The Rise of Skywalker won’t retcon The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a mere 72 days away from making its theatrical debut, and director J.J. Abrams is addressing fans still upset over how the last movie in the saga, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi, shook up the formula. Some of those fans would like nothing more than for Episode IX to plow over some of the choices made in Episode XIII, but speaking to Empire Magazine, Abrams said he intends to do no such thing.

"I never found myself trying to repair anything. If I had done VIII, I would have done things differently, just as Rian would have done things differently if he had done VII. But having worked on television series, I was accustomed to creating stories and characters that then were run by other people. If you’re willing to walk away from the thing that you created and you believe it’s in trustworthy hands, you have to accept that some of the decisions being made are not gonna be the same that you would make. And if you come back into it, you have to honor what’s been done."

Sounds reasonable to me, although I always wondered just how much of the Star Wars sequel trilogy was mapped out from the beginning. Like, were Rey’s parents always going to be revealed to be nobodies rather than characters of great mythic importance, as happened in The Last Jedi, and it just fell to Johnson to sell that twist? Or was that Johnson’s idea?

The Rise of Skywalker may shed some light on that. In a separate interview with Empire, cowriter Chris Terrio said the final film in the sequel trilogy will answer two very important questions:

"“One of them is a simple one: ‘Who is Rey?’, Which is a question that people not only wonder about quite literally, but wonder about in the spiritual sense. How can Rey become the spiritual heir to the Jedi? We kept coming back to ‘Who is Rey?’, and how can we give the most satisfying answer to that not only factually – because obviously people are interested in whether there’s more to be learned of Rey’s story – but more importantly who is she as a character? How will she find the courage and will and inner strength and power to carry on what she’s inherited?"

So wait, were her parents NOT nobodies? Personally, I hope Rey is a nobody, because not every Star Wars movie has to have a “Chosen One” at its center. But I can also see how Disney/Lucasfilm would want to tie a nice little bow on the final film in the Skywalker Saga by making Rey part of that family.

Terrio continued with the second question:

"The second one is, ‘How strong is the Force?’ It sounds a little simple, but actually when you get down to it, that is a sort of Zen Koan that we would really meditate on – not literally in yoga poses or anything, but like we would discuss, ‘What is the Force and how strong is the Force?’ Those two things were really important."

Does this mean Rey will acquire new godlike Force powers? She can already do things most Jedi work a lifetime to accomplish. Maybe these two questions go hand in hand.

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Oh well, we’ll have to wait until December 20 to find out.

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