The latest episode of The Incomparable podcast looks at Rise of the Skywalker scene by scene, and it’s a great listen–especially if you, like me, are a little gaga just *seeing* a Star Wars movie in a theater. Perhaps most importantly, they discuss at length the issue with Abrams’ retreat from Rian Johnson’s Rey origin re-evaluation in *The Last Jedi*: that she doesn’t really have one. Johnson introduced the plot twist in the series that anyone–anyone–can become a Jedi. There’s no dynasty. Hence the nameless servant boy at the end of Last Jedi, who uses his nascent Force power to summon his broom as the Millennium Falcon roars overhead.

Abrams, of course, backed away from this populist version of Force sensitivity, at least as it came to express itself in Rey. Her lineage, it turns out, is the reason for her power.

Melissa Leon of The Daily Beast also makes some cogent points about the plot:

Even apart from the anti-climax of Rey’s lineage loophole, truly, nothing about this Palpatine story works. First he sends Kylo to kill Rey. But when that doesn’t work and she shows up at his evil lair instead, he explains that, actually, this was his plan all along. Then he lays out the same catch–22 he bamboozled Luke with 36 years ago: If Rey kills him, he wins. And this time, he says, his spirit will transfer into her and all the past Sith will live on through her.

Finally, Rey mercifully just shuts Palpatine up and kills him. And nothing happens. All of that spirit-transfer stuff was made up, I guess?

Finn’s potential Force sensitivity and Janna’s secret origins—strangely teased in the film’s last few minutes—nag away at these characters’ closure.)

Finn’s own Force sensitivity opens the possibility of further adventures in the franchise. But as the gang on Incomparable observed, the connection to Episodes IV through VI were severed with Rise of the Skywalker.

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