Rey has made her return to the Resistance with the Ultimate Boon of the Force, but for the ultimate Return, to find mastery, to bring balance, there is one more quest she must endure and a couple more steps of the Hero’s Journey that she must take. However, from the beginning of The Rise of Skywalker, we can already witness how strong Rey’s connection to the Force is. Now, she seeks to discover the connection with the Jedi of the past who will guide her in the Force, which is not as easy for her as it would seem.
The lesson Rey must learn as she continues on this stage of her journey is that sometimes, rather than having “faith in an external power, it is often the heroine’s faith in herself, or lack of it, that determines whether she succeeds or fails. And often the hero triumphs not by fulfilling the expectations of others, but by changing the rules and winning on his own terms” (Priester). This is what sets her apart from the vanilla Hero’s Journey. Of course, she must have faith in the Force, but Rey also has to trust in herself, balance the Light and the Dark, and master two worlds of the spiritual and the material. A piece of this can be seen as she runs the training course, in the first scene with her of the movie. As Rey is being stung by the seeker droid, it seems that anger has gotten the best of her, as she throws Luke’s lightsaber at it and misses, but what Rey uses to destroy it is telling for how she connects these two worlds: a stick, used like her old staff. It is unconventional, but it works.
Another aspect of Rey’s Hero’s Journey that shifts from the norm is that she is no longer on a lone quest, she has a team. As much as she believes that she has to obtain the Sith wayfinder and face Palpatine alone, Finn is there with her saying, “Yeah, alone with friends” (Rise). On the desert planet of Pasaana, when the team sinks into the underground caverns, once more, Rey surpasses another trope of the Hero’s Journey by not slaying the obviously dangerous serpent – which is Poe’s first instinct – but transfers some of her Force energy to heal it. This is also just another way in which she brings herself in balance with the Force as a Jedi, to be in communion with all living things and to use compassion.
But there is still the Dark Side that Rey must face within herself, made known by her use of Force lightening. The shadow of Rey’s past lies in the truth that she is the granddaughter of Palpatine, and because of this, her hatred for him for killing her parents leads her to say, “I’m going to find Palpatine and destroy him” (Rise). Of course, this is very uncharacteristic of a Jedi, but Rey has already shown that she is a different sort of Jedi. However, she must first face herself, her Dark Side shadow that we catch a glimpse of on the ruins of the Death Star on one of the moons of Endor, if she is to dispel the Dark Side from overpowering her and bring balance to the Force. This is another test. Rey has already seen herself in a vision on the throne of the Sith. If she were to destroy Palpatine in anger, that would only make this vision come true, akin to Anakin trying to save Padme from dying in Revenge of the Sith. Rey would become the tyrant, who is “no longer the mediator between the two worlds. Man’s perspective flattens to include only the human term of the equation, and the experience of a supernal power immediately fails” (Campbell 299). This is the part of her that she must first dispel to bring balance.
What holds Rey back is her fear of herself. In facing Kylo Ren once more, she has struck him down in anger, and in this, Rey feels as though she has failed Leia and herself. Just as she has decided to give up and remain in exile on Ach-To, Luke’s Force Ghost is there to encourage her, saying, “Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi. Your destiny. If you don’t face Palpatine, it will mean the end of the Jedi and the war will be lost” (Rise). Rey must confront Palpatine to complete her Hero’s Journey which, from a certain point of view, is her Atonement with the Father. Although Rey is Palpatine’s granddaughter, her father was a clone, meaning that she is essentially his daughter, but this atonement will not act to bring the two together as it did for Luke and his father, this is the be all end all, the final test to prove Rey’s character.
On the Hero as World Redeemer, Joseph Campbell writes, “Two degrees of initiation are to be distinguished in the mansion of the father. From the first the son returns as emissary, but from the second, with the knowledge that ‘I and the father are one.’ Heroes of this second, highest illumination are the world redeemers” (299). Rey understands who she is, but she also knows now that she is not defined by her past. She has not come to lead the Sith but to destroy it. Her only obstacle is giving in to hate. Reminiscent of Return of the Jedi, Palpatine tempts Rey to strike him down so that she can save her friends, but Rey knows that Ben has come back in order to turn the tide. Family Palpatine and Skywalker join forces once more, but it is now on the side of the Light. However, even as a dyad in the Force, the duo seems no match for the Emperor.
But this is Rey’s Hero’s Journey and in order for her to achieve World Redeemer status, she must “slay the tenacious aspect of the father … and release from its ban the vital energies that will feed the universe” (Campbell 303). The Emperor’s rise to power has caused an imbalance in the Force, and the only way to bring this balance back is to slay the Dark Side, the Dark Side that represents Rey’s blood. The final showdown is the ultimate Jedi versus Sith moment. All the Sith live in Palpatine, and all the Jedi, who call out to her in this moment, live in Rey. Of particularly note in this ensemble is Anakin, who says, “Bring back the balance, Rey, as I did” (Rise). As once the Force was in balance by the actions of Anakin Skywalker at the end of Return of the Jedi, Rey must now defeat the Emperor, not in hate, but with the power of the Force and the Jedi of the past behind her, and the ultimate sacrifice must be made as her life force fades away.
The hero dies but dies so that she may be reborn as the Master of the Two Worlds. As Campbell writes, “The individual, through prolonged psychological disciplines, gives up completely all attachment to his personal limitations, idiosyncrasies, hopes, fears, no longer resists the self-annihilation that is prerequisite to rebirth in the realization of truth, and so becomes ripe, at last, for the great at-one-ment” (204-205). Ben Solo’s redemption has made it so that he is able to sacrifice himself for Rey to live, and in this moment, it is another Skywalker saves Palpatine scenario, yet unlike the one that leads to Anakin’s fall in Revenge of the Sith. For the return journey, this is Rey’s Rescue from Without.
Ultimately, Rey becoming the Master of the Two Worlds at the end of her Hero’s Journey is sparked by her mastery of the Force and her at-one-ment with the spiritual and the material. She becomes a new kind of Jedi, as is revealed on Tatooine as she ignites her newly-crafted lightsaber. The blade is yellow, an uncommon color among the Jedi, and I take as a representation of Rey being in balance with the Force. The other notable in her connection with these two worlds is that Rey’s lightsaber hilt is crafted from her old staff, combining the spiritual Force with the material world, her old life with the new. From there, Rey’s Hero’s Journey is complete.
As was discussed, there are many elements of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey that coincide with Rey’s own, but her neck extends out above the rest because Rey’s journey is also not very traditional when it comes to how she portrays and defines who she is. Although Rey is grafted into the Star Wars universe in her relationship with and bringing balance to the Force with the Jedi that came before her – and mirrors such heroes – she is unique in that her quest is not about a personal agenda. Rey’s selfless character traits guides her in the direction in which, first, helps others, and second, comes to terms with who she is and wants to be. She both rejects the nihilism of Luke in The Last Jedi and the Dark Side that calls to her in her own blood, and instead, fashions her own course, relying on the Force, to bring the Light and the Dark into balance. In the end, Rey has brought balance to the Force, and it will now be up to her to learn from the Jedi who came before and forge a new path for a new Jedi Order.
Works Cited
Abrams, J.J. Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker. Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures, 2019.
Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New World Library, 2008
Priester, B. J. “The Heroine’s Journey: How Campbell’s Model Doesn’t Fit.” Fangirl Blog, 20 Apr. 2012, http://fangirlblog.com/2012/04/the-heroines-journey-how-campbells-model-doesnt-fit/.
The Tolkienian 