The Rise of Skywalker finally reveals Rey's parents, and the internet has thoughts

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is finally in theaters, and as director and co-writer J.J. Abrams has been promising for months now, the film really does provide a lot of answers to the many questions raised by the sequel trilogy that began with The Force Awakens. This is a movie that covers a lot of ground in the course of its runtime, and in the process manages to touch on everything from Leia Organa's own Force sensitivity to that mysterious Star Destroyer fleet to, of course, Rey's parentage. We'd been told there was more to the story, and now we know what that full story is.

Of course, since a large portion of the Star Wars fandom flocked to Thursday night preview showings to finally see the film for themselves, the internet has since felt the shockwaves of The Rise of Skywalker's revelations. So, how's everyone feeling about her story now? Let's just say Twitter has ... thoughts.

**Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.**

Ever since Rey was introduced, along with some built-in backstory mystery, back in The Force Awakens, fans have been offering theories ranging from possible Skywalker blood to Kenobi blood to the idea that she's flat-out a clone of some Jedi from the past. In Star Wars: The Last Jedi, writer/director Rian Johnson offered his own explanation: That Rey's parents were junk traders who sold her off, making her a "nobody."

In The Rise of Skywalker, Abrams and co-writer Chris Terrio don't exactly contradict Johnson's assertion, but they do build another layer of explanation into it. Rey's parents were nobodies because they chose obscurity to protect her. In reality, she is the grandchild of Emperor Sheev Palpatine, and her parents sold her into servitude on Jakku to keep her identity a secret, giving their lives to a Jedi hunter in the process. So Rey's tremendous Force strength, coupled with the inner darkness she struggles with, are all owed to a lineage that ties her to Darth Sidious. This revelation sets her on a collision course with Palpatine and with Kylo Ren, who's struggling with his own darkness by the end of the film.

Now that this reveal is out in the world, fans are taking to Twitter to offer everything from disappointment to jokes to simple clever observations about who Rey really is and how that reveal plays out in the film's third act. There will no doubt be many more reactions as the weekend goes on, but here are some of the best we've found so far, from reactions to the parentage itself to disappointment at how Rey's story is treated in comparison to Ben Solo's. 

This is just the beginning of the reactions to the big Rey reveal in the film, of course. As the weekend goes on, there will be many more, and because Star Wars attracts such a diverse fandom, they will be as varied as the fans themselves. For some fans, it might even take a couple of repeat viewings to fully digest this information, but these reactions make one thing very clear: The responses are already predictably passionate.