While the newest Star Wars trilogy may have bowed out with a mixed legacy overall with fans and critics, few can dispute those films captured at least some of the magic of the original films, especially with 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. In that film, Daisy Ridley’s Rey proved to be a protagonist the audience can generally get behind, and her performance in all three films is one of the high points of the saga.
However, one of the more obscure characters from the trilogy apparently left a big impact on Ridley.
A controversial aspect of the trilogy is the question of Rey’s heritage. Many inferred from what they interpreted as allusions in The Force Awakens that Rey may have a Skywalker or perhaps even a Kenobi in her lineage. This theory seemed to be squashed with the second installment. In The Last Jedi, Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren aka Ben Solo claims that Rey’s parents were nothing more than junk traders who sold their child for drinking money. This origin was later reversed in The Rise of Skywalker with the reveal that she’s actually the granddaughter of Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine aka Darth Sidious, the big bad of the original trilogy.
But Rey’s mother, played by Jodie Comer, has proved to have left a lasting impression on Ridley, despite a short appearance in the third film.
Speaking to Grazia, Ridley recently said Comer is one of the people she continues to stay in touch with to this day after the trilogy wrapped.
“My god I was so sad. I spent a lot of time crying, I really felt like I was grieving something. They were my people for so many years! John [Boyega] and I met when we were both twenty-one, we were so young. We started this thing together in our early twenties and now I’m twenty-nine. But we all keep in touch, even though John is the busiest man in the world. I went for breakfast with Kathy Kennedy the other day which was so nice. Jodie [Comer] and I text all the time. It was such a wonderful experience,” Ridley recently told Grazia.
Would you want to see a Star Wars spin-off starring Rey’s mother?