Fan Goes Viral For Bringing Up Bizarre Skywalker Saga Moment
Decades of galactic duels, daddy issues, and a $4 billion corporate buyout all came to a climax in 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The ninth and (most likely) final movie in the Skywalker Saga closed out Disney and Lucasfilm's hotly debated sequel trilogy in ways that fans and critics alike continue to lock lightsabers over. With this being Star Wars we're talking about, those lightsabers may be locked forever (see: "Who shot first?").
However petty and insignificant the fandom squabbles might get, some of the things pointed out by the most obsessive Star Wars enthusiasts really are worth doing a double take over. One such fan went viral on the Star Wars subreddit in August 2020 for pointing out what they deemed "one of, if not the dumbest moments in all of [Star Wars]," referring to a pivotal scene from none other than The Rise of Skywalker.
The Sith dagger is the key
Early in the film, Rey, Finn, and Poe travel to the desert planet Pasaana on information from the late Luke Skywalker that the key to locating the recently resurrected Palpatine may be there: a Sith wayfinder. While the journey proves fruitless in that regard, all hope is not lost, for our heroes stumble across a dead Jedi hunter's dagger that may lead them to the wayfinder if only they can translate the Sith inscription on it.
They of course turn to C-3PO, "fluent in over six million forms of communication," for help. As the droid explains, however, the Imperial Senate restricted droids from speaking the Sith language many years earlier, no doubt the work of Palpatine himself after he took control of the government body. It doesn't take long for the First Order to come and steal the dagger (and capture Chewbacca in the process), but the inscription is safely stored in C-3PO's memory banks.
Luckily, they know a droidsmith on the snowy planet Kijimi who's able to bypass the droid's Sith language firewall. A compromised C-3PO reveals that the wayfinder lies in the ruins of the second Death Star, on one of Endor's moons, and so the planet-hopping continues — but not before rescuing Chewbacca and retrieving the dagger, as well as learning that the blade was used to kill Rey's parents.
The bizarre thing about the Sith dagger
Whew! That was a mouthful. There's plenty to be confused about — even with the full context of the movie — yet none of that is what threw the Star Wars fan who went viral on Reddit for a loop. Once the team reaches the moon where the second Death Star fell, Rey pulls out the dagger to see if it holds any additional clues. Indeed it does: wielding the dagger before her after discovering a tape measure-like extension in the crossguard, she aligns its ridges with the broken form of the second Death Star, which points directly to the Imperial Vault, where the Sith wayfinder should be.
The whole scene is a little too perfect, giving Reddit full leeway to rip right into it with a mix of humor and genuine disappointment in this perceived insult to the audience's intelligence. Aside from the dagger existing as a plot convenience, the scenario raises a slew of questions: Should the contours of the dagger lining up with the devastated Death Star ruins in a scarily accurate fashion be explained away as "the will of the Force?" How about the fact that Rey landed the Millennium Falcon not an inch away from where she needed to be in order to perform this incredible feat of movie magic?
Whether you look past such plot holes or rage against the machine, the Skywalker Saga is over, and for all its flaws, it remains a monumental storytelling and filmmaking achievement. A single dagger can't change that.
Star Wars remains a force to be reckoned with
Of course, this is hardly the first questionable moment to find its way into a Star Wars movie. Over its 40-plus-year history, the saga has had its fair share of glaring plot holes, confusing MacGuffins, and weird decisions galore.
In Return of the Jedi, Luke and Leia have an emotional conversation before the former leaves to confront Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine — a beautiful, character-building scene, save one plot hole. Aware that they're siblings, Luke asks if Leia remembers her real mother at all. She reveals that she does have some memories of her, though they aren't very clear. As audiences would learn more than 20 years later, however, Padmé died during childbirth, meaning neither Luke nor Leia would remember her. Call it hindsight bias, but it stands out when watching the film today.
The plot of The Force Awakens, meanwhile, hinges on a map detailing Luke's whereabouts that's been hidden inside BB-8 by Poe Dameron, who in turn received it from the mysterious Lor San Tekka. It's eventually revealed that this map is just an incomplete fragment, and the rest of the information is actually stored in R2-D2, who has been completely deactivated since his old master disappeared. We can overlook our questions about the unlikely journey of this map, but it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense why R2 suddenly awakens at the end of the movie, seemingly unprompted, just in time for the big reveal.
As for other weird and controversial decisions... take your pick: Jar Jar Binks' entire existence, Vader screaming "NO!" as he saves Luke from Palpatine in George Lucas' revised version of Return of the Jedi, midichlorians determining Force abilities. The list spans the galaxy — as does our love for this wonderfully flawed space opera.