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Will Rey become a Jedi? That’s one of the big questions we’re hoping Star Wars: The Last Jedi will answer. We know the character is a Force user, and we all suspect she’ll train with Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To to hone her abilities, but since we haven’t seen a shred of footage from the movie yet, we’re still not sure how it’ll all go down. But a new look at some promo art from The Last Jedi celebrating the announcement of this year's Force Friday toy event may provide some clues. Take a look:
That’s our first look at fan-favorite characters Rey, Finn, and Poe in action from the new movie, and as you can see from Daisy Ridley’s new look and her lightsaber-wielding stance, she certainly looks like a Jedi.
This is how she looked the last time we saw her, so let's see what the changes might mean:
She has a new hairstyle
We’ve never seen Rey’s hair down before. She has it pulled tightly up during all of The Force Awakens, likely because the heat of Jakku necessitated her keeping it that way to stay cool. This is a whole new vibe for her, and it’s even possible those wisps around her ears might be hiding a hint of a Padawan braid.
She's rocking a leather bracelet
She’s still sporting her patented arm wraps, but she’s now wearing a leather cuff bracelet on her left hand. We saw her wearing something similar in early scenes of The Force Awakens:
But it seemed to have disappeared by the time she reached Ahch-To. She may have brought it with her on her quest to find Luke.
Those robes look comfy
The new robes seem different, too; they look a bit closer to what Luke was wearing at the end of The Force Awakens. Keep in mind that Luke is said to be switching it up and wearing grey as well throughout this movie, which could be an indicator that previous ideas about the Light and Dark sides of the Force could be getting slightly blurred in this film, mirroring the increased moral complexity today’s audiences often like to see. It looks like Rey is wearing something black underneath the robes too - could this hint at a darkness we’ve yet to see from her?
They also seem a bit looser than the more tightly-wound garb she was wearing on Jakku. Is that so she has a better range of motion for training and/or fighting? And speaking of fighting…
She looks a little beaten up
Take a look at the bruise on her left cheek and the scrapes caked with blood above her left eye. Is this simply the result of a couple of training miscalculations, or signs of a more serious battle?
That lightsaber looks familiar
And don’t forget the most important detail: it looks like she’s still holding Anakin’s lightsaber, which means Luke apparently didn’t want it back. (Maybe that’s why he just stared silently at her for thirty straight seconds when she offered it back to him?) There were some rumors flying around that Luke has become such a powerful Jedi that he no longer even needs a lightsaber and may have switched to a staff of some kind (think Yoda in The Empire Strikes Back), but those are unconfirmed. It’s also possible that this packaging could be misdirection and Rey actually has her own differently-colored lightsaber in the new movie. After all, Rogue One brought kyber crystals back into canon, so Luke may have had Rey make her own lightsaber as part of her training.
So will Rey become a Jedi? We’ll just have to hope that Josh Gad keeps badgering Ridley for answers and uncovers the answer before we see the first teaser.
Directed by Rian Johnson and starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Laura Dern, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Gwendoline Christie, and Benicio del Toro, Star Wars: The Last Jedi will open on December 15, 2017.
Images: StarWars.com/Lucasfilm
