Star Wars: Daisy Ridley’s Rey was going to be called Winkie in sequels, new book claims

Taryn, Thea and Sally were reportedly also used

George Lucas wanted to call Rey “Winkie” at one point while writing the Star Wars sequels, a new book has claimed.

Star Wars: Fascinating Facts, which is written by Pablo Hidalgo, will be released in December and is described as “a compendium of hundreds of little-known facts about all nine episodes in the Skywalker Saga”.

In an extract shared on social media, the book explains how Lucas originally imagined the character of Rey, who would go on to be played by Daisy Ridley in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker.

“The Force Awakens’ long journey from idea to finished film was filled with evolution, but one idea that remained constant from the start was that of a young woman’s quest to become a Jedi Knight,” the extract reads.

It claims that in Lucas’s original outline, Rey was imagined as a 14-year-old girl called Taryn, and in subsequent versions would be briefly named both Thea and, bizarrely, Winkie.

“When writer/director JJ Abrams came aboard, he simplified the names to placeholders,” it continued. “Kylo Ren was the Jedi Killer. Thea became Sally. Finn was called Harry. And the character that would be Poe was John Doe.”

Sally then become Kira, then Echo, before finally settling on Rey, the name used in the sequels.

The Independent has contacted LucasFilm for comment.

The Star Wars sequels were released between 2015 and 2019, and starred Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac.