My theory prior to The Last Jedi was that Rey was Han and Leia’s daughter. That she had arrived at Luke’s Jedi temple to begin her training just as the culling began. That in the course of his attack on the temple, Ben unexpectedly found his little sister there, and could not bring himself to kill her — so he is the one who dropped her off on Jakku.

Han and Leia would have presumed her dead, and the guilt from this is what drove Luke into hiding. Years later, it would be because she reminded him so much of his own long-dead daughter that Han developed the instant connection to Rey, never realizing that she was his daughter.

But then The Last Jedi went and changed my thinking entirely.

“Is Rey possibly Force-born like Anakin was? Very, very unlikely, the prophecy about the balance of the Force relates only to him.”

Well, I’m not so sure about that.

“Darkness rises, and light to meet it” makes me think Rey is very much like Anakin.

Not “Force-born” in the sense that she never had a father. But “Force-born” in the sense that she was an unspecial child born to unspecial parents, who was then imbued by the Force with great power, to offset Kylo’s rise in the dark side.

As for the prophecy, my thinking is this:

The Force, in striving to achieve balance, every now and again will imbue a chosen individual with great power. Anakin was the first to be chosen, or the first in a long while.

A lot of people assume that Anakin fulfilled the prophecy and brought balance to the Force when he killed Palpatine. But suppose that isn’t so?

What if being chosen is not a guarantee of success?

The fate/free will debate comes into play here, and I very much fall on the side of free will.

My take is that Anakin, through the exercise of his free will, failed to bring balance to the Force.

And so, now the Force is trying again with Rey.