As expected, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has fans discussing and debating the end of the Skywalker franchise. Fans remain divided in interesting ways. One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of fans of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi didn’t like the movie, while fans who didn’t like The Last Jedi enjoyed it more.
One of the biggest debates I’ve seen from fans is how many feel that The Rise of Skywalker deliberately rejects many of the ideas that Johnson gave us Star Wars: The Last Jedi. This is something Abrams says is not true and says his film is not “flipping off” Johnson’s movie. He has even defended Johnson’s vision for the film and shared how it created new opportunities for him and that it was helpful for the creative team.
Now, The Rise of Skywalker co-writer Chris Terrio is offering his thoughts on the matter and also shares some thoughts on what happened to Rey at the end of the movie. During an interview with IndieWire, Terrio is asked what he thought about how the audience is reacting to The Rise of Skywalker and how they feel the movie is discounting the ideas of The Last Jedi, and he says this isn’t the case at all:
“It mostly came from the characters, because once you start thinking in a meta sense, it’s very easy to go down a rabbit hole and lose all sense of the story you want to tell. So, for example, Luke stopping Rey from tossing a saber away. Yeah, that could be a meta way to read that and think of it as some kind of rejection of The Last Jedi, but that’s not the case. That moment for us was about Luke having learned something and Rey having grown, and he will not let Rey make the same mistake that he did. It was purely a character moment, because at the end of The Last Jedi, of course, Luke’s actions speak louder than words, and he decides to project himself and sacrifice himself to save the Resistance. Now, that is the Force ghost that Rey is meeting. And so, like any good parent, he’d say, ‘Learn from my mistakes, and I won’t let you throw away your inheritance, really,’ because it is her inheritance, both Anakin’s saber, which is Luke’s saber, and Leia’s saber, are her inheritance.”
What is confusing about that, is that Yoda tells Luke in The Last Jedi that it’s ok to burn down the accessories of the past to make way for new things. So there seems to be a bit of a contradiction. Terrio went on to discuss the gifts that Johnson gave them to work with in The Rise of Skywalker mostly with the Force bond between Rey and Kylo:
“That was another gift from Rian! In The Last Jedi, [their Force connection] in the rain, the rain has crossed from one place to another. We thought, we’re going to try to really push that to the point where these two heirs to the empire, that they’re bonded by the force, but they’re not going to be bonded on the Dark Side, which is what Kylo Ren thinks at the beginning of the film — that they’re going to be bonded on the Light. That is the thing that Palpatine never really could’ve anticipated, that they would come together on the Light and that the galaxy would not be afraid and would follow Rey into the heart of darkness. But that saber pass, that was the thing that we were dying to do, because first of all, to see Ben Solo holding a Skywalker saber was a really important thing for us, but second, to say that this connection that the two of them have is going to be the thing that saves the galaxy was super-important.”
I actually read did love that aspect of the story. I liked how the Force was utilized and how the character were able to connect from different places in the galaxy.
He then goes on to discuss Rey and her ending. At the end of the film, she journeys to Tatooine to retire the Lightsabers of Luke and Leia. Some fans have wondered if she now lives there. I personally never got that vibe. I thought it was just a stop on her continuing journey, which Terrio confirms:
“I don’t think we think of it as she’s going to live there. We thought of it as just paying her respects and sort of undoing the original sin at the end of the third movie, which is the separation of the twins. I mean, of course, they had to be separated to keep them safe, and the trilogy wouldn’t exist, the six movies wouldn’t exist if they hadn’t been separated! But that felt to us like it was almost like a wrong that need to be righted. We very deliberately in the script described the wrapping of the sabers, as ‘like you were wrapping infants.’ That’s the thing that you see at the of the third movie, where the two infants are wrapped, and one is sent to Tatooine to be a farmer, and one is sent to Alderaan to be a princess. Leia’s home doesn’t exist anymore, so we thought, ‘Well, Luke could take Leia to his home where he grew up, and where we first saw Star Wars.’
“On a meta level, it was our pilgrimage there to pay respects to George and to all the Original Trilogy had meant to us. But for Rey, it was also a pilgrimage, because she obviously had heard the story of the Skywalkers from Leia, if not from Luke. Her eyes light up in Episode 7 when she hears the name Luke Skywalker, and so we thought it was a fitting end, that now she, having become part of the Skywalker legacy, would lay the sabers to rest and lay them to rest together.”
The big question for me is, will Lucasfilm one day want to return to the location in a future story that would bring the Lightsabers back into the light? It’s always possible, but if it happens, I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon.
What are your thoughts on what Terrio had to say about The Rise of Skywalker?