Rey Explains Skywalker Name in Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker
Rey chose the Skywalker name to honor Luke in star wars: the rise of skywalker, and Star Wars has now given that ending a clearer explanation. The new account comes six years after she buried Luke and Leia’s lightsabers on Tatooine, declared herself Rey Skywalker, and closed the sequel trilogy on one of its most debated beats.
Luke Skywalker’s Name
Rey said she chose to adopt the name “to proudly wear my Master’s name” while honoring Luke Skywalker’s “life and his sacrifice.” In the expanded explanation from Insight Editions’ The Secrets of the Jedi: The Chronicles of Luke Skywalker, she tied the choice directly to the Jedi she called Master, not to Palpatine’s bloodline or the family she was born into.
Rey also said, “Luke Skywalker may be gone from this plane, just like all the Jedi who came before him... but he will live forever.” That line gives the name change a different frame than the movie did on its own: the Skywalker identity becomes a deliberate tribute, not a casual label chosen after the battle.
Tatooine After Palpatine
At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey traveled to Tatooine after defeating Emperor Palpatine with help from a newly redeemed Ben Solo and the spirits of past Jedi. She buried Luke and Leia’s lightsabers there, then called herself Rey Skywalker and ignited a yellow lightsaber. The sequence left the trilogy with a single, loaded image: a descendant of Palpatine choosing the name of the family that trained and guided her.
That choice divided fans because The Last Jedi had built a “nobody” theme around Rey’s parents, and the Skywalker turn pulled the ending in a different direction. The new explanation does not erase that split, but it does make the move read less like a bloodline claim and more like a statement of allegiance to Luke and the Jedi Order.
Rey and the Jedi Order
Rey’s second line in the expanded explanation, “Because, in the end, I am all the Jedi. And maybe we all are,” pushes the ending beyond one character’s name. It links her decision to a wider idea of inheritance inside the franchise: the Jedi survive through memory, teaching, and sacrifice, not only through ancestry.
Daisy Ridley portrayed Rey across the sequel trilogy, and the character’s naming decision remains one of the era’s most discussed creative choices. A Rey movie is on the horizon, so this new explanation gives the studio a cleaner legacy line to build on if the character returns with the Skywalker name still attached.
