One of the biggest critiques of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was that Rian Johnson took every opportunity to seemingly sever every subplot that J.J. Abrams set up in The Force Awakens. According to Abrams, The Last Jedi didn’t change anything.
The Force Awakens had a lot of gears working. Not only did it have the responsibility of winning fans back over after the dismal prequels, it also had to establish a new cast for a new trilogy.
The Last Jedi essentially gave these seeds the finger, turning the whole direction on its head.
Fans theorized in the wake of Last Jedi that J.J. Abrams would retcon some of those seeds in Rise of Skywalker, in an attempt to fix the trilogy. Abrams loosely planned out the entire trilogy while doing Force Awakens.
In an interview with ET Canada, Abrams revealed that Johnson’s Last Jedi didn’t change anything about the overall story he imagined:
“The story that we’re telling, the story that we started to conceive when we did ‘The Force Awakens,’ was allowed to continue. Episode VIII didn’t really derail anything that we were thinking about.”
You can interpret this two different ways. A number of the shocking reveals in The Last Jedi came from the mind of J.J. Abrams, or Abrams is just referring to the larger plot arc in the trilogy.
Daisy Ridley (Rey) also told MTV News that fans can rest easy, “this ending will be less controversial” than the end of Game of Thrones.
Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams join forces once again to take viewers on an epic journey to a galaxy far, far away with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. In the riveting conclusion of the seminal Skywalker saga, new legends will be born and the final battle for freedom is yet to come.
Episode IX stars Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Domhnall Gleeson. Kelly Marie Tran, Joonas Suotamo, Billie Lourd, Keri Russell, Anthony Daniels, Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, and Carrie Fisher, with Naomi Ackie and Richard E. Grant.
