What I learned from Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker is a very American truth: Special powers and abilities don’t come to you through any effort, drive, ambition, heart, or spirit on your part. Nope. It’s all due to your bloodline. You inherit it.

Striving to attain something is for suckers. Oh sure, they sell you a fiction, as they do in America, that you can accomplish great things and amass wealth through hard work. But that happens so rarely it’s hardly worth mentioning. Nope. Almost all of the time, you come to great wealth because it’s already in your family. You inherit it. You accomplish things because you already have a leg up. You can laugh at the little ants struggling mightily to build a computer, while you are given all the materials you need because it’s all already in your possession through no real work on your own.

One of the things I loved about The Last Jedi is that it hinted the fantasy might be real: You can be great because your soul is pure, because you want it, because you strive to achieve it, and so on. But no. Rise of Skywalker sets that “right.” You have the ability and privilege only because you inherit them.