New ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ Deleted Scene Reveals the Reason Rey Left Ahch-To
In the theatrical cut of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, we never saw the moment when Rey (Daisy Ridley) decided to leave the secret Jedi temple on the planet Ahch-To and return to help her friends. But one of the scenes cut from the film from director Rian Johnson is starting to pop up online, and it gives us a better look at exactly why Rey chose to leave when she did.
In the scene below, you’ll see that Rey believes the village that’s home to the planet’s Caretakers (those weird alien nun creatures you saw in the film) is under attack. She races to help only to discover the Caretakers are actually ... throwing a party. Even R2-D2 is having a good time. Rey is incensed with Luke for the deception.
Rian Johnson recently told Entertainment Weekly a little more information about this scene:
Originally it was just a breaking point for her. Okay, he’s gone too far. This is the point where she finally says, ‘Okay, if you’re not gonna help, then I’ve wasted too much time here.’
Johnson originally felt he needed this scene to lead into an important Force conversation between Rey and Kylo, but then decided their interaction actually worked better without it. As for the speculation from some fans that this scene contained the third “lesson” that Luke Skywalker promised to give Rey, Johnson told EW that’s not correct; there are “things about the movie that fans can choose to interpret as his final instruction to Rey,” but he refused to go into more detail in case that is something J.J. Abrams wants to explore further in Episode IX.
Regardless, after careful consideration, I am going to say that this deletion was ... correct. It’s fun, but I’m not sure it fits with the enormous stakes at this point in the film, and we see so little of these Caretakers already, I think their dance party would have raised more questions than was necessary. Star Wars: The Last Jedi arrives on Blu-ray on March 27, 2018.