The Rise of Skywalker has certainly been a polarizing movie possibly even more so than The Last Jedi. I, for one, enjoyed the film, but I’m also not a hardcore purist when it comes to Star Wars. I thought it brought some nice closure to the trilogy. One of the things that I really loved about it, something that spanned through all three of the movies, is the idea that we can become more than the circumstances we’ve been given. We are not tied down to fate.

The Star Wars universe has often been obsessed with the idea of fate and destiny. It starts with Anakin who is fated to bring balance to the force (by destroying almost all of the Jedi). Then we move to Luke, whose destiny was to rule the galaxy with his father, or so Vader claims. How many times is the phrase “It is your destiny” mentioned in the earlier movies? But the new trilogy set up this new idea that's essentially summed up and Luke's words to Rey in The Rise of Skywalker. 

“Some things are stronger than blood.” That’s what Luke tells her. If we look at all of the characters in the new trilogy, you can see that they were able to take what they were given and rise above it.

Spice Runner Turned Rebel

Poe for one is revealed in Skywalker to have shady past. While visiting Poe’s home world, we find out he used to run spice. That would put in with some of the worst scum and villainy in the galaxy. And yet we see that when he was given an opportunity, he left his whole life behind, a life of crime, to join the resistance. We don’t know what circumstances got him into the spice running game, but when we meet him in The Force Awakens, it’s clear that he’s moved past it.

The Defective Stormtrooper

Finn is another obvious candidate. Finn was taken as a child and reconditioned by the First Order to be a stormtrooper. This doesn’t last long, however, because in his first battle, he goes against his conditioning and realizes that the life of a stormtrooper is not what he wants. Rather than accept his fate, he renounces the First Order enjoys the resistance, fighting back against them.

The Force Dyad

And then, of course, There's Rey and Ben. 

Ben, grandson of Anakin Skywalker and nephew to Luke, is clearly strong in the force and destined to do powerful things. And then Rey is revealed to be a Palpatine, equally strong in the force and prone to the dark side.

It's interesting to see how the two characters develop. Ben was sort of Luke's hope of bringing the Jedi back to strength. But Ben became upset with his grandfather and went over to the dark side of the force and became a new Sith lord. After killing Snoke, he rose to become the Supreme Leader of the New Order, apparently fulfilling his destiny. Full of anger and hate, Ben Solo struggles between the light and the dark his entire journey, showing that he may be more than what he believes his destiny to be.

Rey, on the other hand, plays foil to Ben. As she trains with Luke in The Last Jedi, she immediately leans to the dark side. Her character is introduced as this character of light that rises to balance out the darkness of Kyle Ren, and yet what we find is that she is potentially the most powerful force user in the galaxy, and she is immediately drawn to the dark side. The fact that she's Palpatine's granddaughter reinforces this. She spends most of Skywalker, however, fighting against that, much like Ben fights against the pull to the light. So the idea presented with both her and Ben is that we choose who we want to be.

We can’t control the circumstances that we're born into. We can’t control the things that happened to us. But we can control how we respond, how we react, to those things. We're not controlled by fate because we decide who we want to be.