Disney keeps signaling it's not done with Rey in Star Wars just yet
A rumor says Daisy Ridley’s Rey will cameo in 2027’s Star Wars: Starfighter, and her Rey-led film is still in development despite years of delays. Fans keep predicting Disney will abandon the sequel era. Disney keeps doing the opposite.
A persistent chunk of Star Wars fandom is convinced Disney wants to bury the sequel trilogy and quietly retire Rey. Disney keeps acting like it has no such plan.
The latest signal is a rumor that Daisy Ridley‘s Rey will make a cameo in Star Wars: Starfighter, the Ryan Gosling-led film due May 28, 2027. It joins a Rey-centric novel that just hit shelves and a long-in-development Rey movie that, delays and all, has never actually been canceled.
So is Disney done with Rey or not?
The Starfighter cameo rumor
This is a rumor, not an announcement.
The claim, circulating from insider social-media accounts, is that Starfighter‘s plot follows Gosling’s non-Jedi character escorting a Force-sensitive child across the galaxy, a journey that ends with them reaching Rey. That would let Ridley cameo and set up a larger story.
Some versions tie it to Starfighter launching its own trilogy, with “a big cameo to set up the sequel.”
Starfighter‘s writer Jonathan Tropper has reportedly said the film features “no legacy characters.” So the cameo is unconfirmed and arguably contradicted. Shawn Levy directs, with Gosling, Amy Adams, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, and Flynn Gray, and the film is set roughly five years after The Rise of Skywalker.
The Rey movie that never actually died
The bigger picture is the solo film, and its status is the crux of the whole “abandoning Rey” narrative.
Announced at Star Wars Celebration 2023, the Rey-led New Jedi Order film, directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, is set 15 years after The Rise of Skywalker and follows Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order. It gathered momentum fast, at one point the favorite to relaunch Star Wars in theaters, and was reportedly eyed for 2025.
Then it slid. Creative teams came and went, and by November 2024 the release was delayed indefinitely. That delay is what convinced a lot of fans Disney was walking away, from Rey and from the sequel era generally.
But “delayed indefinitely” isn’t “canceled,” and the surrounding signals cut the other way. Ridley says she’s still involved and crafting the story. And crucially, Lucasfilm reportedly considers Ridley one of its “most valuable cinematic assets,” and both Disney and Lucasfilm view Rey as one of the franchise’s main box-office draws.
(Ask Ollie’s Bargain Outlet if Rey is a valuable asset. They’ve been sitting on piles of unsold Rey action figures for a decade.)
Why fans keep expecting an abandonment
The “Disney is done with the sequels” belief isn’t baseless, and that’s worth acknowledging.
The sequel trilogy was divisive, its box office declined film to film (from The Force Awakens‘ $2 billion to The Rise of Skywalker‘s $1 billion), and Disney has spent years since visibly reaching backward and sideways, the High Republic era, The Mandalorian, James Mangold’s dawn-of-the-Jedi film thousands of years earlier.
That pattern reads, to a skeptical fan, like a studio steering away from the sequels it made.
The endless delays on Rey’s movie pour fuel on that. Every year it doesn’t start filming is another year fans read as Disney getting cold feet.
When a project is announced with fanfare and then goes quiet for years, “they’ve given up” is a natural conclusion.
What Disney is actually signaling
Stack up the evidence and it points the opposite way from the abandonment narrative.
In the last year alone: a Rey-and-Leia novel put her at the center of new canon, the solo film stayed in active development with Ridley involved, and now a rumor has her cameoing in the next theatrical release to bridge toward her future.
That’s not a studio walking away from a character. That’s a studio keeping the pilot light on across multiple formats while it figures out the movie.
Disney doesn’t seem to be abandoning Rey. The “most valuable asset” language and the steady drip of Rey content make that clear.
But it also clearly hasn’t cracked how to bring her back, which is why the movie keeps slipping and fans keep filling the silence with worst-case theories.
Rey probably isn’t being dropped. She’s likely just being delayed again.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
D/REZZED is part of Clownfish TV. For more news, views, and rants on gaming, tech, and pop culture, visit clownfishtv.com. Watch the show on YouTube at @ClownfishTV where new episodes drop daily. Subscribe to the Clownfish TV podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, and wherever else you get your podcasts. Sign up for the free newsletter at more.clownfishtv.com.
Hat Tips:
SuperHeroHype (September 2025), verified for the Starfighter cameo rumor, the @MyTimeToShineHello and Den of Nerds sourcing, the “big cameo to set up the sequel” claim, the escort-the-Force-sensitive-child plot, the May 28 2027 date, and the cast (Gosling, Adams, Smith, Goth, Gray)
Inside the Magic (January 2026), verified for Jonathan Tropper reportedly saying Starfighter has “no legacy characters,” contradicting the Rey cameo rumor
Murphy’s Multiverse (2025), verified for the New Jedi Order film’s Celebration 2023 announcement, the Obaid-Chinoy direction, the considered-for-2025 momentum, the November 2024 indefinite delay, and the “most valuable cinematic asset” reporting
ScreenRant (March 2026), verified for Disney and Lucasfilm viewing Ridley as a main box-office draw, the sequel-trilogy box-office decline from $2 billion to $1 billion, and the New Jedi Order premise of Rey training a new generation
Parade and GeekTyrant (December 2025-2026), verified for Ridley confirming she’s still involved and crafting the story, being the only confirmed cast member, and the 15-years-after-Rise-of-Skywalker setting