The Last Jedi Makes The Force Awakens Much More Interesting

And to solidify that further, why would Maz feel she still needs convincing of the idea that her parents weren't returning if Rey already consciously realized it?

Kids who are abused often form walls around those memories and project something different in their place.  That something different becomes their self-deluded reality, but it is their "reality" nonetheless.

And that self deluded reality is exactly the denial I'm talking about. I've known victims of abuse that lived with it, lied to themselves and the world that it was going on, convinced themselves that they were in a good situation for themselves, but would go berserk to protect someone else who was heading to the same situation.

It certainly seems like the writer(s) was trying to seduce the audience into that belief; simply because they knew that the majority of the audience had a large appetite for it. Rey acts like a gushing groupie who just found out Santa Claus is real, at the mention of Luke Skywalker's name. But when she finds out Han Solo is the Han Solo, she acts as if he had been her imaginary father idol for her entire life. In hindsight of both these movies, those moments look like "winks" at breaking the fourth wall.

Indeed. Even when you bring "little Ani" Anakin into the equation it's still good writing by comparison, despite complaints of him building C3PO ruined some people's childhood. Anakin formed attachments with droids in a world where he was a slave mistreated or ignored by most sentient beings. Even most of his childhood peers treated him like an outsider. But Anakin had a nurturing parent who helped allow him to entertain droids as pets. He was also removed from slavery early enough that he wouldn't experience many shattering "relationships" with droids being destroyed. Or having to "slaughter the family pet pig for food and money".

In contrast Rey should've encountered many droid scraps and even a few intact droids on those downed Star Destroyers. But there was no evidence she had hidden away any droids as pets. She certainly would've (very early on) had the reality that a child without parents was at a disadvantage in an economy based on fighting over ship and droid parts to survive. And now that we find out even before Plutt became Rey's guardian her parents were dead-beat drunks, it only makes her nobility over BB8 look even less plausible. So her morality seems to come out of nowhere. It's just there because "that's what all Disney warrior princesses are made of".