For Star Wars fans, Rey in The Force Awakens couldn't arrive fast enough. Though we received three additional prequel movies, fans were still hungry to know what happened to the Skywalker family after Return of the Jedi.
Sure, the prequels filled in some of the blanks of the past, but for many, the movies just didn't have the classic Star Wars feel that they had grown up with.
However, just as we thought that George Lucas was done with Star Wars forever, he sold the rights to Disney, which announced shortly thereafter that it was picking up where he had left off.
Disney gave The Force Awakens the deluxe treatment, spending a considerable fortune on its budget and revving up its marketing campaign to full blast.
At the center of the sequel trilogy was a new female hero — Rey, the scavenger. Like Luke Skywalker, she was from an isolated community on a desert planet.
In fact, she was similar to Luke in a lot of ways — she was an amazing pilot, she possessed natural Force ability, she had mysterious parentage, and she was drawn into a battle against evil when she met a droid on a mission.
Rey quickly earned her place with fans as a favorite character, even though many questions about her have yet to be answered.
Though we may still not know the whole truth about Rey's family, or exactly why she is so powerful with the Force, most fans trust that by episode nine. these questions will be answered.
However, based on clues from the movies, books, and comics, Rey's history and abilities aren't as mysterious as we thought.
Here are the 20 Strange Details About Rey's Body In Star Wars.
Luke's Lightsaber Knows Who She Is
While Rey, Finn, Han Solo, and Chewbacca stopped on planet Takodana to seek help from Maz Kanata inside her castle, Rey had a peculiar experience.
She felt an irresistible urge to explore one of the basement rooms. Inside, she opened a chest that contained Luke's old lightsaber — the one he lost in Cloud City.
When she touched the lightsaber, she had a powerful vision of Cloud City, the slaughter at Luke's Jedi Academy, and one of her own memories when she was left behind on Jakku.
Maz Kanata explained that the lightsaber was calling her and that she should have it.
According to the Ahsoka novel, the kyber crystals inside lightsabers have a collective "conscious" and are considered living crystals.
This means that Luke's lightsaber knew who she was and wanted her to have it.
What we don't know is why.
Her Mind Is More Powerful Than Kylo Ren's
Kylo Ren kidnaps Rey on Takodana, thinking that he can extract information about Luke Skywalker's whereabouts by probing her mind with the Force.
However, he hits a snag. While initially successful at reading her mind and seeing her past on Jakku, Rey mentally pushes back, shoving Kylo Ren out of her thoughts.
She then pushes even further and probes Kylo Ren's mind, easily uncovering his greatest fear that he will never be as strong as Darth Vader. Shaken, Kylo Ren regroups with Snoke about what to do next.
This was Rey's first conscious use of the Force.
Some fans think that it was Kylo Ren's mind probe that "awakened" her ability. However, one thing is for sure, if she can defend against a mental Force attack from Kylo Ren, her mind is much more powerful than anyone had imagined.
She Knows How To Defend herself
It wasn't easy for Rey to look after herself on Jakku. In addition to basic survival skills like scavenging and trading for food and water, she had to defend herself against marauders who wished to steal from her or do her violence.
Naturally, she had to adapt if she wanted to survive.
So she walked softly and carried a big stick, or in this case, a quarterstaff. As seen when several sketchy scavengers attempted to steal BB-8 from her, she used her quarterstaff and some slick fighting moves to defend herself against their attacks.
During his first experience encountering Rey, Finn witnesses the whole scene. By the time he tries to come to her rescue, she's already dispatched the two thugs, knocking them totally unconscious.
By the looks of it, she's definitely done this before.
She Has Natural Force Abilities
Even Rey didn't know she was Force sensitive until Kylo Ren started poking around in her mind.
What exactly happened afterward is still a mystery. Was there some kind of barrier that unleashed her power? Has she unconsciously been using the Force while she was growing up on Jakku?
What we do know is that after her power becomes unleashed, it rivals Kylo Ren's ability, who has obsessively trained for years.
In terms of raw power, Rey definitely has it— winning mind fights with Kylo Ren and levitating hundreds of boulders.
Her power isn't refined (yet), but we're sure this will happen over time.
Fans noticed she swiped Luke's old Jedi books from the Force tree and stowed them in the Millennium Falcon. If she can educate herself from a junkyard, imagine what she can learn from these books.
She Has The Mechanical Skills & Physical Dexterity to Pilot The Millennium Falcon
We knew Rey was quite the pilot when she commandeered the Millenium Falcon with Finn and outmaneuvered a few TIE fighters while flying at high speeds inside the wreckage of a star destroyer.
Yet, she knows how to fly it like a pro. Actually, she knows how to fly a lot of ships, but how?
According to the book Rey's Survival Guide, Rey salvaged a computer from an old Y-wing bomber that enabled her to run flight simulations.
On a desert planet with virtually no built-in entertainment, this might have been the closest thing she had to a video game. How often she used the simulator is unknown, but judging by her thrilling flying and escape from Jakku, it was probably a lot.
Her Body Is Adapted To Desert Climates
Jakku seems even more remote than Tattooine, but its climate is about the same: hot and dry.
Making sure that she has enough water was probably Rey's main concern while living there, followed by obtaining enough food rations to survive.
Growing up in this environment means that Rey is almost certainly adapted to dry conditions and probably has more than few tricks to naturally find water.
However, Rey is no farmer like Luke. Instead, she relies on her salvaging skills to trade items for food.
Salvaging downed ships required that she stay in excellent shape, similar to a mountain climber or spelunker. Scavenging gave her enough of a hands-on education to teach herself in multiple practical subjects.
Training as a warrior in self-defense was also necessary, as explained in Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary.
She Can Outrun Trained Stormtroopers
Finn is a trained ex-stormtrooper, yet when the blaster fire starts flying, Rey easily outpaces him.
Finn is in great shape, but Rey has an edge. As anyone trying to run on the beach might tell you, running in the sand slows you down and makes your calves work overtime.
However, Rey grew up running on sand.
As a scavenger, though, she was also constantly working her body. From sunup to sundown, she was climbing, spelunking, hiking, lifting parts, and most likely defending herself on an everyday basis.
Finn may have run more than a few missions, but Rey was never off the clock.
In terms of pure stamina and speed, she's got the edge not only on Finn but probably on most stormtroopers who aren't specialized for desert climates.
She Is Only 19 When The New Saga Begins
Rey starts out her hero's journey while still very young — she is 19, approximately the same age as Luke when he found R2-D2 and kicked off his adventure.
However, their initial dreams were very different. Luke yearned to get off of his remote planet, while Rey just wanted her family to come home.
Her youth and background were helpful in answering her own call to adventure. She was young and in enough shape enogh to have the courage to become one of the key players of The Resistance.
Realizing that her family would never return gave her the impetus to leave Jakku and try to find her "place in all of this."
It's hard to believe, but when she finally starts training with Luke in The Last Jedi, the age difference is approximately the same as it was between Luke and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Daisy Ridley Had To Train Five Days A Week
What does it take to play a character who has done punishing work in the desert her whole life and can wield a lightsaber with the best of them?
As Daisy Ridley described in her interview with Elle, it took working out five hours a day, five days a week for three months.
On top of that, she had rigorous stunt training at Pinewood Studios in London.
Ridley said that she ate "lots of fish, legumes, and spirulina shakes" and that her exercise became her "solace."
She said this was "because it's the only thing structured in my life right now. Training is sort of a therapy session, I guess."
Daisy continued this disciplined training regimen for her work in The Last Jedi, and presumably also for the upcoming untitled Episode IX.
She's Self-Educated In Spaceship Engineering From Scavenging Junk Ships
As far as wrecked ships go, Jakku is a goldmine. As explained in Aftermath: Life Debt, Jakku was the site of the last major battle of the Galactic Civil War, which took place about a year after the events of Return of the Jedi.
A massive battle took place both in the skies above the planet as well as the ground below.
The New Republic won the fight.
Littering the Jakku landscape is the bulk of the former Empire's fleet, as well as many ships from the New Republic.
As a result, the landscape is a graveyard of Star Destroyers, TIE and X-wing fighters, Imperial AT-AT walkers, battleships, and Y-wings.
Rey had a chance to salvage almost every kind of ship from both sides, which gave her an engineering and mechanical background second to none.
She Taught Herself How To Speak Multiple Languages
As a motivated learner, Rey is a dedicated student.
Rey's Survival Guide attributes Rey's foreign language education from several sources.
One source was the computer that she salvaged from a downed Y-wing bomber. As the same computer that she used to run flight simulations, it also had schematics for The New Republic and Imperial ships, as well as comprehensive information on alien languages.
Because Jakku was an outpost that saw many travelers and other scavengers from other planets, Rey also picked up binary languages from droids and learned how to understand (if not speak) the Wookie language from Wookie traders and smugglers.
This is also how she came to know about the famous Han Solo and Chewbacca, who were practically celebrities.
She Has Used Force Battle Meditation
Battle meditation, as first described in Heir to the Empire and Tales of The Jedi Audio, is a Force power that boosts the morale of allies as well as increases coordination, stamina, and general overall skill set during battle.
In practice, it is mostly used to influence groups, but it can be used on oneself.
Many fans wondered how Rey was able to defeat Kylo Ren in their first lightsaber battle.
There are three reasons for this defeat, the first being that Kylo Ren was horrifically injured by Chewie's bowcaster blast. The second is that Rey had been fighting with a quarterstaff her whole life, using moves similar to the fighting style of a lightsaber.
The third, according to Disney, is that she was using the Force power of battle meditation for the first time during their encounter.
She Was Initially Missing From The Force Awakens Toy line
It's hard to believe that the people in charge of the toy line for The Force Awakens seemingly believed that the public didn't want Rey action figures because she was a girl.
However, in 2015, this wqas exactly what happened.
Angry parents wondered why the main hero of the story was absent, while male second tier unnamed characters were available.
Worse, her figure was left out of the Millenium Falcon toy set (she's the pilot) and also excluded from the Monopoly game.
As anyone could guess, this did not fly with fans, who were able to purchase a Leia Organa figure back in 1977.
A massive backlash spawned a social media movement, #wheresRey, and even J.J. Abrams got on the phone to express his concerns.
Thankfully, asecond and third wave of toys were released soon after, with versions of Rey everywhere.
She Won't Be The Last Jedi
In The Last Jedi Luke insists that the Jedi must end, saying, "Now that they’re extinct, the Jedi are romanticized, deified. But if you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of the Jedi is failure."
This is a convincing statement. However, soon after R2-D2 replayed Leia's original holographic plea for help from A New Hope, Luke must have both changed his mind and gotten the idea to appear as a "hologram."
"You're my only hope," she repeats, and Luke realizes that the Jedi are about awakening hope.
When Force-projection Luke confronts Kylo Ren, he says that he won't be the last Jedi.
With adepts like Rey who stole all the Jedi books and children who can Force-push brooms on the Casino planet, it seems though while the Jedi Order is gone, the Jedi themselves will endure.
She's An Expert Mechanic
All of that experience salvaging parts and examining schematics on her repurposed Y-wing computer has definitely paid off for Rey.
The practical hands-on approach to learning worked wonders for her, so by the time she's 19, she knows how to fix almost anything electronic or mechanical.
Having studied the wreckage from the Battle of Jakku which contained almost all models of spaceships from both sides, she probably knows more than professional spaceship mechanics.
This is how she knew how to fix the Millennium Falcon in The Force Awakens.
In her words, she just bypassed a faulty compressor. We're not sure what that means exactly, but it seemed to do the trick. Han Solo was certainly impressed.
She Built The Speeder She Uses Herself
When fans got a look at Rey's speeder, they probably thought that they'd never seen this kind of vehicle before in the Star Wars universe, and they would be right.
According to Star Wars: The Force Awakens: The Visual Dictionary, this speeder was custom-built by Rey from the parts she found in Starship Graveyard, the common name of the field of wreckage from the Battle of Jakku.
As quoted in Rey's Survival Guide, she said, "I built it myself, from parts I found in the Graveyard and in junk piles in Nima, along with a few things I got in trade from the Teedos. Everything was stuff I scavenged or that other people had thrown away."
She also said, "I designed my speeder to carry heavy loads back and forth between the Graveyard and Niim. But when it's lightly loaded it goes really fast -- and pretty high."
Her First Force Use After Kylo's Interrogation Was The Jedi Mind Trick
Rey's very first conscious use of the Force happened when she fighting back against Kylo Ren's mind probe. After he left her alone in the room, she took a shot at her second use of the Force — the old Jedi mind trick.
"You will remove these restraints and leave this cell with the door open," she says the stormtrooper on guard (incidentally, it's actor Daniel Craig under the helmet).
It didn't work at first, with the stormtrooper threatening to tighten the restraints on the "scavenger scum."
However, on the third try, he straightens up and repeats, "I will remove these restraints and leave the cell with the door open."
Rey presses her luck, "and you'll drop your weapon!" As he leaves he says, "and I'll drop my weapon" and throws it to the floor.
Old Obi-Wan would have been impressed.
She's Inspired By The Original Concept Design Of The Female Hero For A New Hope
George Lucas' original vision for A New Hope was thematically pretty much the same, but the characters were pretty different.
Lucas asked Ralph McQuarrie, conceptual designer, to come up with some designs for the characters he had originally conceived.
Luke Skywalker was originally Starkiller, who was a young girl. C-3PO was also more feminine, while Obi-Wan's character was sort of a hybrid between Obi-Wan and Han Solo.
Chewbacca looked completely different. You'll notice that Chewbacca and R2-D2's design inspired Zeb Orrelios and Chopper the Astromech droid in Star Wars Rebels.
It's interesting how things come full circle. Lucas originally imagined the classic trilogy with a female hero raised on a desert planet, and six movies later, this finally came to pass.
Her Force Ability Is Based On Balancing Light And Dark
During Rey's brief training, Luke believed the Jedi Order was a failure and that Force wielders needed to focus on balance.
This was markedly different from Yoda's training of Luke, who urged him to always practice the light side of the Force and avoid the dark.
While meditating under Luke's direction, Rey saw all the forces of the island in balance, with long demised and decaying animals feeding the plants for new life, and the light of the Jedi temple above balanced with the darkness of the caverns below.
Most likely spooked by what he interprets as her raw Force strength as well as by what he thinks is her attraction to the dark side, Luke was terrified by his new pupil.
However, Rey seems to keep the light within her, as Kylo Ren has so far failed to turn her to the dark side.
She May Be Prone To Heavy Drinking
When Rey finally meets with Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi, it seems like he is going to help Snoke turn Rey to the dark side.
Things take a wild turn when Kylo Ren assassinates Snoke and teams up with Ren to take out the rest of his guard. They both assume the other will turn, but neither does.
In an attempt to sway her to come with him, Kylo Ren tells her that her parents were nobodies, just scavengers who sold her off for drinking money.
Rey believes him.
If Kylo Ren is telling the truth -- and that's a big if -- then this makes Ren genetically susceptible to having a drinking problem, too.
However, with all she's learned about the Force and balancing the light with the dark, we doubt that she will be going to rehab anytime soon.
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Can you think of any other interesting facts about Rey's body in Star Wars? Let us know in the comments!'