I have been wrestling with what to say about The Rise of Skywalker since I saw it and in some ways I'm still not sure. I think, for one, that it is not necessarily a very good movie. It's maybe an OK Star War. There have been good Star Wars that are good movies as well, and there have been good Star Wars that are bad movies. The prequels, for all of their many faults in terms of dialogue, plot, and characterization, are still good Star Wars in my opinion, as the Star Wars universe is largely better for all they have wrought and all they have inspired, such as Clone Wars. Solo was an OK movie and an OK Star War. Force Awakens was a pretty good movie and an OK Star War. Rise of Skywalker is, to reiterate, a kinda bad movie, one that somehow has both too much plot and not enough of a relevant one and has a frenetic pacing in the first act that blows well past exciting and into infuriating. It is, in my apparently controversial opinion, an OK Star War.
The Rise of Skywalker had one task above all others, and it was going to be the main criteria on which I personally judged it, and I am not alone in this regard. This was to end the "Skywalker Saga" as we have come to call it, giving us the resolution to the characters and factions that have waged the titular Star War for 42 years. Now, mind you, I do not think this necessarily had to be the main goal of Rise of Skywalker. It could merely have been the end of the sequel trilogy, and it arguably should have limited itself to that goal, as the first two installments of the sequel trilogy seemed to focus more on the new story they were trying to tell rather than rote continuation of the six movies that came before. Alas, JJ Abrams made it clear this ninth movie "had" to tie all of the films together and provide a finality to some battles we had already thought were over, and so I choose to judge it based on that stated goal. For me at least, Rise of Skywalker very awkwardly stumbles to a more or less acceptable landing with that in mind. The Sith are defeated, peace is once more restored to the galaxy. Leia and Han's sacrifices are not in vain as they bring Ben back from the brink. Luke and Rey ensure the continuation of the Jedi Order. These were the main things I was hoping to get as an ending for the saga as a whole.
I gather this is not the popular opinion, and there are two main sticking points for people who have told me the ending is actually depressing and not at all in keeping with the optimism that should define Star Wars:
1) Rey ends the saga alone on a desert planet, as she began the Force Awakens
2) The Skywalker family line ends, and worse, they are outlived by a Palpatine.
For point number one I can only side with the filmmakers themselves (not something I will do often in defending this movie) and my own read on the scene. Rey merely goes to Tattooine to pay final respects to Luke and Leia by burying their lightsabers. Considering the Falcon is there and never even seems to land, (and Rey has gone to the trouble of building her own new lightsaber) it is highly unlikely she is planning on staying there.
Some have said that burying Luke and Leia on Tattooine is sad, as it's a place that holds only "pain" for the Skywalkers, and I have to say I disagree. True, Shmi Skywalker died tragically on Tattooine and so did Owen and Beru Lars, but that was also where Anakin lived with a mother who loved him dearly and whom he never forgot, and whose love he arguably never really learned to live without. Beru and Owen are often written off as little more than the tragedy that sets Luke on his heroic path but they were themselves two noble individuals who took on the son of the most dangerous man in the galaxy, knowing very well it could likely lead to their death someday, and raised him and loved him and gave him a home. It was, as Obi-Wan himself notes in a short story in From a Certain Point of View, as pure a heroism as any the Jedi Master had ever known. That was truly Luke's home. Tragedy took place there, but so did love and light. Most of us lose those we love at home. That's how home works. It is not merely there for the good times.
Point number two is a bit more interesting and a bit more open to interpretation. For one I should get out of the way right now that I personally hate the decision to make Rey a Palpatine. I, like many, absolutely loved The Last Jedi's message that the Force belongs to everyone, and I loved the idea that the Force chose some "nobody" to rise as Ben Solo's equal and opponent. The awkward and clunky delivery of the revelation doesn't help either. That said, what does save Rey's character for me is that revelation ends up meaning nothing to her. She spent TFA and TLJ trying to find her place in the story only to be told she has none, she is a nobody. She accepts this and decides to embrace what Maz told her before, that "the belonging you seek is not behind you-- it is ahead." Where and/or who she came from is irrelevant, what matters is how she will mark the way forward. In the end Rey Nobody is what prepared her for Rey Palpatine. Having already come to the realization that she would be defined by what she did and not by where she came from, she is only momentarily setback by the realization that she came from something worse than nothing, and quickly resumes course on the hero's journey.
As for the end of the Skywalker Line, well.... does that matter? If you hated the revelation that Rey was a Palpatine because you were tired of Star Wars being the story of a few powerful families determining the fate of the galaxy, shouldn't that also make the end of the Skywalker bloodline irrelevant? For that matter, if this is the Skywalker Saga as Kathleen Kennedy was fond of saying, that this is the story of one family, then stories tend to end. The Skywalkers enter the scene with Anakin, literally created and birthed by the Force itself for the specific purpose of restoring balance. They exit stage left after struggling over the course of three generations to do just that.
To be quite honest, until the prequels retconned Anakin from a pretty powerful Jedi seduced by the Dark Side whom Luke redeemed simply because he was Luke's father into Space Jesus, the Skywalkers were far from a family of prophecy and destiny. They were just a guy and his estranged dad. Leia is revealed at the eleventh hour to be a part of the family in a fashion barely less awkward and clunky than Rey's own lineage. The tie-in books and her own title (General Organa) have made it quite clear that while Leia embraces Luke as her brother, she still sees herself first and foremost as the daughter of Bail and Breha. Sure, we must account for the prequels and the prophecy of the chosen one and all of that now, and we have had 30 years to add weight to the notion of Luke and Leia as siblings, but the idea that the continuation of the Skywalker Line is of paramount importance like they are space royalty is more a projection of how the audience feels about these characters than the logical end of their story.
I gather also that most of these complaints center on Ben Solo dying after his redemption and how that's a sad note for this family to exit on. This is true, but it's also true that Luke devotes his entire journey in Return of the Jedi to bringing his father back to the light side and his reward for his success is to watch that father die nonetheless, and I don't remember people spending 30 years dwelling on how sad and "depressing" that was as the presumed ending of the saga. As Yoda tells us "once you start down the dark path forever will it dominate your destiny." Anakin and Ben both walked the dark path, and while they came back, the journey back nonetheless takes everything they have.
I don't buy that Ben deserved to survive simply by merit of being the last Skywalker either. If we are to say that Rey Nobody was a beautiful idea, that noble blood matters not, and that your deeds matter more than your origin, well, I don't see how Ben "deserved" to carry on as the heir to the Skywalker line regardless of his own dark deeds. As for whether Ben "deserved" better than that, hell, I don't know. I don't know what I deserve. I do know he has the good fortune of living in a universe where heaven is less an abstract hope than a reality and where he will be reunited with his family. Whatever he deserved, I believe what he found was peace.
Finally, I have to say as awkwardly as it is delivered, I am happy with Rey choosing to adopt the name of Skywalker for herself. If there is to be a continuation of the Skywalker name, it should be just that: a person known for kindness and compassion and sympathy for the downtrodden taking on the name in honor of those before her who embodied those ideals. It isn't the literal continuation of the blood of Anakin Skywalker that matters, but the legacy of the Skywalkers. The Last Jedi ended with Luke Skywalker's physical death and yet it assured us he could never die by showing us how quickly his legend spread and sparked hope throughout the galaxy. The Rise of Skywalker may end the physical Skywalker bloodline, but the name is repurposed, not as a family name that carries with it the burden of expectation and the weight of the tragedies it has witnessed, but as a symbol of hope chosen by someone who has proven she can handle it.
I've never been one to get overly involved in fan theories or head-canons but I will end here with one I have held for a long time. I prefer to believe the reason Owen and Beru and Obi-Wan never bothered to change Luke's last name, even while hiding him from the Empire, is that the name Skywalker is not actually that uncommon out there in the Outer Rim, where immigrants frequently arrive to start anew. I think Skywalker was originally a name not unlike the "Snow" surname the people of Westeros gave to bastards of the north, a pseudonym for one whose origins are unknown or purposefully forgotten, who is merely a traveler from far away, one who has walked the path of the stars. I guess that makes it easy then for me to accept Rey returning the name to its roots. Not inherited as the continuation of a kind of royal line, but chosen by someone who will wander the galaxy, a girl with a strange past and a forgotten name, who was told once she had no place in the story and decided to write her own instead.
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