The young Jakku scavenger Rey didn’t know how she wound up on the bleak planet Jakku – only that she had to survive. For years, she did so by exploring the wreckage of Imperial and New Republic warships that crashed in the desert sands in a long-ago battle, salvaging components that could be refurbished.

Rey traveled the Jakku wastes on a speeder she built out of scrap – a remarkable feat that reflected her genius for improvisation and survival. Though stranded on a forlorn frontier world, Rey made herself into a highly skilled mechanic, pilot, and warrior.

Despite her skills, Rey lived a dull, numbing life. She traded salvage to Unkar Plutt, the junk boss of Niima Outpost, in return for food. Rey dreamed of escaping Jakku for some lush green world, but remained on the dismal planet, certain that whoever had left her there would one day return.

In the evenings, she returned to her makeshift home in a toppled Imperial walker, where she’d eat and repair machinery – and sometimes allow herself to dream of deliverance. At the end of each day, she scratched a mark on the wall of her home – proof that she’d survived yet again.

Rey’s life changed course when she rescued an astromech named BB-8 from the net of a Teedo scavenger. Rey at first sent the little droid to Niima Outpost to seek passage off Jakku, but relented and let the frightened mechanical spend the night in her home.

Rey then took BB-8 to Niima, where Unkar offered to trade an enormous number of food portions for the droid. When Rey refused, Unkar sent his thugs to take the droid by force. It was a mistake – Rey gave the bullies a sound thrashing with her staff.

Witnessing the confrontation was Finn, a young man in a jacket BB-8 identified as belonging to Poe Dameron. Finn indicated he was a member of the Resistance, giving Rey hope that he could get BB-8 off-world. But First Order TIE fighters and stormtroopers attacked Niima Outpost, forcing the three to run for their lives.

Rey, Finn and BB-8 fled Jakku aboard a battered freighter of Unkar’s. To Rey’s surprise, the junker handled like a fighter. With Finn manning the guns, Rey sought refuge in the Graveyard of Ships, outmaneuvering the TIE fighters and racing for space.

No sooner had they escaped then the old crate began to break down, with her balky propulsion system threatening to flood the interior with poisonous gas. Rey hurried to fix the problem, intending to drop off Finn and BB-8 at Ponemah Terminal and then head back to Jakku.

But another ship arrived and grabbed the freighter with a tractor beam. The new arrivals were Han Solo and Chewbacca, a pair of smugglers so famous that even Rey had heard of them. And the junker that had sat idle on Jakku was the Millennium Falcon – their former home.

Rey’s mechanical acumen impressed Han – but there was little time for conversation, as enforcers from two criminal gangs boarded Han’s bulk freighter and confronted the smuggler. In an effort to help Han and Chewie, Rey tried to override the ship’s blast doors, trapping the gang members. But she accidentally opened everything aboard the ship, releasing vicious predators known as rathtars.

After a hair-raising three-way fight, Rey, Finn and BB-8 fled the chaos with Han and Chewie aboard the Falcon. On the way to the planet Takodana, Han told Rey that the legends of the Force were true. He explained how Luke Skywalker’s plan to rebuild the Jedi order had ended in tragedy, with Luke vanishing into exile.

Takodana amazed Rey – it was an impossibly green world that housed Maz Kanata’s castle, frequented by galactic riff-raff seeking information, entertainment and shady deals. An odd feeling led Reyto Maz’s storeroom – and a lightsaber that seemed to call to her. After Rey experienced a Force vision, Maz urged her to take the saber, telling her she could do extraordinary things if she’d only let the Force in.

Overwhelmed, Rey rejected Maz’s entreaties and fled the castle, only to walk right into a First Order assault on the planet. The dark side warrior Kylo Ren took Rey prisoner, bringing her to Starkiller Base.

Kylo interrogated Rey, using his Force powers to dig into her mind. He uncovered her feelings of loneliness, and the fact that she’d come to see Han as a father figure. But to the surprise of both, Rey found Kylo’s own mind open to her as well. She saw that the seemingly fearsome warlord was vulnerable, filled with conflict and pain.

Rey’s Force powers were raw, but growing. She used them to convince a stormtrooper to let her out of her cell, then ran into Han, Chewie and Finn, who’d infiltrated Starkiller Base to bring its shields down ahead of an attack by the Resistance’s starfighters.

As Starkiller Base collapsed into chaos, Kylo intercepted Rey and Finn. He defeated Finn in a lightsaber duel, but Rey took Skywalker’s saber and continued the fight, rejecting Kylo’s entreaties that he could show her the ways of the Force. Fueled by anger and raw power, Rey defeated Kylo. But rather than cut him down, she broke off their fight to tend to Finn. Chewbacca then rescued Rey and Finn in the Falcon.

The Falcon escaped the planet right before it exploded, then returned to D’Qar. Finn had been badly wounded, but would survive. Rey kissed Finn in the medbay, thanking her friend for coming back for her.

By joining together information in the memory banks of BB-8 and R2-D2, the Resistance determined Luke’s whereabouts. Rey joined Chewbacca and R2-D2 aboard the Falcon to travel to the Jedi master’s planet of exile. Chewie honored his friend by offering her the pilot’s seat that had belonged to Han Solo.

After a journey across space, the Falcon reached the planet where Luke had hidden himself. Rey had found the long-lost Jedi master, and offered him the lightsaber he had lost so many years ago – a silent plea for him to return to a galaxy that needed him.

To Rey’s shock, Luke refused her entreaty, telling her it was time for the Jedi Order to end and he had come to Ahch-To to die. But all those years on Jakku had taught Rey how to wait. She followed Luke as he made his daily rounds of the island, determined to wear down the Jedi Master.

Luke finally became curious about Rey when her sense of the Force led her to an ancient tree where the Jedi Master had stashed the ancient texts that were the foundation of the Jedi Order. Rey pleaded with Luke to help her understand the strange power awake in her. He agreed to teach her three lessons about the Force, which he said would convince her he had made the right choice.

Luke taught Rey to open herself to the Force and feel it surrounding her and all the other living things on the island. But Rey was also called to a mysterious cave at the root of the island that was a nexus of dark-side power. Luke told her he had only seen such raw power once before – in Ben Solo, now Kylo Ren. It hadn’t scared him enough then, but it did now.

As Rey’s Force abilities grew, so did her mysterious connection with Kylo – somehow they could see and hear each other across millions of light-years. To Rey’s surprise, Kylo no longer tried to hide his hurt and pain from her – and he suggested that the story of how he’d betrayed Luke Skywalker wasn’t as simple as Rey had been led to believe.

Rey found herself unsure about what to believe and increasingly angry about Luke’s refusal to help a galaxy that desperately needed him. Driven to learn the truth about Kylo and her own past, she decided to seek her own answers – even at the risk of falling prey to the dark side of the Force.

Rey sought out the island’s dark-side cave, which she believed could show her the truth about her parents. But she was crushed when a vision only revealed herself. Even during her lonely years waiting on Jakku, she had never felt so alone.

Feeling that Luke had failed her, Rey confided in Kylo, who insisted she wasn’t alone. Their Force connection was strengthening, and allowed them to actually touch across the light-years. That moment was interrupted by Luke, who lashed out in shock at seeing his treacherous nephew manifest on Ahch-To.

In that moment of connection with Kylo, Rey said, she had seen his future. She told Luke that if she went to him, the former Ben Solo would turn away from the dark side. Luke warned her that events wouldn’t unfold the way she thought. When he once again refused to help her, Rey left Ahch-To.

Rey arrived aboard the Supremacy as a prisoner of the First Order. She tried to convince Kylo to turn, but he said he’d also seen something during their connection: when the time came, she would join him. Snoke then brutally interrogated Rey, using the Force to rip the location of Luke’s hermitage from her mind.

Kylo did turn, using Luke’s lightsaber to cleave Snoke in two. But rather than save the Resistance, he asked Rey to join him so they could rule together. He told Rey he’d seen the truth about her parents: they were nobodies, junk dealers who’d abandoned her. Rey refused to join Kylo, and the two fought over Luke’s lightsaber, which split in two.

The lightsaber’s sundering left Kylo unconscious. Rey departed in Snoke’s escape craft, rejoining Chewbacca aboard the Falcon. The two rushed to Crait, where Rey used the Force to lift a deadfall trapping the Resistance members inside an abandoned rebel base. When the Force reconnected her with Kylo, Rey closed it off. The Resistance had survived, and now looked to Rey to rekindle hope.

After the near-disaster on Crait, Rey dedicated herself to helping Leia rebuild the Resistance. She also continued her Jedi training, poring over the Jedi texts she’d taken from Ahch-To and learning from Leia. On Ajan Kloss, she pushed herself to achieve a deeper connection with the Force, struggling to commune with the spirits of departed Jedi.

While Rey trained on Ajan Kloss, Resistance intelligence sources discovered the resurrected Emperor Palpatine had created a huge Sith armada. This fleet would soon launch from Exegol, a legendary Sith world Rey recognized from the Jedi texts. Luke had searched for a Sith wayfinder that could lead him to Exegol, but failed to find it. Rey decided to continue the hunt.

The lead followed by Luke had gone cold on Pasaana, so Rey decided to start there. She intended to undertake this dangerous mission alone, but her friends insisted on joining her, and so she traveled to Pasaana with Poe, Finn, Chewbacca, BB-8 and C-3PO. Before she left, Leia offered her a bit of cryptic advice: “Never be afraid of who you are.”

On Pasaana, Rey’s connection with Kylo intensified – he was able to reach across space and tear an Aki-Aki necklace from her neck. Kylo warned her that Palpatine wanted her dead, but denied he was serving a new master. He had his own plans for the galaxy and swore he would turn Rey to the dark side and make her his ally.

After escaping First Order stormtroopers, Rey and her friends were trapped in the burrow of a vexis. Inside, they found the remains of Ochi of Bestoon, Luke’s quarry from years ago. Near Ochi’s bones was a dagger etched with Sith runes. When Rey touched it, she could feel the dark ripples the blade sent through the Force – a legacy of the evil deeds it had done. Rey helped them escape the burrow by using the Force to heal the vexis, transferring some of her life energy to the wounded serpent.

Rey and the others investigated Ochi’s abandoned freighter, which she was certain she’d seen before. Warned by the Force that Kylo Ren was on Pasaana, she confronted him in the desert, damaging his TIE fighter with her lightsaber. But Kylo survived the crash. Rey would not be rid of her nemesis or their strange connection so easily.

While Rey confronted Kylo, the Knights of Ren captured Chewbacca – and Ochi’s dagger. Seeing a First Order transport rising into the sky, Rey used the Force to try and pull it back. She managed to arrest its flight, but Kylo battled her for control of the ship. Her emotions boiling over, Rey erupted in a storm of Force lightning. To her horror, the transport exploded.

Ochi’s dagger was lost, but its inscriptions remained in C-3PO’s memory – unfortunately inaccessible due to programming preventing the protocol droid from translating Sith. With the Millennium Falcon in First Order hands, Rey and her friends rushed to Kijimi aboard Ochi’s ship to find Babu Frik, an underworld droidsmith who could unlock C-3PO’s memory. They found Babu, but only after a confrontation between Rey and Zorii Bliss, leader of Kijimi’s Spice Runners.

The First Order caught up with them on Kijimi, where Rey learned Chewie was alive and in custody on a Star Destroyer. Launching a rescue attempt, Rey was drawn to Ochi’s blade, which she found in Kylo’s chambers. The disturbance in the Force alerted Kylo, and the two used their Force connection to duel, despite Rey being aboard the Star Destroyer and Ren being on the planet below. A vision showed her Ochi using the dagger to kill her parents.

Learning Rey’s location, Kylo hurried back to his ship and confronted her, revealing the secret of her parentage. She was Palpatine’s granddaughter, hidden on Jakku by her parents to keep her safe from the Emperor. Kylo said the two of them were a rare and powerful dyad in the Force – the grandchildren of Vader and his master. But Rey refused to join Kylo, escaping in the Falcon.

C-3PO’s translation revealed the Emperor’s Sith wayfinder was on Kef Bir, a moon in the Endor system. Using Ochi’s dagger as a guide, Rey realized the artifact was inside wreckage from the second Death Star. Determined to keep her friends safe, she commandeered an ocean skiff and made a perilous solo voyage across Kef Bir’s turbulent waters.

Rey found the Sith wayfinder in the ruins of the Emperor’s vault, but had to endure another terrifying vision: herself, wielding a red-bladed double lightsaber and radiating dark-side power. And Kylo Ren had followed her once again. He destroyed the wayfinder, telling Rey the only way she was getting to Exegol was with him.

Rey and Kylo fought furiously atop the wave-lashed Death Star wreckage. When Kylo was distracted by Leia reaching out to him through the Force, Rey ran him through with his own lightsaber, leaving him mortally wounded. Sensing Leia’s death, Rey healed Kylo and admitted she had wanted to join him – but as Ben Solo, not Kylo Ren. Rey then departed in Kylo’s TIE, shaken by the revelation of her lineage and by what fate might have in store for her.

Rey returned to Ahch-To and set fire to Kylo’s TIE, intending to exile herself as Luke had done. But Luke’s spirit appeared to her, counseling her not to repeat his mistakes. He revealed he knew she was a Palpatine but insisted that her spirit meant more than her bloodline. He encouraged her to confront her fear and face Palpatine, giving her Leia’s lightsaber to use along with his own.

Luke’s spirit also used the Force to raise his old X-wing from the sea. Using Kylo’s Sith wayfinder as a guide, Rey traveled to Exegol, broadcasting course information to the Resistance so they could follow.

On Exegol, Rey confronted her grandfather, who greeted her as Empress Palpatine. He urged her to kill him, a sacrifice that would let him transfer his spirit into her body, making them one. Rey resisted giving into her hate, but Palpatine taunted her that only by striking him down could she save the Resistance.

Ben Solo – now returned to the light – joined Rey on Exegol to fight Palpatine. They stood against him as a dyad, wielding the Skywalker lightsabers in tandem. But the Sith Lord used the dark side to drain both their essences, rejuvenating his broken body. Rather than make Rey his successor, he would restore himself and rule alone.

Palpatine exulted that Rey was no match for him, as he was all of the Sith. But Rey responded that she was all of the Jedi. Aided by the spirits of the Jedi who had come before her, she used both Luke and Leia’s lightsabers to deflect Sidious’s Force energies back at him, destroying the Sith Lord once and for all.

This monumental effort left Rey dead. But Ben sacrificed himself as his grandfather Anakin Skywalker once had, restoring her life. He then passed into the Force, redeemed by this act of altruism.

With the Resistance having destroyed the Sith armada above Exegol and the First Order under attack across the galaxy, Rey returned to Ajan Kloss to celebrate with her friends – and to mourn the death of Leia. With her labors at an end, she hugged Poe and Finn.

Rey flew the Millennium Falcon to Tatooine, landing near the long-abandoned Lars farm. She buried Luke and Leia’s lightsabers in the sand, having built her own Jedi weapon, and caught a glimpse of their Jedi spirits watching her. When a local asked Rey’s name, she had a new and satisfying answer: She was Rey Skywalker.