I saw The Rise of Skywalker the same way I did the other post-Disney films: opening night, first showing, @ my local theater with my two best buds, Dustin and Kell. It’s become a tradition, grown to encompass beer and a couple hands of sabacc. This year, though, was pretty different. We saw it at a different theater, Dusto had a wicked sinus infection…and we all left the theater with a feeling of uncertainty.

While Dusto slipped away silently to nurse his cold, Kell and I took to a nearby pub to unpack the final installment of the Skywalker saga. While we discussed both its merits and shortcomings over apps, he flat out told his girlfriend it was “disappointing.”

While I wasn’t ready to go that far, I was having some mixed feelings. I.e. “Well, I’m not sure I want to see this again.” At home, I didn’t have much to say about it, nor on social media. I already had tickets to see it again the following Saturday, though I wasn’t sure I’d be ready.

Why? To Kell’s point, it seemed to bite it’s thumb at the previous chapter, The Last Jedi, at every turn. On top of that, the plot was all over the place, the pacing moved like a bump of coke and the action was Marvel-esque–something I never wanted from a Star War.

I felt betrayed in a way. I thought JJ took the low road and sucker-punched the choices made by Rian Johnson in TLJ. I thought writer Chris Terrio had hacked another franchise fanfic.

But, much like Luke Skywalker hiding on Ahch-To, I was wrong.

The second showing was like a completely different film. Surrounded by my whole squad, I laughed, I cried and, more importantly, I saw a thought-out, cohesive, subtle, complicated, challenging film that didn’t just celebrate Last Jedi but repaired the story arc of the post-Disney saga.

Let’s discuss.

Kell and I spent the last 2 years worshipping Last Jedi for its bold, almost meta, take on the galaxy far, far away. Rey was nobody, Snoke was nothing and the Resistance was reborn to fight Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. Awesome.

But Rise of Skywalker opens with Kylo answering to a decrepit Emperor Palpatine…and worst of all, we find out [I’m serious about spoilers now] that Rey is his granddaughter.

This was by far the toughest thing to swallow in TROS. Not just because it muddies the lesson of TLJ that said you don’t have to be of a special bloodline to be a hero, but because Rey was my favorite because she was so purely good.

How could they do this??

But I see now that it’s a strong story arc. Last Jedi gave us the answers that we needed in 2017–and I for one never took them as concrete. Rey had to come to terms with a sad truth. She was nobody. Her parents were nobody. It allowed her to move forward with her Jedi training and become the clear-headed prize fighter of the Resistance. It was a beautiful message.

But that was only the middle of a trilogy. Rey’s next test was bigger than accepting her parents weren’t coming back: accepting that she came from the galaxy’s greatest evil. And it was true. It’s real, it happened…Rey is a Palpatine.

But as strong as I thought Rey was rising from nothing, she’s so much stronger fighting her compulsion to the Dark Side. We saw her go right to it in TLJ, but she found away to let the past die. Like Kylo, she killed it. And like Luke she found a loophole to do it in her own way. If these things don’t honor Rian Johnson’s masterpiece, I don’t know what does.

Like a true Jedi, Rey found a way to win without sacrificing her beliefs. And along the way, we get to see a true quest, awesome aliens (Babu Frik!!!