The canon identities of Rey’s parents, making the sequel trilogy’s mishandling of them look even worse. Rey’s parentage was treated with monumental significance throughout the sequel trilogy, but each of the films fails to treat the two as people and instead uses them as plot devices to either hint at a connection to another notable Star Wars character or send a message that previous Star Wars films already said with more competence. Shadow of the Sith seems to be mitigating these missteps to a degree, but the book only further highlights one of the sequel trilogy’s failures.
Star Wars: The Force Awakens made the mystery of Rey’s parentage intrinsic to her character, both in-universe and in a meta sense, and the ensuing speculation regarding their identities became detrimental to Rey’s character. Star Wars: The Last Jedi exacerbated the issue by going too far in the opposite direction and insisting that they’re meaningless “nobodies” with no bearing on the rest of the Star Wars saga. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker repaired some of The Last Jedi’s damage by explaining who they were, but it was, unfortunately, not enough to solve this Star Wars sequel trilogy issue.
Shadow of the Sith does what the sequels should have done and treats Rey’s parents like characters. In addition to naming them Dathan and Miramir, the book includes scenes told from their perspective, giving readers a sense of their personalities and backgrounds. Miramir, Rey's mother in Star Wars, is a gifted pilot, engineer, and inventor, hinting that Rey’s natural talent in these same fields comes from her. Dathan expresses a melancholic desire to have a past he can long for, as he holds no nostalgia for his traumatic upbringing on Exegol as a strandcast clone of the tyrannical Emperor Palpatine. Although the Star Wars sequels weren’t the place to fully flesh out Rey’s parents as Shadow of the Sith does, they neglected to treat them as people and hinged far too much of Rey’s identity on them.
Two of the biggest faults of The Force Awakens are its use of J.J. Abrams’ “mystery box” tendencies (resulting in a significant question that the film shouldn’t have left unanswered) and its overreliance on original trilogy-era nostalgia. The Last Jedi made a far worse mistake by failing to understand Force sensitivity and the family drama of the Star Wars saga, using Rey’s parents as a vehicle to say that “special” bloodlines aren’t necessary for a character to be a Force-sensitive hero. This message was said with far more competence in the Star Wars prequels, which demonstrates it through key Force-sensitive characters from a variety of diverse backgrounds, as opposed to The Last Jedi’s clunky and heavy-handed meta-commentary.
Even though it gave Rey’s parents their long-awaited identities, The Rise of Skywalker still used the two as a means to connect Rey to Emperor Palpatine instead of developing their relationship with Rey and treating them as people. Given how much the film needed to do to wrap up the sequel trilogy, this is, unfortunately, the best it could do. Shadow of the Sith does what none of the Star Wars sequel trilogy films did, however, and makes Rey’s parents meaningful characters with personalities.
