Enter Rey: Mary Sue or Audience Insert?

Last time, I discussed how the controversial nature of Rey’s character wasn’t simply due to her seemingly flawless temperament and her inexplicable powers. The problem was that her type of character, a character that shows little in the way of growth, was in conflict with the type of story Star Wars traditionally tells; that is, the “boy on a farm” trope, a trope that traditionally has the protagonist start as a weak, unprepared character and end up as the hero or, sometimes, the villain.

Abrams may have put Rey in a desert, but she shows no signs of weakness. Some fans complain that Luke in A New Hope is too “whiney.” But this flaw is necessary because it communicates that he is not ready to take on the Empire yet. In the Disney trilogy, even when Rey makes mistakes, the mistakes either have no consequences, work out for her, or are praised when some fans feel her choice was a poor one.

Star Wars isn’t science fiction. It’s science fantasy, and like many fantasies, it depends heavily on growth. The point behind the “boy on a farm” trope is that the character must grow into the role of hero. The fact that she is already powerful at the start of the story irritates many fans because a Jedi must train and learn and grow before they can take on the Dark Side, which is known for granting its users power quickly. This effort verses easy access to power is one of the common themes in fantasy, and not seeing Rey struggle before she became capable of defeating Kylo Ren caused many fans to feel confused and even cheated.

Think about it like this. If an audience member goes to see a romantic comedy but the movie promising to be a romantic comedy turns out to be a slasher film, that audience member is going to be annoyed. Why? Because they’ve been tricked with a “bait and switch” and know it.

The distinction between science fiction and science fantasy might be more subtle, but the end result is still the same because Rey is essentially a Superman figure inside a story designed for Frodo Baggins, a character who wants adventure but isn’t ready for it at the beginning.

Put another way, science fiction often requires a certain degree of moral ambiguity so different characters can explore opposing views, whereas science fantasy, or fantasy in general, often requires a fixed moral stance because such stories are focused on growth, and the best way for the audience to see growth is to have clear measurements, clear distinctions between right and wrong. The character must start out impatient and become patient, but in order to have this progression, the story needs to communicate that patience is a virtue and impatience is a vice.

The character must be in a weakened position (impatient) so he or she can become stronger (patient). This is why fantasy, many times, uses a magic system—in this case, the force—that is somewhat grounded, meaning it will require training and time to master, and the training process will often reflect the character’s personal growth.

This, again, requires the protagonist to start in a weakened position; however, Rey is anything but weak, and as far as anyone can tell, she has nothing to learn, save that she already has everything she needs inside her, which isn’t much of a lesson.  

Fans of the Star Wars franchise watched six films revolving around the “boy on a farm” trope. The force is a power centered around training and focus because that’s what a boy on a farm typically needs in any fantasy to defeat the bad guys. However, Rey needs neither training nor focus, which undermines the audience’s expectations by creating a clash between genres.

A writer can get away with this if their explanation about the origin of the powers is sufficient and if that explanation is given at the proper time. In this case, I am of the opinion that the explanation regarding Rey’s powers should’ve been given near the beginning of the story to prevent the audience from dwelling on the question throughout the trilogy.

However, the writers chose to reveal Rey’s backstory toward the end of the trilogy, and, to make matters worse, the backstory only created more questions rather than giving the audience any satisfactory answers.

Perhaps Abrams had the origin of Rey’s powers in mind from the beginning of the trilogy; perhaps he didn’t, but either way, if he’d understood how George Lucas constructed A New Hope and hadn’t contented himself with copying individual scenes from the original film like an outline, he would’ve realized that Rey’s powers were going to create confusion, not because of her gender, but because the audience was expecting her to grow into the hero, not be one from the outset.

The training sequences in countless films alone are enough to demonstrate this principle, even if given in a montage, and the force is one of the most classic examples of character growth being communicated to the audience through training, so I’m not sure how Abrams missed this, although I can guess why.

I suspect the reason Rey was made to be so powerful from the outset was because her character was meant to serve as what’s known as an audience insert, someone the audience is supposed to imagine themselves being. A fan would want to fly the Millennium Falcon. A fan would want to gain Han Solo’s approval. A fan would want to find Luke when no one else can.

Abrams wasn’t trying to make a Mary Sue; he was trying to make an audience avatar, but to do this, he broke the core structure of Star Wars—the boy on a farm fantasy—and he made characters act inconsistently, justifying her actions when they shouldn’t and acting close to her even when they’d never met her before. I’ll begin discussing Rey’s story in the next review.