The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson actually considered revealing Rey was a robot
This would have been an unconventional twist to the storyline about Rey's mysterious parents
Rian Johnson practically wrote our headline for us. The Star Wars: The Last Jedi director has revealed he had some very out-there ideas about Rey's origins story – and the "silliest" was that our heroine is actually a robot.
Having inherited the big mystery of Rey (Daisy Ridley) and her backstory from The Force Awakens director JJ Abrams, Johnson was initially undecided about what to do with the character. So he made a "big ass document", which is not a document about giant bums, but a list of every single possibility.
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Speaking on Slashfilm's podcast, he explained: “I honestly listed everything I could think of, even awful possibilities where I said, ‘This is not what we’re going to do.’ I mean the less silly one was, ‘Is she a clone?’ Anything that’s a theory on Reddit now I guarantee was listed on that document."
Johnson added: "The silliest one was, ‘Is she a robot?’ Okay, we’ve seen a biomechanical realistic flesh hand on Luke, could the technology have advanced significantly in the 30 years, and then I just started laughing.
"Look forward to the ‘Rey was almost a robot' headlines."
Glad to oblige.
In the end, Johnson opted to make Rey human (phew) but threw a bit of a curveball. Fans had been speculating for years about who Rey was related to in the Star Wars universe: Luke Skywalker? Han Solo? Princess Leia? Snoke?
Instead, Rey turned out to be a "nobody" who was abandoned by her neglectful parents, neither of whom were anything special.
None of this was part of a plan to upset the fandom. "It’s not like I was aware of those expectations and was trying to purposefully poke people in the eye,” Johnson said. “I was writing based on my honest gut reactions to what the most powerful turn of events would be to those questions.”
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