The following contains spoilers for Obi-Wan Kenobi Season 1, Episode 1, "Part I," now available on Disney+.
One of the most contentious aspects in Star Wars has been Rey's lineage. The franchise walked back the concept of her being a "nobody" in The Rise of Skywalker, instead altering her destiny to be a Palpatine descendant. To make the plot twist more frustrating, she chose to talk Luke's last name, nullifying the trilogy's theme of someone carving out their own identity.
That reveal left a bad taste in some fans' mouths. Certain viewers felt theories Rey being Luke's or Princess Leia's long-lost daughter would have made more sense. However, as Obi-Wan Kenobi continues on Disney+, the title character's past and the things he's clearly pining for suggest that Rey would have been better suited to be part of the Kenobi family.
There were also theories that Rey was Obi-Wan's descendant because of British accent and how she holed up like a recluse on Jakku. In Obi-Wan Kenobi, he was also hiding out, but doing so out of necessity after Order 66. Interestingly, when he and Princess Leia hitched a ride on Mapuzo, she asked if he was her father. With an air of regret, he replied, "I wish I could say I was." Part of that's down to him not being able to tell her about Anakin and Senator Amidala. But it also could connect to Mike Chen's novel Star Wars: Brotherhood, in which Obi-Wan regretted not having a family.
In that book he was pining for Sabine Wren, with his mentor Dexter Jettster saying he should have forgotten the Jedi Order and started something with her. Obi-Wan seemed to embrace the idea of love -- which is why he didn't reveal Anakin's illicit marriage. The franchise should have followed through, with Obi-Wan either having a child with Sabine or filling the gap in his heart with someone else. Tala, the Imperial spy featured in the Disney+ series, was considered as a love interest and the Empire could have hunted them down. Such an arc would have fit with Obi-Wan's being despondent over not knowing his family. This easily lays the groundwork for Rey to be his granddaughter, albeit with some tweaks to the timeline.
Linking Rey to Obi-Wan would be poetic since he found the first Chosen One in Anakin and then protected Luke. Having to abandon or hide his actual family away, even from himself, would have provided great fodder for the TV series to explore. And without him, Rey could have been an unrefined powerhouse, latently harnessing her powers in The Force Awakens and making herself a target for Snoke, Kylo Ren and his knights. A Sith Lord offering her the chance to get her lost family back -- say, a dead mother -- or corrupting her over how her Jedi ancestor placed her on a road of doom would understandably have tempted her.
That dereliction of duty would have paved the way for Obi-Wan's Force ghost, rather than Yoda, to intervene and help Luke bring her back to the light side. Such a plot twist would have been a purposeful way of giving a very human, sympathetic Rey a taste of darkness and conflict, as opposed to forcing her into a clone saga gone bad. It would also paint the Jedi as flawed individuals who never understood complex human emotion properly until they created heartbreaking tragedies like a lost Rey.
New episodes of Obi-Wan Kenobi stream Wednesdays on Disney+.