For those of you who know me, you know that I am a big Star Wars fan. In fact, if it weren’t for George Lucas’s creation, I may have never gotten into writing novels. But that’s a story for a different day.
So, I watched J.J. Abrams’s, to me, brilliant Star Wars: The Force Awakens once again. I work from home, so television, movies, music, etc. serves as background noise. The time before when I watched it (probably my third viewing) with my wife, something caught my eye early in the movie that I wanted to look at again. But I didn’t want to stop the movie then as my wife may have started her own Rebellion.
Today, I had the chance to pause and investigate what it was I thought I saw, and it may give us a clue to Rey’s ties with Luke Skywalker.
Early in the film, after Rey returns to her home (a fallen AT-AT Walker), we get a glimpse into her solitary life. The camera pans around to a desiccated plant in a pot and then shows the above plush toy sitting on a shelf. The movie is full of Easter Eggs tying this film to the original trilogy.
If you look closely, the toy on the shelf appears to be a beat up X-Wing pilot. Many of us, those who are long gone from our childhood homes, still have our favorite stuffed animal sitting on a shelf, in a box, or on a bed in a guest bedroom somewhere. It’s one way we hold on to our childhood.
If you ponder why Rey might have created this doll, you could arrive at a few clues to her past. The Star Wars Visual Dictionary notes that she crafted this doll from debris she found in the junk fields — the orange fabric came from a New Republic cargo container.
There is barely a wasted shot in the Force Awakens. J.J. Abrams had purpose to every scene and image in the movie. Would he have had his prop makers go through the trouble of creating this plush toy and then aging it to make it look like it had been with Rey since she was a small child for no reason?
We know there’s a connection to Luke Skywalker and Rey. What that is, we don’t know yet. What if she felt some “pull” in wanting to create an X-Wing Pilot doll? What if that doll was meant to be Skywalker but she didn’t know it when she made it?