The 5 Best 'Star Wars The Force Awakens' Fan Theories and Conspiracy Theories

Remember those halcyon days when any crackpot rumor or fan theory about The Force Awakens was pored over, dissected, and criticized mercilessly? Now that a bajillion people have seen the new installment of Star Wars, pushing it to hundreds of bajillions of dollars and counting, we can finally do away with the goofy ideas we all had for the movie like how Kylo Ren is actually Luke, or that Boba Fett would make an impromptu appearance somewhere, or that Darth Vader was really alive. It’s all nonsense, all of it. But because J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan’s franchise re-starter succeeded in answering some questions and asking a whole bunch of new ones, and because as Star Wars fans we can’t help ourselves, here are the best ridiculous fan theories that have come in the wake of The Force Awakens.

Warning: Emo Kylo Ren Says Major Spoilers Lie Ahead

5. Rey is just a normal person.

We’re guilty of speculating about exactly who Rey is. Given the movie’s strong emphasis of her being innately Force-sensitive, mixed with the mystery surrounding her parents dumping her on Jakku to fend, fans inevitably whittled down Rey’s possible family to a few candidates. She’s either Luke’s daughter because his old lightsaber suddenly called out to her in Maz Kanata’s castle, or she’s Han and Leia’s daughter.

The latter would make sense given the narrative implications for the subsequent movies between her and Han and Leia’s confirmed son, the evil (for now) Kylo Ren. But wouldn’t it be great if she were just a normal orphan dumped on Jakku who suddenly finds herself with great power in the middle of a reignited battle between good and evil? It’s a nice thought, but given the series’ soft spot for the Skywalker lineage, it doesn’t make as much sense as making her kin to Luke and Leia.

4. What was in Rey’s flashback sequence?

The movie site Screenrant has an interesting theory about Rey’s trippy flashback / flash-forward / flash-sideways sequence in Maz’s castle after finding the lightsaber. The scene’s surreal flourishes were reminiscent of the cave setting of Luke’s Jedi training on Dagobah in The Empire Strikes Back; in it, Rey sees Kylo Ren and what are assumed to be the evil and mysterious Knights of Ren slaughtering unknown people in a harsh downpour. Screenrant says they may be dozens of murdered Ewoks on the forest moon of Endor. Now, why would some evil bros like the Knights of Ren, who may very well be a rogue sect of Padawan learners that branch off to revolt against Luke, straight-up slag walking teddy bears? Because Kylo Ren was looking for Darth Vader’s burnt helmet, of course.

This is a nice theory about the scene because it harks back to Return of the Jedi, which will undoubtedly be explored in the next episodes, but it doesn’t quite add up. More likely: It’s Kylo and the Ren bros killing the rest of the Padawan learners that Luke was teaching before Skywalker, traumatized and hounded, went into hiding.

3. The first line is a dig on George Lucas.

The opening scene of The Force Awakens may have surprised people expecting the movie to focus on Rey right from the get-go. Instead, Max von Sydow’s cryptic character Lor San Tekka gets the first bit of dialogue when he gives Poe Dameron the fragment of the map that leads to Luke Skywalker. How did Tekka get that fragment? Who cares. Maybe we’ll find out in the next movies. Let’s focus on what matters: dissing George Lucas.

Tekka’s first line of dialogue is, “This will begin to make things right.” He’s definitely talking about the map to help the Resistance defeat the First Order, but is he also throwing shade at George Lucas’ universally panned prequel trilogy? There’s no way that Lucas’ old screenwriting buddy and Force Awakens co-scribe Lawrence Kasdan would trash his friend like that, and considering Abrams has been genuflecting before Lucas his entire career then it doesn’t seem likely, even if The Force Awakens did go on to right some wrongs.

2. Snoke is Darth Plagueis.

The Force Awakens never did answer: Who exactly is Supreme Leader Snoke? He resembles a mix between a withered version of those gigantic translucent dudes from Prometheus and Gollum from Lord of the Rings (unsurprising, maybe, as Andy Serkis plays both Snoke and Gollum), but in Star Wars lore he’s obviously a Palpatine stand-in. He’s the puppeteer behind all the machinations that set the new trilogy off, and though he’s kept in the background for much of the first movie we’ll be seeing more of him soon enough. But have we seen — or heard of — him before? In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine tells Anakin the story of Darth Plagueis, an all powerful Sith lord who could cheat death using the Dark Side. It’s what causes Anakin to go down the path to become Darth Vader.

According to previously accepted Star Wars canon, Palpatine murdered Plagueis to become an all-powerful Sith lord himself, and a whole [Expanded Universe novel](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/DarthPlagueis(novel) was written about him. But the dead have come back before during the saga, and the Expanded Universe was thrown out now that the new trilogy is accepted as official canon. Could Snoke really be this mysterious Darth Plagueis who has been pulling the strings all along? Palpatine says he could cheat death, which is how he’s alive after all these years looking particularly decrepit. While that scenario is entertaining, the new trilogy is trying to distance itself from the prequels, and Kasdan even denied knowing Plagueis’ identity during the Star Wars panel at Comic-Con. Abrams echoed that sentiment with a flat “no” when asked about the Plagueis/Snoke connection.

1. Han Solo is still alive.

Let’s just shed a tear for Han for a sec. R.I.P., coolest dude in the galaxy. He’s dead and gone, and it’s unfortunate, skewered on a light saber and dumped down a bottomless chute on a planet that subsequently imploded into a star. But any Star Wars fan should know that the saga has a fondness for killing off its elderly mentor characters, e.g., Obi-Wan and Yoda. Once Han took Rey and Finn under his wing to try to teach them about the Rebellion and the Jedi and all that, he was a goner. Technically he isn’t; Han Solo will get his own standalone Star Wars movie in 2018 while Harrison Ford got paid a ton because he’d only be around for one movie, but that’s neither here nor there. The weirdest fan theory so far is that Han Solo is somehow alive.

It isn’t too far fetched when you consider that Luke survived the same sort of drop after Vader’s classic “I am your father” speech in The Empire Strikes Back and was miraculously saved by the perfectly placed antenna on the bottom of Cloud City. If you stretch your sense of plausibility a little bit for The Force Awakens, Leia says Han should bring their son home, and after he can’t turn Ben away from his Kylo Ren persona he gives up only for a Resistance ship to scoop him up at the bottom of Starkiller Base just like in Empire. Anybody who believes this forgets that Han gets stabbed straight through the heart by Ren’s lightsaber and is deader than Vader.