Star Wars never had the problem you think The Last Jedi fixed.

I still haven't watched Rise of Skywalker yet, but watching the way certain fans of The Last Jedi are hating on it brings to mind one praise of TLJ that I haven't addressed directly in my past criticizing of it.

It keeps being suggested that before the Sequel Trilogy the Star Wars saga had this unintentionally pro Eugenics subtext where only people of exclusive elite bloodlines could be Jedi or Sith.  And that's why TLJ saying even the child of a nobody can be a hero was so important to them.  And now they feel betrayed by a perception that RoS is undoing all that.  I enjoyed this YouTube video responding to the idea that RoS somehow undoes that message.

My problem however is I disagree that Star Wars ever had this problem to begin with.  

Yes the whole Skywalker family stuff established that if one of your parents was Force Sensitive you almost certainly will be too (I disagree that that implication was only created by the Vader being Luke's father reveal, in A New Hope we already knew Anakin was a Jedi and that was the only reason Obi-Wan had to take an interest in Luke as a potential Jedi).  But that never meant the reverse was also true.  In fact that only one parent being Force sensitive doesn't give you any less potential then if both were proves it was never functioning like Eugenics or Phrenology.

The Prequels very clearly told us the reverse can't be true because normally the Jedi don't get married and have families, they live like monks.  The Phantom Menace establishes that normally Force Sensitives just randomly pop up and the Jedi order detects them.  Qui-Gon inquired about Anakin's father only because Anakin had a uniquely abnormally high Midichlorene count.  

The Midichlorenes' role in all this is also misunderstood.  TPM established that EVEYRONE!!! has them.  And while Yoda and Anakin's well above average counts are significant that doesn't mean there's always a correlation between how many you have and how powerful you are.  And given how genetics works it's not impossible two people with a low Midichlorene counts can have a child with a high one.  And since they're partly based on Midochorndia we can infer it's possible to increase your count beyond what you're born with through training.

The fact that so many fans thought that's what the implications of the Star Wars movies were says more about them then it does Star Wars.  Especially since it's mostly a perception of people who trash the Prequels.  They clearly never actually understood the Saga.

So all this talk about Rey being the first Star Wars hero to not be a hero because of who's family she's from really annoys me.  Who were Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon's ancestors?  I don't know about the EU but in the main films they never mattered and Obi-Wan was the actual main hero of the Prequel Trilogy, he was a failure as a mentor to Anakin but a damn near Mary Sue at everything else and then makes up for his failure with Anakin by being a better mentor for Luke.  And that's not even getting into the non Force Sensitive heroes of the saga.  Meanwhile Anakin was the son of a slave.

And no, TLJ wasn't saying anyone can be a Jedi in a way the old movies didn't already because ancestry or not Rey and Broom Boy still can only do it because of an innate talent they were born with.  There is nothing to suggest you could now teach Force powers to someone who didn't already show the signs of it that Anakin and Rey showed.

Rey's parentage was not a big deal in the fan theorizing simply because she could use the Force (in fact it was going on before we knew for certain she'd be the Force user of TFA), it was treated as a big deal because Abrams made it a big deal.  And while much of how TFA does that could have been compatible with TLJ's reveal, that moment about Rey between Han and Maz Kanata is not.  And while the deep insane depths of fan theorizing sometimes came up with familial backgrounds for Finn and Poe too, it wasn't as ubiquitous with them because Abrams didn't tell us to care about their backstory.

Now Rey's parents being nobodies was never part of why I disliked TLJ, I was fine with that in-spite of the plot hole I just mentioned because guess what I agree with Patrick Willems on Plot Holes.  

The other major area where TLJ fans feel betrayed is redeeming Kylo Ren, and that one does go hand in hand with one of the major reasons why I hated TLJ.  That one isn't as universal, the GreedoShotFirst duo were willing to be okay with that.  But it's brought up by both Linkara and Quinton Reviews.  

Here's the thing, even leaving aside my on principal hatred of saying "some people can't be redeemed" which I've elaborated on elsewhere, since I do like plenty of fiction with not redeemed villains in-spite of that value of mine.  In this particular case, making the ONLY child of Han and Leia a complete failure who's existence caused only harm would have utterly destroyed the legacy of the Original Trilogy.   In fact so is making it so they only had one child and he was a mostly negative influence on the galaxy till his last 30 seconds of life still tarnishes the OT in a way I can't forgive this Sequel Trilogy for.

The ending of Return of The Jedi was such a great ending to the Hexology partly because the love between Han and Leia is supposed to represent the new life to come out of all this War.  That the new Jedi order isn't going to be rejecting Love the way the old order did in the Prequels.  But now because of the multiple ways the ST destroyed Han and Leia's relationship people like MrCynical can continue to say Star Wars always punishes romantic love.

And that's why on some level I never fully got behind any other explanation for Rey's backstory including her being Luke's daughter, I wanted her to also be the result of Han and Leia's love for each other so their legacy didn't depend solely on what the films did or didn't do with Kylo.  But I accepted that as unlikely as soon as TFA ended.

I didn't want Rey to be a Skywalker because I felt only Skywalkers can be heroes because of some medical devotion to hereditary monarchy, and I certainly have no devotion to Eugenics since I don't even believe in Evolution.  I'm a Christian who bases his theology on how Paul said God UNATURALLY grafts people who don't biologically descend from Abraham into the family of Jacob.  I wanted the Sequel Trilogy to not undo that Han and Leia's love created the future of the Galaxy.  You had the spin off films to hype up heroes who have no Skywaker connection.  But they couldn't do that either, instead Rouge One is most praised for how it used Vader and Leia at the end and then they made a movie about Leia's future husband.

I do still like that Rey is a Skywalker by adoption which is something I argued all the way back in 2016.  But in that context I wish she could have spent more time with her adopted family before they ALL died.  [Wow, I just reread that post and realized I kind of unintentionally predicted what happens in RoS, doesn't mean I'll like it.]

However I also suggested back then a way to redeem Kylo Ren that wouldn't just be repeating ROTJ.  They didn't do that, and it could have still worked with TLJ's themes.
https://jaredmithrandirolorin.blogspot.com/2016/04/kylo-ren-and-theme-of-redemption-in.html