This stunning Dark Rey cosplay predicted one of Rey Skywalker’s best and most haunting scenes in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Though The Rise of Skywalker had its issues, it did examine Rey’s fear and trauma as she carried the burden of being the last Jedi and the shock of her upbringing and heritage. Given her grandfather’s identity, darkness was something intrinsic in Rey, and her arc in The Rise of Skywalker was about trusting herself and her instincts, fighting the darkness at every turn.

Of course, Rey still had moments when she thought the darkness might overwhelm her, giving us the haunting visual of Dark Rey carrying a unique blood-red, double-bladed switchblade lightsaber. One cosplayer predicted Rey’s dark appearance over 2 years before The Rise of Skywalker was released. In 2021, cosplayer saira (@sairaspooks) posted a throwback to a dark Rey cosplay she’d done around the time Star Wars: The Last Jedi was being promoted and previewed.

This cosplay even predicted Dark Rey would wield a double-bladed red lightsaber. Rey’s inky black outfit and the character’s trademark hair buns complete this impressive and prophetic Star Wars cosplay.

What If Rey Had Turned To The Dark Side?

Realistically speaking, it would have made more sense for Rey to turn to the dark side in The Last Jedi than in The Rise of Skywalker, when Kylo Ren offered to take her hand and show her the full extent of her strength. If she’d given in, The Rise of Skywalker would have then been about them discovering the power of the Force Dyad together – providing audiences with a better understanding of this mysterious phenomenon – and the film could have still ended up with Rey and Kylo taking on Palpatine together, an act which, given this is Star Wars, would have pushed them back to the light.

Realistically speaking, it would have made more sense for Rey to turn to the dark side in
The Last Jedi
than in
The Rise of Skywalker,
when Kylo Ren offered to take her hand and show her the full extent of her strength.

Together, Rey and Kylo would have made a formidable dark side duo. It would have been difficult for the Resistance to deal with, considering Luke would probably still have died on Ahch-To, Leia wouldn’t have been at full strength, and the only other Force-sensitive person around, Finn (at least the film would have been able to explore his character’s true potential), would have had a lot to learn. Star Wars is about light prevailing over darkness, of course, but it’s still interesting to think about what might have happened if Rey had become Dark Rey in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker instead.

Source: @sairaspooks