Rey's origin is perhaps the most debated Star Wars mystery following the release of The Force Awakens, especially because she showed impressive Force powers despite any sort of training.
Well, it looks like one Star Wars fan just got fed up and decided to use genetics to once and for all put a period on two theories about the heroine's parents. After all, science is always right, right?
The two theories:
> Rey is Luke Skywalker's daughter
> Rey is a descendant of Emperor Palpatine
Right now, nothing is certain. Disney-Lucasfilm has kept a tight lid on any details regarding the plot of future Star Wars films. Director J.J. Abrams may have said we haven't met Rey's parents in The Force Awakens, but he quickly took back his statement when he "clarified" that she doesn't discover them in the film.
In light of this mystery, a Redditor jad2121 decided to use genetics to disprove the two aforementioned theories about Rey's parents.
First, we have to understand how genetics work, with its basic principle being that certain genes are recessive while others are dominant, and this is most visible with a person's eye color. Meanwhile, other markers include cleft chins and dimples.
Applied to Rey, Palpatine, and Luke, this are the results of the Redditor's analysis:
> Rey – Brown eyes, dimples, cleft chin
> Luke – Blue Eyes, dimples, no cleft chin
> Anakin – Blue eyes, no dimples, no cleft chin
> Padme – Brown eyes, dimples, no cleft chin
> Palpatine – Blue eyes, no dimples, cleft chin
According to jad2121, this means that Luke and Rey can't be genetically connected:
For the Skywalker line, Luke has blue eyes, so he had to get one blue allele from each parent. This means that Padme must have one blue and one brown allele (since she has brown eyes).
Anakin also must have two blue allele's, since he has blue eyes. Out of all the Skywalkers, only Padme has dimples. So she must have one dimple allele and one non-dimple allele. Anakin has two non-dimple alleles. None of them have a cleft chin, and since that is a dominant trait, there can't be any cleft chin allele's in the Skywalker genetics.
As for jad2121's analysis on Rey and Palpatine, the Redditor said:
Rey has brown eyes. This means that she either has one or two brown alleles. Since Palpatine has two blue alleles, she can't be his clone or his force child, since you would need another parent to give the brown eye allele. Similarly, Rey has a chin dimple but none of the Skywalkers do. So she can't be a force child or a clone of either Luke or Anakin.
This theory sounds very convincing and entirely possible...on Earth perhaps. However, I'm not sure if George Lucas looked into genetics in such detail when he created Star Wars. It still is about a galaxy far, far away that features creatures from different planets. It's also worth noting that Anakin had been created by the midi-chlorians. I don't know if the microscopic, intelligent lifeforms are genetic-specific.
What do you think?
Star Wars: Episode VIII hits theaters on December 15, 2017.
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