The moment Darth Vader looms over Luke Skywalker in the climax of The Empire Strikes Back and declares that he is Luke's father is one of the greatest twists in cinema history. Paternity reveals weren't a new concept when The Empire Strikes Back came out, but Vader's confession remains the most enduring example of the trope because its near-perfect execution ensures that audiences focus on what it means for the story instead of the awkward reality that Darth Vader got someone pregnant.

That's the bar any "I am your father" reveal has to clear. Its narrative implications have to be stronger than the base fact that characters bone. Long-running franchises like Star Wars should have enough built-up emotional resonance to clear that bar easily, but The Rise of Skywalker's paternity (or rather, grand-paternity) twist that Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter doesn't come close and it's not the first mega-franchise to run its story to the ground with a similar failure.

The stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child premiered in June 2016 and functions as a canon sequel to the beloved children's books that inspired a generation, and also hedges its plot on the uncomfortable surprise that Voldemort had a daughter with Bellatrix Lestrange. His daughter Delphini unveils herself towards the end of the show and is supposed to come off as a threat, but the mere idea of Voldemort having an orgasm is scarier than any spell Delphini can cast.

Part of the reason Voldemort's bedroom activities dominate the mind after seeing or reading Cursed Child is how little it makes sense given what Harry Potter fans know about Voldemort. He's a narcissist, a barely-human husk of a person who eschews human connection in favor of pursuing power. His evil is rooted in self-hatred and entitlement not the looming suspicion that he's trying to fuck your wife. To say Voldemort had sex even once is to recontextualize his character in a way that's icky at best and deeply uncomfortable at its worst.

Similarly, Rey being Palpatine's granddaughter lacks impact on the greater story of Star Wars beyond the fact that fans can't unsee their mental images of Palpatine making the beast with two backs at any point on his quest for galactic domination. The Rise of Skywalker could have skipped that entire plot point and still ended exactly the way it did, except it didn't and the only real takeaway from the twist is the enduring knowledge that Emperor Palpatine was horny. Palpatine, like Voldemort, is at the end of his series a half-dead, decaying corpse of a man whose sacrifices in pursuit of immortality should definitely have nuked his dick game, but Star Wars insists that the Emperor's physical and mental corruption by the dark side was no obstacle when it came time to sling it.

Cursed Child and The Rise of Skywalker make the exact same mistake in assuming that the continued genetic legacy of a character no one wants to think about naked is more interesting than any of their extant themes about war, loss, and heroism. Star Wars and Harry Potter are both about fighting totalitarian regimes, but their sequels insist that fascism isn't nearly as bad as what happens when evil wizards nut. It's lazy storytelling to extend the shelf life of a villain because no one has any better ideas, and that laziness becomes egregious when that shortcut comes packaged with inescapable visions of unthinkably weird sex.

Cursed Child and The Rise of Skywalker are allegedly the last we'll hear from these particular characters in their respective franchises, which is both a relief (please, for the love of god, don't tell us Peter Pettigrew or Grand Moff Tarkin had kids in a sequel series twenty years down the line) and a disappointment. The last words in both of these iconic stories are forever written as they are, with Voldemort and Palpatine screwing their way to continued relevance, and no Jedi mind trick or obliviate spell can fix it.

Originally posted here:

'Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker' has a 'Harry Potter Cursed Child' problem - Mashable