During the annual Star Wars Celebration, this year held in Chicago, the title of the final installment of the franchise’s “Skywalker” story line had its title revealed. When Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker opens in theaters later this year, it will be the ninth and conclusive film in a nine film arc that started more than 40 years ago. The galaxy that’s far away with stories from a long time ago has seen 11 films in total.
Fans had been eagerly awaiting not only the title of the final film in the saga’s third and last trilogy, but also footage. They were not let down. At the end of an hour-long discussion of the film with comedian Stephen Colbert, director JJ Abrams debuted the first teaser trailer, and it sure did pack a punch, including a surprise twist featuring the Star Wars galaxy’s most evil character ever, Sheev Palpatine.
What fans may not have been anticipating, however, was Abrams accidentally revealing one of the biggest plot-twists in the franchise’s fabled history.
“So, we’re all really excited for you to see the finished product in a few months. We think there are some surprises in store that’ll really knock your socks off,” Abrams told the audience both at the Star Wars Celebration panel, and watching at home, “And when you see Rey, Finn, Poe, Rose, C-3PO, Chewbacca, Lando, R2-D2, the Emperor, Han, who we brought back to life just for this one moment, Luke, and Leia all in a shallow mass grave, we think you’ll be truly satisfied with our work.”
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The thought of Abrams overseeing the death of a central character in the Star Wars canon is not new. In his first Star Wars film, Abrams directed the death of Han Solo, arguably the best character in the franchise, and if anyone says any different they’re a-holes. The second film in this trilogy saw director Ryan Johnson kill off Luke Skywalker. But Abrams said choosing to finish the final film in the Skywalker saga with literally every beloved character dead was “not easy, but made a lot of sense.”
“Disney wants to capitalize on this franchise forever and ever, so of course it makes sense to make sure that by the end of it all, I have literally killed everything that fans once loved about the film,” Abrams explained. “The good news is that since George cocked-up the prequels so badly, as long as I don’t have a CGI Jar Jar Binks doing a lightsaber duel with Darth Maul, the fans truly won’t care.”
You can watch the trailer for Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, below:
Every generation has a legend. Watch the brand-new teaser for Star Wars: #EpisodeIX. pic.twitter.com/fWMS13ekdZ
— Star Wars | #TheBadBatch now streaming on Disney+ (@starwars) April 12, 2019
Writer/comedian James Schlarmann is the founder of The Political Garbage Chute and his work has been featured on The Huffington Post. You can follow James on Facebook and Instagram, but not Twitter because he has a potty mouth.
