While Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is the final movie in the 42-year Skywalker saga, it ends on the Tatooine suns rising rather than setting over Rey and BB-8. Out at the Lars homestead on Tatooine, Rey buries Luke and Leia’s lightsabers while holding out and showing off her own. An old woman passes by, asks Rey who she is, to which she eventually responds “Rey Skywalker”.
The ending of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker shows Rey choosing to take a different path than she was born into. Instead of being defined by the fact that she’s a Palpatine, she decides to continue the name “Skywalker”. The name has been dealt a blow with Vader’s fall and Luke’s failure to stop Ben Solo from becoming Kylo Ren. By getting permission from the Force ghosts of Luke and Leia to continue that family name, Rey is looking to do better with that name, living up to the title of the movie, The Rise of Skywalker.
Rey and BB-8 watching the suns rising on Tatooine serves to symbolize, in a very literal way, the “Rise” in The Rise of Skywalker, coming as it does just after she has claimed the family name for herself. This is just the start of many more stories that Rey will be a part of, even if they’re not told in future Star Wars movies. Rey will be out there building the new version of the Jedi Order, trying to succeed where Luke failed.
The rising suns on Tatooine also bookends the Skywalker saga as a whole. While it wasn’t the exact beginning of the original Star Wars, Luke’s time as the protagonist started with him looking out over the Tatooine sunset. That was Luke feeling melancholy about his life out in the middle of nowhere, hoping and longing for a bigger adventure in the galaxy. That adventure was just around the corner for him, while Rey’s big, dangerous adventures like that are hopefully in her past.
This also keeps The Rise of Skywalker from just repeating too much of previous Star Wars movies. They hadn’t just done a random scene looking over the twin sunset; it was one of the most iconic scenes in the series. While no Star Wars movie has been afraid to be self-referential, and The Rise of Skywalker has plenty of Easter eggs and nods to the past, it’s crucial not to repeat exactly what happened before. Going from a Tatooine sunset to a sunrise changes the context enough to mean something else: a new, hopeful beginning for Rey and the rest of the galaxy, not the start of a long and arduous journey for Luke and the Rebellion.
Instead of perfectly mirroring Luke Skywalker staring at the sunset, Rey gets to watch the twin suns rise at the end of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Rey has now taken on the name Skywalker, so the title of the movie is literally true in that moment. This brings the series full circle, ending on a more uplifting version of the iconic twin sunset scene from the first movie.