If you are lucky enough to have some skills in statistics, you may be able to get ahead of the game. Remember that show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"? It was amazing that the poll the audience answers seemed to yield the correct response so often. Perhaps you could use statistics to "poll the audience" and it will give us the correct answer.
The problem is that with 129,000,000 matches and multiple possible theories being expressed on each matching web page, the task is formidable. Random sampling makes it possible to take a smaller number of those webpages and still end up with the same answer--at least it gives us a range that we are somewhat confident about (see other posts on sampling and confidence intervals on this cite).
First, it can be helpful to do some pre-research so that we have some idea what we are looking for. I have done it for us this time around and found nine theories (some related to others) and twelve criteria that people say should be satisfied by the theory.
The theories:
First, have a look at the nine theories:
- The Obi Wan's granddaughter theory (daughter of Luke and Obi Wan's daughter)
- The daughter of Luke Skywalker theory
- The daughter of Luke and a "Mara Jade" type Jedi theory
- The daughter of Luke and a "Mara Jade"-turned-evil theory
- The daughter of Leia and Han Solo theory
- The daughter of Leia-turned-evil and Han Solo theory
- The daughter of Obi Wan Kanobi theory
- The conceived by the force theory
- The reincarnated Anakin Skywalker ("Chosen one") theory
These were gathered by a purposive selection of articles that seemed most relevant. Purposive sampling means that articles are chosen based on the information they can provide. The results of purposive samples are not generalizable (able to be applied to the whole population) but can be an excellent choice in exploratory research or in pre-research because it helps the researcher get their bearing with major themes relevant to the study. In this case, it helped us uncover nine theories that we kept hearing over and over again.
There could be millions of potential theories, but we can know when to stop doing our pre-research when we start hearing only the same major theories over and over again. (We sometimes call this saturation).
The criteria:
Next, there were also twelve criteria that people kept talking about. According to the articles and comments read, these are things that the theory should satisfy for the theory to be chosen by those making the movie. A good theory should:
- Have the ability to explain Rey's advanced abilities with the force
- To explain her advanced pilot skills
- To explain her advanced mechanical skills
- To explain why she was abandoned (or placed) on Jakku as a young child
- To explain Maz Kanata's statement that Rey's family is not coming back
- To explain the draw Rey has to Luke's/Anakin's lightsaber
- Keep the movies Skywalker family-centric (to meet a statement made by creators of the movies)
- Create an interesting plot twist
- Be true to the Star Wars feel (and perhaps parts of even the expanded universe EU)
- Explain Obi Wan's "first steps" line in Rey's vision
- Explain cinematographic allusions or foreshadowing about who Rey is (like the look of her clothing or her upbringing on a dust planet).
- Explain the apparent connection between Rey and Leia toward the end of the movie
There are two ways to look at the "worthiness" of a theory vis-a-vis the criteria: How well a theory meets each criterion, and how many of the criteria it meets. One theory may provide a fascinating and excellent explanation about Rey's ability as a pilot but completely fail to explain Rey hearing Obi Wan's voice during her vision. Similarly, one theory may provide a fair explanation of all these criteria, but another may provide phenomenal explanations for half of the criteria.
This will have to be sorted out later. But, just keep in mind that our evaluation of these theories will be some combination of how good the theory is at explaining each criterion, and how many of the criteria the theory explains. These could be called "depth" and "breadth" respectively.
Preliminary results
There are many possible ways to go about this but one is to make a crosstabulation (crosstab). This simply means that we put the categories of one thing as column headers, and the categories of the other as row headers, and they we will in the frequencies we observe at the intersection. (In practice we usually make two variables and the "intersect" or "cross" them using statistics software).
For now, I have filled in each cell with my subjective analysis based on my readings.
The table is below:
This is simply the product of me rating each theory (in rows ->) as + , ++ , or +++ where + means "the theory would provide a decent explanation" and +++ means "the theory would provide a very good explanation". Notice there is also a - rating, meaning "this would provide a bad explanation of the criterion".
Now, back to the two ways of assessing the results: depth and breadth. If you scroll over to the right, you can see the total number of points each theory got. This is its overall strength and is simply the total number of + that it has, minus the total number of -. So + gets 1 point, ++ gets 2 points, +++ gets 3 points and - gets -1 point.
To the right of that is another column that give each theory a point for each criterion that it satisfies with at least one + .
Results
Rank by total points (depth):
- Reincarnated Anakin/Chosen one
- Daughter of Luke and "Mara Jade"-turned-evil
- Daughter of Han Solo and Leia-turned-evil
- Daughter of Luke and "Mara Jade"
- Luke's daughter
- Force conceived
- Daughter of Luke and the daughter of Obi Wan's
- Daughter of Han Solo and Leia
- Daughter of Obi Wan
As we see here, the more simple versions of theories are less able to provide strong explanations for the different criteria on average. The top theories involve more details and usually, a woman that has turned evil. The internet world tends to find some appeal in the idea that there will be a "Rey, I am your mother" moment over the next two movies at some point. The idea is that either "Mara Jade"/Luke's Jedi wife turned evil in a sort of Darth Sidius reversal. She feels that the only way to conquer the dark side is to make one's way into it and then destroy it from within. Luke, disagreeing with this philosophy parts ways with his wife and has to hide their young daughter (Rey) and wipe her memory. Nevertheless, she has some Jedi training from Luke (and possibly ghost Obi Wan) that resurfaces later on, making Rey as powerful as we see in the movie. So, Luke's estranged wife will turn out to be either Snoke (a disguise) or Phasma, and, upon learning of Rey, try to bring her to the dark side. Some in this camp even think it may be Ben's intention to do the same, thus the scene where he looks at the Darth Vadar mask and says, "I will finish what you started"--not referring to destroying all Jedi, but to restoring balance to the force by passing through the dark side.
A similar vibe runs through the Leia-turned-evil theory--that she is not pleased with the inability of the republic to put down the first order and decides to take a small band of resistance fighters to do it. Thus, the resistance is portrayed as a small movement with rudimentary spacecraft rather than more elaborate ships and equipment. This could play out with some similar "Rey, I am your mother" moments, and many believe that Leia might also be behind Snoke (as a disguise). Other possibilities behind Leia's turn to the dark side might be related to her inability to face the darkside like Luke did with Darth Vadar, her lack of training in the force by the light side, or, possibly the same thing that would turn a "Mara Jade" character to the dark side--fighting it from within.
The #1 theory, however, does not have this tone. Instead, it portrays Rey as a reincarnation of Anakin, or the Chosen one. In this theory, the "Chosen one" is not a single person, but takes on many different personas over time through reincarnation. Thus, Rey is, in a sense, Anakin, out to undo the mistakes of his past life. We see Rey on a dusty run-down planet, good at flying and fixing things, and some argue that Rey bears a remarkable resemblance to Shmi Skywalker. This theory obviously explains a lot of criteria because it is sort of the catch-all--instead of answering how she is related to Anakin (a point that seems to be pretty overtly made by the movie makers), it simply asserts that she is him. However, this theory provides great depth of explanations for a lot of the criteria, but not as much breadth as others. For example, it does not offer a ready explanation of why she was abandoned as a young child or hears Obi Wan Kenobi's voice in her vision.
Let us look at the ranking by breadth--percent of criteria satisfied:
- Daughter of now-evil "Mara Jade" and Luke
- (tie for 1st) Daughter of Han and now-evil Leia
- Reincarnated chosen one
- Daughter of "Mara Jade" and Luke
- (tie for 4th) Luke's daughter
- Daughter of Obi Wan's daughter and Luke
- (tie for 6th) Obi Wan's daughter
- Daughter of Leia and Han
- Force conceived
Once again, there is the general trend that more complex theories involving women turned evil are at the top! In fact, the same theories occupy the top three places, but the "reincarnated chosen one"theory has fallen to 3rd. This is because, while it satisfies many of the criteria very well, it does not satisfy as many of the criteria as some other theories.
Conclusion
Short of drawing up and conducting a full survey to a representative sample of the Star Wars fan universe, we conclude that three of the theories seem to land at the top:
- Daughter of now-evil "Mara Jade" and Luke
- Daughter of Han and now-evil Leia
- Reincarnated chosen one
So, which should be crowned the best? Here, we might want to weight depth or or breadth differently--implying that one is more important than the other. But, assuming we weight them equally, we just average them and end up with these final standings:
- Daughter of now-evil "Mara Jade" and Luke
- Daughter of Han and now-evil Leia
- (tie for 2nd) Reincarnated chosen one
So, in episode 8 when most of the world finds out that Rey is the daughter of Luke and a "Mara Jade" type Jedi-turned Phasma who was trained by Luke and ghost Obi Wan but had her memory wiped and was sent to Jakku to protect her from the dark side and her mother, maybe you will be able to say you heard it here first thanks to the power of analysis.
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