Do you reckon George Lucas have ever sent Rian Johnson a fruit basket and said, ‘thanks for taking the pressure off me, pal.”
If the voices in the Youtube comments of some of the best-known Star Wars sections on the internet are to go by, then lots people have already given up on Disney Star Wars. I myself, was heavily disappointed by The Last Jedi, but the latest Star Wars Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker trailer has put a spring back in my step, even if I’m conscious to the fact that I may be let down again in just under a month and a half, when the movie is released. For now though, I wish to join the speculation and put forward a few ideas as to how I think the movie should go… I’ve got to put it on the record before it’s too late.
What can go wrong?
Easily, this could be a bad movie. Dialogue could be stupid, plot holes could be obvious, story points could be dumb or left incomplete. J. J. Abrams was strongly connected to the television show Lost, and we all know that had an unsatisfying conclusion. Nonetheless, I am optimistic that a good story will be told. After all, The Force Awakens was good. I don’t want to look back on Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker and think that it could be a rushed product of having to hit a Disney deadline.
Secondly, what can go wrong is a failure to properly integrate the prequel trilogy. This movie is being advertised as the end of the Skywalker series. I expect links and throwbacks to both the original series and the prequel series. In this movies defence before it even comes out, Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker has a lot do to. It will serve as the cap to the Disney trilogy as well as the entire saga. Obviously the prequel series isn’t as nostalgic as the original trilogy, but it does exist, and Star Wars fans that were young enough to grow up with it, do hold a place in their heart for it. George Lucas put a lot of effort into turning the original trilogy, which was primarily Luke Skywalker’s story, into Anakin Skywalker’s story, with the prequel trilogy. I don’t think Disney have been so forthcoming in including recognisable ideas and iconography from the prequels, other than in Rogue One and a little in Solo, and that’s understandable, but I would love if Qui-Gon Jinn appears as a force-ghost in Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, or something like that, and I think it could make sense.
I’m also okay with the much-speculated death of C-3PO due to it fitting with what was established in the prequel trilogy. I do not say this lightly, because C-3PO is probably my favourite character, but Anakin did build him, and if we are saying goodbye to the Skywalker family at the end of Episode IX, I think it’s fitting we say goodbye to C-3PO too. BB-8 and R2-D2 better bond quickly.
What’s a good idea and what’s a bad idea?
Rey – I love what many are speculating; at the end of Episode IX, Rey will lead a new wave of force-sensitive types known as Skywalkers, that will supersede the Jedi.
It was suggested in The Last Jedi that Rey could be a clone, after she sees many copies of herself in the caves of Ahch-To. I choose to interpret that scene as conveying Rey is just one of many who is force sensitive. One of Rian Johnson’s ideas from The Last Jedi which I can actually get behind is that Rey is a nobody – she doesn’t have some fated lineage; she’s not a Kenobi or a Dooku. Rey has simply been entangled with the Resistance because the Millennium Falcon was held on Jakku, and Finn crashed there. This is not new to Star Wars; if you think of Han Solo in the first Star Wars movie, there was nothing special linking him to the Rebellion either, only that Luke and Ben just needed a quiet pilot. By making Rey a nobody, she actually becomes an everybody – Rey can stand in for all the boys and girls and Star Wars fans alike who have also been swept up in the adventure. And the Star Wars galaxy is meant to be vast; we can’t have everyone related to everyone, or being the product of some greater scheme.
However, I do feel Rey will be made special somehow, in an attempt to shock and mystify. Maybe she will be a clone, set into motion by Emperor Palpatine. I just don’t want a scene with a hundred Rey’s jumping around like she is Mr. Anderson from The Matrix Reloaded, personally.
Ben Solo – Hey, is it too late for Kylo Ren to be revealed to have been undercover in the First Order the whole time? That would be a pretty big reveal, right? If you think about it, he is the one who killed Snoke… and maybe he couldn’t confess to Rey that he is on the good side because he still sensed the Emperor was around. If Luke Skywalker set the plan into motion, then it might explain why Luke is so crabby that Rey found him in hiding – Luke is presented with his old lightsaber and he throws it over his shoulder, like it doesn’t matter, to deter the little girl from getting involved and ruining the undercover operation. If Ben Solo and Luke Skywalker have been in cahoots the whole time it would erase their crappy stories on how Luke sensed Ben was turning to the dark side, and so he tried to murder him in his sleep – lame! It would also explain how Luke Skywalker knew where to find the Resistance on Crait, if Ben Solo had told him; maybe the pair were forced to stage a big death for the Jedi Master to keep the First Order from suspecting Kylo Ren was a fraud after he murdered Snoke. After all, Kylo Ren doesn’t really kill Luke; he is only fighting a force projection. It would also make sense of Kylo Ren’s dribble about killing the past – the First Order, the Resistance, destroy it all and start fresh, because it’s all irrelevant when compared with the evil behind it, personified by Snoke and the Emperor. You could also reinterpret Ren’s speech from The Force Awakens trailer, where he tells the Darth Vader helmet that he plans to ‘finish what [he] started’; that could mean ‘destroying the Sith’ and not ‘ruling the galaxy’. Look, for the most part, I’m only aiming to clean up the problems left by The Last Jedi. I wish Kylo Ren was given some clearer motivation and Luke Skywalker wasn’t such a pessimist in that movie, but this is what we got!
If Ben Solo dies, and Rey realises he was good all along, the bond she shares with him might work as the catalyst for her to create the new Jedi Order, the Skywalkers. Ben will have shown her that you can be heroic without being pure, that you can harness the lessons of the dark and the light to forge a new path forward – Joy and Sadness practically taught us this in Inside Out. Of course, for this to work, we’d have to be okay with the fact that Ben killed Han Solo for a greater purpose, and that might be a stretch. And yes, I’m basically Professor Snape-ing Kylo Ren for Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, but he already looks like him and I think it fits.
Finn & Poe Dameron – Just be heroic; that’s your only goal. In my opinion, Finn has been shown to be running away from more problems than he solves over the course of the last two movies, and Dameron was given a pretty awful story in The Last Jedi, so let’s see them finally lead the Resistance to victory.
I also wouldn’t mind if it’s revealed that Finn is force sensitive. It would explain how he was able to break the conditioning techniques put on the Stormtroopers by the First Order, and I’ve always got the sense that the people in charge at Disney want us to believe there’s something special about Finn. He also looks good with a lightsaber, and maybe him using one against Kylo Ren in The Force Awakens is good foreshadowing. If Finn is force-sensitive, I think it would serve as an adequate twist for the final movie, matching that of Leia being revealed to be Luke’s sister in Return of the Jedi; it’s…fine, not overly necessary, but it’s there now. Plus, Rey is going to need a right-hand-man when she’s populating the Skywalker ranks.
Emperor Palpatine – Look, I think we all would have preferred it if Snoke was the big baddy in the finale, and Palpatine was left dead at the bottom of the Death Star reactor. But it’s not meant to be. For all we know, Snoke was going to be revealed to be Darth Plagueis the Wise, the former master of Palpatine, that Palpatine mentioned during Revenge of the Sith. I think that could have been a great call, and worked perfectly to calm my concerns that the prequel trilogy will not be adequately connected. How’s this for a theory – Palpatine thought Plagueis was dead, but Plagueis forecasted the control Palpatine would amass over the senate and the galaxy, and bided his time. It was naïve for Palpatine to consider his former master dead, a character noted for cheating death. After Palpatine’s arrogance led to his death, Plagueis saw the best time to strike – this backstory effectively one-ups Palpatine, and leaves Snoke as the grander villain. Not only that, it would be great to see a Sith counterpart to the Jedi force-ghost, where from apparent death, the sith can ‘become more powerful than you could possibly imagine’, as Obi-Wan Kenobi puts it to Darth Vader in A New Hope. It would also go to show, that Plagueis was always smarter than Palpatine, as Palpatine never manage to figure out how to cheat death himself.
Now, as unfortunate as it seems that Palpatine will return for Episode IX, I predict the backstory I have just described will essentially be flipped, whereby Palpatine did figure out how to save himself where Plagueis didn’t, but kept the secret of life from Anakin because he didn’t ever want Padme to live; isn’t Palpatine so evil…?
In conclusion…
Whatever comes of Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, us fans will make sense of it. That’s what we are good at – once the story becomes cannon, it is our imaginations that make it work. We want Star Wars to be magical, and it is our will to make it so that is an unstoppable force. Look at the vitriol over Jar Jar Binks; for a character that was so hated, he has morphed into something beautiful with the fan theory that he is a Sith Lord. That’s got to make you laugh. I am optimistic for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker because it’s the best way to be. Whatever comes I can almost guarantee the movie is going to look amazing, visually, and I can’t wait for that alone. Let’s just hope this movie blows our minds, and we can spend the next ten years describing how cool it is rather than how much better it could have been with changes. Fingers-crossed.
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