Questions, easter eggs, and what's next: A Rise of Skywalker spoiler talk

The Rise of Skywalker is finally out, and with its release comes the (supposedly) definitive ending of The Skywalker Saga. All nine movies are interconnected, and tell one vast story spanning decades – both on screen and in our world – across multiple different planets. Was the story told well? That’s debatable. There hasn’t been a single uncontroversial Star Wars movie since… The Empire Strikes Back, arguably.

What can't be argued is that this is the end of an era. A lot has happened in The Rise of Skywalker, and it could mean big things for the future of Star Wars as well as its past. Let’s talk about it, but beware! We’re diving headfirst into spoiler territory here. If you haven’t seen The Rise of Skywalker yet, turn back. There be Wampas here. 

(Also, a spoiler for The Mandalorian’s first season - Episode 7)

The spawn of Palpatine

First, let’s tackle the movie’s big twist. Halfway through The Rise of Skywalker, Rey’s lineage is finally revealed. She is Rey Palpatine, the granddaughter of Darth Sidious AKA Sheev Palpatine. In a weird way, this kind of makes sense for the main narrative of the saga. Besides Anakin, Palpatine has been present throughout the first two trilogies, so it would make sense to bring him back in some form to conclude the saga. 

Unfortunately, choosing to bring him back and reveal Rey to be his heir at the same time was a really strange choice. She never got a moment to confront her lineage and get some proper answers to all the questions that must have bugged her. Why did her grandfather turn to the Dark Side? Who were her parents? Why had he abandoned them? Instead, their meeting went from, “Join me,” to an almost immediate, “I’m going to kill you now.” 

The movie never really took the time to re-introduce Palpatine to us, either. We’re never told outright how he came back from the dead after being tossed into the void by Darth Vader in Return of the Jedi. We only know he created Snoke, and he showed Kylo Ren floating Snokes in tubes to prove it. However, we don’t really know what Snoke was either. We only know that Palpatine has been pulling his strings throughout The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, only coming out of hiding when Snoke is killed. 

It’s worth noting that Rey’s father was Palpatine’s son, but we never learn who his mother was, or when he was even born. I have to wonder – why did Palpatine even choose Rey to succeed him? Why not her father, if he was the immediate heir? We’ll have to turn to the inevitable comic book spin-offs and sequels for those answers, but at least now we know how Rey learned to use the Force so quickly. Suddenly being able to use Force Lightning is a clear indicator that the Force is extremely strong with her family.

The Dark Side of the Force, that is. 

Easter eggs

Probably the most fun thing about watching Star Wars and Marvel movies is keeping a close eye on the background of every shot. There are always a couple of winks and nods to the fans somewhere, and The Rise of Skywalker has these in spades. 

The least obvious one is in the very first scene of the film, with Kylo Ren massacring Sith Eternal (the Sith loyalists worshiping Palpatine) on his way to Exegol. That red planet he was fighting on? That was Mustafar, according to the Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary. Mustafar, the fiery lava planet from Revenge of the Sith, was shown to be where Darth Vader had built his base of operations back in Rogue One. 

By now, the lava has receded and the Dark Side’s touch has begun to fade. Apparently, Mustafar now attracts cultists devoted to Darth Vader’s memory, Kylo Ren being just another one of them. It makes sense that there would be a wayfinder in Mustafar too. Only two existed after all, so of course it would have gone to the only two Sith in existence. One went with Vader to Mustafar, and Palpatine took the other to the second Death Star, which Rey would later find after its collapse. 

Interestingly, the force healing ability Rey displays throughout the film (by healing the burrowing serpent in Pasaana, for example) was also used in another piece of Star Wars media in the same week. You might’ve heard of Baby Yoda from The Mandalorian? Recently, the cute little bugger used the exact same Force power to heal someone after an almost-fatal injury. So Rey isn’t the first character to channel this particular Force ability, which is interesting. 

There’s other small stuff too, like Chewbacca finally getting the medal he never received at the end of A New Hope! He inherited Leia’s medal after she passed, having survived the rest of his friends from the original trilogy. In a rare nod to the prequels, a battle droid appears in Babu Frik’s (the real star of this movie) lab. Denis Lawson also returns to his role as Wedge Antilles from the original trilogy. However, there’s a big, big one that deserves its own segment.

Rey becomes one with all of the Jedi

Towards the end of the film, The Emperor is pouring lightning into the sky (possibly creating a Force Storm), which leads Rey to reach into the Light Side. It was a desperate attempt to connect with the rest of the fallen Jedi Order and to her shock, she finally succeeded. She became one with every Jedi of the past, who all come back to encourage her to get back up and bring an end to the Sith. 

We hear familiar voices, many of whom aren’t just from the prequels and original trilogy, but the animated TV series as well. The following are all the actors who returned to make those voice cameos: 

• Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen)
• Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)
• Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor/Alec Guinness)
• Yoda (Frank Oz)
• Ahsoka Tano (Ashley Eckstein)
• Mace Windu (Samuel L Jackson)
• Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr)
• Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson)
• Luminara Unduli (Olivia D'Abo)
• Adi Gallia (Angelique Perrin)
• Aayla Secura (Jennifer Hale)

Ahsoka Tano and Kanan Jarrus return from Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) and Star Wars Rebels, while the rest of the characters mostly originate from the prequels and original trilogy. Almost every actor returns to their original roles as these characters too. Hayden Christensen’s cameo as Anakin was particularly compelling, as he says, “Bring back the balance, Rey, as I did.”

He was the Chosen One, after all. He brought balance to the Force – it just didn't stay that way forever. 

I have questions...

Of course you have questions. After this torrent of information, who can blame you? The Rise of Skywalker did a great job providing closure in some parts, but not so much in others. We never received answers for certain questions (how did Palpatine come back?), but we could cobble together some answers from the information we have here. For example, since the Sith Eternal were on Exegol at the end of the film, we can assume that they found Palpatine’s body and built that giant machine keeping him alive, reviving him from death.

Other questions do have answers. In Pasaana, Finn is cut off from telling Rey something he deeply needs to say – before he’s swallowed by alien quicksand. Poe relentlessly hounds him later to find out what it was, but Finn is tight-lipped on the matter throughout the movie.

J.J. Abrams himself has come out to say that Finn had been trying to tell Rey he was Force-sensitive all along. We see hints of this throughout the movie, with Finn referring to it as a "feeling" to Jannah and later sensing Rey’s death. The poor guy probably just wanted guidance from his Jedi friend. 

Where did all the Star Destroyers come from? No clue. No idea. We could say that since the Final Order’s Sith Fleet was made up of Imperial Star Destroyers and not the usual First Order’s Star Destroyers, they might have been ships left over from the original trilogy’s era, reused for the Final Order.

There are a ton of questions left over from this film and there’s no way it could’ve answered them all while still moving forward at a breakneck pace. Once again, the inevitable slew of Star Wars tie-in comics are the place to go for these answers. 

The death and rebirth of the Skywalker bloodline

In another twist, Kylo Ren abandons his pursuit of the Dark Side’s power after Rey brings him back from the brink of death. His mother, Leia, dies trying to reach out to her son, forcing him to finally confront his past instead of running away from it. He sees a memory of his dad, Han Solo, right before he killed him, only this time things go differently. 

Kylo tries to say something, but can’t, to which Han simply says, “I know,” echoing his final line in The Empire Strikes Back, where he says the same thing in response to Leia’s “I love you.” Having finally accepted closure, Kylo Ren dies there and Ben Solo is reborn. We even have a small moment where Ben, facing off against The Knights of Ren, pulls a lightsaber out of thin air and shrugs. It's a small moment, but one where we see Han Solo's son for the very first time. Unfortunately, he dies too, while saving Rey and extinguishing the Skywalker bloodline – or so it seemed.

Throughout the trilogy, Rey has found herself receiving guidance and teachings from all the living Skywalkers – whether they be Luke, Leia, or her son Ben. Even in the end, Ben saved her life by giving up his own, while Luke and Leia arguably did the exact same thing both in this movie and The Last Jedi. Every Skywalker has stood up for Rey despite knowing her lineage, and how disastrous a surviving Palpatine heir could be to the galaxy. Luke and Leia knew all along (somehow), and let her live despite this – teaching her how to embrace the Light Side, when they had failed to do the same for Ben Solo. 

A running theme in this film which I love is that blood doesn’t matter. A person’s lineage doesn’t decide where their morality lies. Anakin was raised with nothing much like Rey, and grew to become one of the most savage murderers in the galaxy. Luke was the same, but became a beacon of hope despite the actions of his father. Rey, despite being torn between the Light and the Dark, ended the Sith once and for all and became the last Jedi. Luke says so himself in The Rise of Skywalker that "there are things more powerful than blood".

The Last Jedi was about letting go of the past and letting it die. The Rise of Skywalker, despite walking back many of its predecessor’s decisions, only reinforces that theme. The past doesn’t have to factor into what Rey becomes next. She lets go of her Sith bloodline, shrugging off her destiny to do horrific things to the galaxy. Instead, she redeems Kylo Ren, defeats the Sith and journeys off into the unknown. At the film's end, she pointedly lets the Palpatine name die and embraces the Skywalker name instead. The Skywalkers had been more of a family to her than the Palpatines, after all.

A Skywalker can be evil, and a Palpatine can be good. That's what this trilogy is all about. Who your parents are never mattered. 

Conclusion

The Rise of Skywalker is, like all things Star Wars, bound to be hotly debated in the years to come. There are a lot – and I mean a lot of things wrong with this film – but I personally admire it for pulling together three movies in a way I didn’t think possible. This trilogy lacked a sense of direction for the most part, but this was as good a conclusion to it as I could have hoped for. 

The new trio of characters – Finn, Poe and Rey – were all fleshed out pretty well, even if the latter received a gargantuan twist that could’ve been doled out a little earlier in the trilogy. As it stood, the whole Palpatine thing wasn’t given enough time to cook. Still, there were a lot of unbelievably good Star Wars moments too, like seeing Ghost from Star Wars Rebels show up or hearing Hayden Christensen return as Anakin. 

If you disliked how The Skywalker Saga ended, do not despair. There’s plenty more Star Wars on the horizon, whether it’s new Disney+ TV series like The Mandalorian and Kenobi, comic books like Charles Soule’s Star Wars or entirely new trilogies. Some are bound to be better than others, but it’s not exactly slim pickings out there for Star Wars fans.

May the Force be with you, and good writing be with Kenobi. I desperately need that show, stat. A little something for Zorii Bliss and Babu Frik too, please.

If you want to read our review of The Rise of Skywalker, go here.

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