant to when he greeted Frodo