Spoilers ahead for Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Turn around now if you've yet to see the movie, and don't want to know any details going in.
The biggest question on everyone's minds leaving Star Wars[1]: The Force Awakens[2], after how will Luke Skywalker react to being found (the answer to which was equal parts shocking and funny), was: who are Rey's parents? The truth about Rey's parentage – delivered in The Last Jedi, out Friday worldwide – in that they were nobody is the best route writer-director Rian Johnson could have taken.
Instead of sticking with the traditional hero portrait of being born into a well-known last name aka the "Chosen One", The Last Jedi tosses that old ideology out of the window in lieu of a much more powerful message: it's the nobodies of the world who will rise from their circumstances to keep the evil at bay, and it also reinforces the film's internal debate of letting the past die, not giving it too much due.
It’s why the last shot of The Last Jedi[3] doesn't close on the face of a character we know, but a little Force-sensitive boy we briefly met, barely getting by sweeping the floor and dreaming of a day when he can use his broom to overthrow his oppressors. It's due to new hero Rose Tico who passes a message of hope with her Resistance ring, which in turn connects into the crucial lesson maverick pilot Poe Dameron learned from Vice Admiral Holdo.
The reason this band of Resistance fighters – which has dwindled from some 400, to just the handful that can fit in the Millennium Falcon – needs to stay alive is because they're "the...