Is it just me, or does it seem like something might be amiss with Smol Bean (TM) Rey? After the drop of the first Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer on Friday, looked as though there was a possibility that Rey may go to the Dark Side of the Force — or, at the very least, flirting with the idea.
The first and most obvious hint at this in the trailer are the murmurings we hear after Luke tells her to breathe and asks, "What do you see?" She answers "light" — and then, after we hear murmurings of the words "Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi" (:48) as well as the words "the Dark Side," she answers again: "Darkness."
While fans have long suspected that Rey — who demonstrably has both light and darkness in her — is crucial to bringing balance to the Force, she may be taking some unconventional methods to get there. Daisy Ridley seemed to confirm this herself, mentioning in the panel preceding the trailer release at Star Wars Celebration that her relationship with Luke will not go the way that people — or Rey herself — may suspect, hinting at a tension between the two.
But aside from these external cues, there are a few other moments in the trailer that may subtly, or unsubtly, be hinting at Rey's deeper delve into the nature of the Dark Side.
First, of course, is the official poster, which depicts Rey with a lightsaber that seems equally tainted by Light and Dark.
Beyond that, though, we see that Rey's choice of attire has noticeably darkened — a subtle but no less important context clue, as she was clothed in ivory and beige in the last episode and seemed much more firmly in the realm of "Light".
Even the lighting and imagery surrounding Rey seems persistently conflicted — her hand on the rough ground, facing a turbulent sea, facing off with Luke for a training session on the edge of a cliff. It seems clear that while Rey might have had a clearer sense of who she is as a person prior to this next film that she now finds herself in some kind of flux.
The truly eyebrow-raising moment in the trailer, though, may be an event that ultimately helps to decide where Rey's loyalties lie — although it is unclear from the very brief image we get in the trailer, this still appears to be of Rey, falling to her knees beside R2-D2, facing the destruction of what might very well be a temple on Ach-To, the planet where she finds Luke.
Assuming that this is the handiwork of the Knights of Ren, is it possible that they attacked the planet and something happened to Luke, leaving Rey without a mentor to guide her? Will Kylo Ren's iconic plea for Rey to let him teach her the "ways of the Force" have to become a reality for Rey to help defeat Snoke? Or is this a tipping point that pushes Rey to the Dark Side, but still without aligning herself with Kylo Ren and his master?
We still have until the movie's Christmas Day release to find out, but this much I do know — the possibility that Rey flirts with the Dark Side in The Last Jedi is very, very real.
