Star Wars Characters Who May Already Know Rey's True Identity

When Star Wars: The Force Awakens reached theaters, people realized just how central Rey (Daisy Ridley) is to the ongoing saga—and we've already seen in the trailers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi that she's receiving Jedi training from Luke Skywalker, although he seems concerned that she's so powerful that training her may be dangerous.

So who is Rey? She grew up on the planet Jakku, scavenging and fending for herself. Her family left her there as a small child, and she's spent her life waiting for them to return. The Force Awakens contains almost no clues as to who that family might have been, but it's set up as such a mystery that it's impossible to imagine it won't be revealed eventually. And Force powers are often hereditary, as we see with the Skywalkers, so it seems likely that at least one of her parents has a connection to the Jedi. With that in mind, here are some characters who might already know the secret of Rey's family.

Unkar Plutt (Simon Pegg) is the junk boss of Niima Outpost on Jakku, and generally seems to be a deeply unlikeable and mercenary character. He shows no particular regard for Rey, offering her meager rations in exchange for the junk she's scavenged, and sending his thugs after her when she refuses to sell BB-8 to him. But when Rey has her Force vision, we see that he was the one she was left with as a child when her parents abandoned her. While we don't know if her parents actually came to Jakku or if someone else brought her there, Plutt does seem uniquely positioned to know who her family is and why she's important. He doesn't seem like a character who's likely to return in future films, however.

Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o) is a thousand-year-old Force-sensitive pirate queen, and she seems to know a whole lot about a whole lot of things. She senses Rey's connection to the Force and to the Skywalker lightsaber, which has somehow found its way from Cloud City on Bespin to the catacombs of Kanata's castle on Takodana. She's a very mysterious and guarded character, so it's hard to tell if she's getting everything she knows about Rey from the Force, or if she might secretly know who Rey is from other sources. Either way, she tells Rey, "The belonging you seek is not behind you... it is ahead"—and also that her parents are never coming back to Jakku and she should allow her life to move forward. She sets Rey on the path to finding Luke Skywalker, but whether that implies that Luke is literally Rey's family remains to be seen.

Snoke (Andy Serkis), the Supreme Leader of the fascistic First Order, is even more of a mystery than Maz Kanata. He's obviously an adherent of the Dark Side of the Force, and played a major role in training Kylo Ren. But where Snoke came from and what role he's played in the Star Wars galaxy's past remain unknown. He certainly looks ancient—and even more decrepit than Emperor Palpatine in Return of the Jedi. According to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens novelization, Snoke saw the Empire rise and fall. If he was watching, and he also became aware of Ben Solo and his potential for corruption, it seems likely that he would also have been aware of another powerful young Force prodigy like Rey. Even if Rey and Snoke have never met, it won't be at all surprising if he knows her entire life story. And given that he's such an evil, manipulative character, the fact that he doesn't seem to know her when discussing her with Kylo Ren doesn't necessarily mean anything, as he could have simply been concealing his knowledge. Let's not forget, he asks Ren to bring her to him.

Whether or not they're related by blood, there's clearly an important connection between Rey and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). He takes an interest in her from the moment he learns that a girl helped Finn and BB-8 escape from Jakku. He's shocked by her Force abilities when he attempts to interrogate her, and embarrassed that she can read his thoughts. At this point, he doesn't seem to have any inside knowledge of who she is. But here's the thing: Many fans believe, and it would certainly make narrative sense, that Rey's background connects her to the Skywalker family, or at least to other previous Force users who's appeared in the franchise. 

For years before turning to the Dark Side, Kylo Ren was Ben Solo, the son of Leia Organa and Han Solo. He's ten years older than Rey, and if she was the child of people who know his parents, he might have been aware of her then. And if that's the case, he may have already started piecing this together by the time he attempted to recruit her during their fight in the forest.

If Rey is the child of people who knew Kylo Ren's parents, his one surviving parent would likely figure out who she is as well. Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) shows a particular interest in Rey the moment she lands at the Resistance headquarters on the planet D'Qar. She goes to talk to Rey first, rather than commiserating with Chewbacca about the loss of Han Solo. She doesn't betray any sign of knowing who Rey is, but it's possible she's simply protecting her from that knowledge, for the same reason Rey was left on Jakku in the first place. 

Maybe it's Leia's Force sensitivity at play, but she also trusts Rey very quickly, never hesitating to send the young scavenger off in her late ex-husband's ship to find her missing brother. Leia has lived a long life, and spent all of it at the center of the battle between good and evil. If Rey's parentage is important to that battle, it's entirely reasonable to think that Leia knows about it.

The Rip Van Winkle of droids, R2-D2 (Kenny Baker/Jimmy Vee) spent years in low-power mode after Luke Skywalker went into hiding. During that time, he was able organize the vast amount of information he absorbed from various computer systems over the years, which is what enabled him to help find Luke Skywalker using star maps from the Imperial Archive he had downloaded from the Death Star years earlier. 

One of R2-D2's chief functions in the Star Wars saga is to remember. After all, he's been a part of the story since Kylo Ren's grandmother Padme Amidala was the teenage queen of Naboo, escaping from a blockade with the help of Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. And unlike C-3P0, his memory has never been erased. So is Rey's true identity contained somewhere within his vast digital mind? It's hard to say for sure, but it's certainly possible.

The quest to find Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is at the center of The Force Awakens, and it's Rey who finally reaches him. As she holds out his lightsaber, he stares at her sadly and warily. It's hard to say, until we see them spend more time together in The Last Jedi, whether he recognizes her. 

Many have speculated that she's his daughter, but the way he speaks to her in the Last Jedi trailers makes that feel less likely. But that doesn't mean he doesn't know her parents, or that he didn't play some role in her being placed in hiding. Those trailers suggest Rey is a uniquely powerful Force user, to such a degree that it frightens Luke. It's possible, whether he knew her parents or not, that Luke has been aware of Rey's existence since she was born, thanks to his unique insight into the Force. Luke is Rey's teacher, and it's possible that who she is and where she comes from is one of the lessons he has to teach.

Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew/Joonas Suotamo) occupies a similar position to R2-D2: He's been around for a very long time, but because he doesn't speak English it's not always easy to understand exactly what he knows. If Leia and Han knew Rey's family, Chewbacca almost certainly does too. And even if they don't, his keen eyes may have picked up something nobody else is aware of. For that matter, he may be able to smell something familiar about Rey. Like Leia, Chewie takes to Rey quickly, serving as her co-pilot on the Millennium Falcon just as he did for Han. Previous movies have made clear that Chewbacca frequently knows more than he lets on, and this could be one of those cases.

Yoda (Frank Oz) has been dead for decades, but we can't take for granted that being dead means he won't show up. Yoda is one with the Force, and could almost certainly manifest as a Force ghost even after all these years, if he knew something that needed to be told. He's probably been watching the development of the Force and its users for all this time, and could easily appear to Rey or someone else if he knows something they need to know. For that matter, so could Obi-Wan Kenobi or even Anakin Skywalker. All of this seems pretty unlikely—but it's possible.

Rey wasn't a baby when she was left on Jakku. Actress Cailey Fleming would have been six or seven years old when she played Rey in the Force Awakens flashback, and even if she's meant to be playing younger, there's no way Rey is any less than four or five. So even though she doesn't reveal any specifics about them, Rey ought to remember her family—in fact, she may not be able to say exactly who they were or what roles they played in the galaxy. But it's still entirely possible that if she sees her parents, or a picture of them, or maybe even hears their full names, that she'll be able to say, "That's my family." Everyone is expecting someone to show up and tell Rey where she comes from and who her parents are, but it may turn out to be something she's capable of figuring out on her own.