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At the moment when Rey is captured by Kylo Ren, she is holding the blaster given to her by Han Solo. When Kylo freezes her, her arm kind of gets forced down, leaving the weapon pointed towards the ground and her grip on it apparently unaffected. At this point, she's still got it and it's not going anywhere. We don't see what happens to it when Kylo uses the Force to knock her unconscious.

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The next we see of her right hand is when Kylo is carrying Rey on board his shuttle. By now, she is definitely no longer holding the blaster. So she dropped it somewhere (or it was taken from her hand) between that spot in the woods and here. She definitely does not have the blaster at any point while she's on Starkiller Base, and the blaster remains on Takodana. (I'm of the opinion that she drops it as soon as Kylo picks her up. Curiously though, her hand is still in a fist, so I'm not sure.)

Image 2

Later in the movie, as she's on her way to meet Luke Skywalker, she once again has the blaster.

Image 3

Staying in-universe, the weapon must have been recovered by someone who later was able to return it to Rey before the end of the film. However, it doesn't seem like it could have been any Resistance people who did it. Right after the First Order departs, General Organa's transport lands, drawing the attention of both Han Solo and Finn, and nobody on the transport would even have known about Rey. It seems extremely unlikely to me that any of them would even have thought to go looking for her blaster, as there are far more important things to deal with.

Are there any canon in-universe details (novelizations perhaps) that explain how Rey got her blaster back, or could this just be a minor plot hole in the movie?

Or, is this simply another blaster of the same type?

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    Are we sure it might not just be a similar blaster?
    – Adamant
    Jan 6, 2017 at 22:15
  • It's a possibility, but I can't recall ever seeing a blaster that looks like this (with that stacked-barrel look) anywhere else in-universe, suggesting that there aren't a lot of blasters of this type floating around.
    – Bob
    Jan 6, 2017 at 22:18
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    I was about to call it a blooper. Still, it's possible Rey got another weapon of the same type from the Resistance. She did not have a holster for the gun when Han gave her one, and she had to carry it behind her back, under her belt. In the end of the movie she did, however, and the holster seemed to be designed for this specific type of weapon.
    – Essen
    Jan 6, 2017 at 22:44
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    @Essen That's a good observation. However, it could just mean that Rey recovered her blaster some time before getting her new clothes.
    – Bob
    Jan 6, 2017 at 22:48
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    Speculation, but the most likely in-universe explanation is that the blaster fell from her hand while being carried to the transport on Takodana. It was then recovered by Resistance forces while they searched the ground for remaining hostiles. Sometime between the events on Starkiller base and the time she left to find Luke, it could have been returned to her. Or, as @Essen says, it simply could be she got a new blaster.
    – DBPriGuy
    Jan 6, 2017 at 22:55

4 Answers 4

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The short answer is that it's not directly addressed.

As you say, she seems to loose the gun when Kylo knocks her out, is clearly not carrying it all through the Starkiller Base scenes and yet it appears again at the end when she's bade farewell by Leia and boards the Falcon.

According to the 'Force Awakens Visual Dictionary', that blaster is an NN-14, so it is indeed a production model and not a unique weapon. Therefore the simplest explanation is that it's simply another blaster of the same model that either just so happened to be at the Resistance base, or more likely: it was the second of a pair kept aboard the Falcon.

Also worth bearing in mind is that there's an indeterminate time jump between the scene where R2 & BB-8 reconstruct the map and the following scene where Rey says goodbye to a comatose Finn. Both she and Leia undergo a complete costume change so that's plenty of time to any number of scenarios to unfold from the simple (Chewie gave her another one) to the elaborate (Maz showed up with her original she left on Takodana.)

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    Your theory about the blaster being one of a pair is probably the best one so far. Remember, Finn's blaster came from that cache too; who knows what else Han had stashed in there?
    – Bob
    Jan 24, 2017 at 15:09
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    ^It probably wasn't even Han's but a bunch of stuff Unkar Plutt had stashed there. For all we know he had a whole case of NN-14's he was planning to sell on. Could just as easily have belonged to Ducain or the Irving Boys. Remember the Falcon was stolen years prior to TFA.
    – Kris
    Jan 24, 2017 at 17:05
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    I feel like the movie implies that Han already knew that stuff was there. He seems to go directly to the compartment instead of accidentally discovering it.
    – Bob
    Jan 24, 2017 at 19:26
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    Well it's still his ship. Surely he knows where the equipment closet is, no? ;)
    – Kris
    Jan 24, 2017 at 19:28
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As mentioned by an earlier comment, the blaster is, as far as the viewer can tell, a standard NN-14 blaster pistol made by LPA, so one can assume the blaster is available for purchase, if not already in the Resistance's armory. In real life, it would make sense for Rey to want the same blaster again, since real guns fire and act differently based on their make. While Rey didn't get much use out of her original blaster, some familiarity is better than none. On a less important note getting the same blaster type would mean she would not also have to get a new holster for her blaster.

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  • Since the sole example of this blaster model we see in over 20 hours of star wars film (and hundreds of hours of cartoon series) is the one that Han hands her, what evidence so you have to base your assertion that it's a standard model?
    – Valorum
    Jan 23, 2017 at 23:47
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    @Valorum By standard I mean that the blaster Rey has either time has no visible modifications from the version that the manufacturer produces. I do not feel that the blaster's inaugural appearance being in Episode VII makes it instantly unique because (1) this is the first film set in this time period, and other technology has been shown to have advanced and changed since the other TV and Movie settings and (2) with the population as large as it is, there are bound to be many, many weapons manufacturers, and so the appearance of many different style weapons should actually be expected.
    – WitchsFISTS
    Jan 23, 2017 at 23:56
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It's possible that BB-8 came across it in the woods while heading to the Resistance transport on Takodana and picked it up for Rey, storing it inside himself for safekeeping. He then could have presented it to her off-screen at some point between Rey's arrival at the base post-Starkiller and when Rey departed again to Ahch-to with Chewie.

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I think its unlikely it was a unique one of a kind blaster, more likely a generic readily available model of blaster used by the resistance, so most likely the blaster seen in the later scenes is a different blaster of the same model or very similar style as the one given to her by solo.

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    Since the sole example of this blaster model we see in over 20 hours of star wars film (and hundreds of hours of cartoon series) is the one that Han hands her, what evidence so you have to base your assertion that it's a common model?
    – Valorum
    Jan 7, 2017 at 10:31
  • @Valorum Well, Kris above does point out that it's a NN-14 model, nothing custom.
    – Marakai
    Jan 23, 2017 at 23:36
  • @Marakai - Again, just because something has a model number doesn't mean that it's a common model. The sole example we see is in this film, in this scene.
    – Valorum
    Jan 23, 2017 at 23:38
  • @Valorum You're picking nits. ;) There's after all a dictionary! Otherwise you'd better raise that as an issue on the other 2 answers (as of typing this).
    – Marakai
    Jan 23, 2017 at 23:40

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