Star Wars: Everyone Who Knew Rey Was A Palpatine Before She Did
Here are all the Star Wars characters who found out Rey was a Palpatine before Rey found out she was a Palpatine. When Daisy Ridley's Rey is first introduced in The Force Awakens, it quickly becomes apparent that this orphaned scavenger's heritage is important. This angle is seemingly nixed by The Last Jedi when Kylo Ren tells Rey she's the child of nobody special, but the story changes direction yet again with The Rise of Skywalker, with Kylo now claiming she's actually the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine.
As dissatisfied as the Star Wars faithful might've been with Rian Johnson's anti-climactic answer, just as many felt underwhelmed by the Rey Palpatine reveal, trying to make sense of the connection and wondering why the reveal even mattered in the final chapter of the Skywalker saga. The audience is also left pondering who knew about Rey's secret history before she did, and that list is surprisingly long. The Rise of Skywalker proves that numerous Jedi and Sith allies found out about Rey, but decided to keep quiet for one reason or another.
Rey finds out the truth after she and her friends rescue Chewbacca from Kylo Ren's Star Destroyer. Shortly before escaping, the Jedi in-training is approached by Kylo in the ship's hanger, where he discloses both her controversial lineage and the secret of the Force dyad. But which characters already knew?
Since he's the one to break the news, Kylo Ren obviously discovered Rey was Palpatine's granddaughter before she did, although he was the only one with the decency to share that knowledge with her. Kylo purports to know who Rey's parents are in The Last Jedi when the pair's Force dyad is beginning to blossom, but thanks to The Rise of Skywalker's retcon, this initial claim must've been simple emotional manipulation from Angry Ben. As part of his "rule the galaxy together" sales pitch, Kylo Ren coaxes Rey into admitting her parents were "nobody" and the new Supreme Leader of the First Order agrees, calling her unknown mother and father "filthy junk traders who sold you off for drinking money." Although Kylo's bluff doesn't have the desired effect, Rey seems to believe him.
Only after locating the zombie-like Palpatine on Exegol in the opening sequence of The Rise of Skywalker does Kylo discover the truth. Revealing his behind the scenes machinations, Palpatine hints at the truth of Rey's bloodline, and Kylo asks to know more. Although the scene cuts before further words are uttered, it's safe to assume this is where Palpatine reveals his status as Rey's biological grandfather to a stunned Kylo Ren.
After meeting Rey in the final moments of The Force Awakens, Luke Skywalker reluctantly trains her until his moment of sacrifice in The Last Jedi. But only upon appearing as a Force ghost in The Rise of Skywalker does Luke admit that he was aware of Rey's Palpatine connection. A conflicted and confused Rey returns to Ahch-To, thinking to spend the rest of her days in hiding, but when Rey expresses her anguish, Luke says "because you're a Palpatine?" much to the shock of his former student. Luke argues that spirit and heart are more important than blood, reassuring Rey that she needn't be a slave to her roots, but the spectral Jedi never actually clarifies when or how he discovered this hidden truth. There are three potential points in the Star Wars timeline where Luke could've found out.
Between the original and sequel trilogies, Luke traveled with Lando Calrissian to investigate the Sith's movements. Since he was already on Palpatine's tail, Luke might've discovered the cloning connection and deduced the identity of the abandoned child on Jakku . This would at least explain his immediate reluctance to train Rey. The second possibility is that Luke did the math once his training with Rey began. After witnessing her raw potential in The Last Jedi, Luke remembers feeling the same power once before in Kylo Ren. Since Kylo was being manipulated by Snoke (and therefore by Palpatine), maybe he finally makes the connection here. The most likely option, however, is that Luke only learned about Rey's past after becoming one with the Force upon death.
When Luke appears to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker, he reveals that his sister knew Rey's dark history too. Rey asks why Leia would continue to knowingly train the descendant of Palpatine, but Luke assures her that the Resistance leader would've judged Rey on her own merits. Luke's words confirm that Leia discovered Rey was a Palpatine during her lifetime, either before or during the time jump between The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. If Luke found out through his Sith investigations, or while training Rey on Ahch-To, he undoubtedly would've passed on this knowledge to his sister. If the truth only revealed itself after his death, however, perhaps Luke appeared as a Force ghost to Leia prior to The Rise of Skywalker and revealed who she was really training.
It's also possible that Leia made the finding without Luke's help. The famous Star Wars princess was especially astute in using the Force to ascertain feelings - intuiting her sibling bond with Luke, feeling the death of Han Solo, etc. Leia is arguably the best equipped Force sensitive character to simply feel that Rey could be a Palpatine.
Naturally, Palpatine is fully aware that Rey is his granddaughter from the very start. With his life sustained by the Sith Eternal on Exegol, Palpatine set about artificially creating a clone of himself, hoping to complete his physical resurrection. A male subject from these failed clone attempts struck out alone and started a family in the outside world, conceiving Rey. Palpatine recognized the birth of his granddaughter almost immediately, and made attempts to capture her many years before The Force Awakens.
Since Supreme Leader Snoke is merely a puppet of Palpatine's, he too is privy to Rey's bloodline throughout the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy. Using Snoke, Palpatine is able to monitor his granddaughter's progress and coax out her latent abilities. "Snoke" also helps plant seeds of suspicion in Rey's mind by encouraging her Force bond with Kylo Ren, hoping she'll be led to the devastating truth and ultimately join him on the dark side of the Force.
Star Wars never reveals a great deal about Rey's parents - only that Palpatine's son escaped his wrinkly, undead dad and had a daughter. In order to keep Rey safe from Paplatine's grasp, he then took her to Jakku as a young girl, counting on the planet's remote anonymity to provide a safe haven. While Rey's father would've known the full truth of the Palpatine family, it's not clear whether her mother was completely clued in. Did Palpatine's son tell his partner exactly why their daughter was in so much danger? Or did he leave out the gory details and implore her to trust he was doing the right thing?
Wired into his chair on Exegol, Palpatine couldn't very well chase down his granddaughter in person. And even if he could, the former Emperor wouldn't exactly blend in. Instead, Palpatine sent an emissary to locate Rey on his behalf. Learning of his granddaughter's birth, Palpatine called upon Ochi - a loyal and notorious Sith assassin - to track down the young girl, but the hunter only got as far as Rey's parents, who were killed after refusing to reveal their daughter's hiding place. It's possible that Ochi wasn't told why his target was so important, but given that he was trusted with knowledge of Palpatine's survival, the assassin most likely did know Rey was the Emperor's kin. Unfortunately, The Rise of Skywalker shows that Ochi died in an accident on Pasaana prior to the events of the sequel trilogy, taking the secret to his grave.
Exegol's Sith Eternal barely appear in Star Wars, and are effectively a plot device to broadly explain both Palpatine's survival and his cloning efforts. It's these mysterious cultists who facilitate the experiments while the Emperor himself is physically immobile, therefore it's logical to assume they knew about his secret granddaughter. The Sith Eternal were present when Palpatine's clone son was created, they knew when he escaped, and they surely must've also known when and why Ochi was sent to retrieve the young Rey.
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