It has been ten years since The Force Awakens, though the Disney era of Star Wars truly began one year prior with the release of Star Wars Rebels, the new Star Wars canon timeline with new comics and books, and the teaser trailer for The Force Awakens. Much of the Star Wars sequel trilogy era was defined by fan theories. It was the Wild West. Some theories ranged from Rey being the daughter of nearly every Star Wars character to Luke Skywalker actually turning to the Dark Side.
The Last Jedi faced plenty of backlash, partly because it didn’t pay off fan theories but instead took the story in a bold (yet set up by The Force Awakens) direction. By the time The Rise of Skywalker came out and concluded the trilogy on a downward note, it’s easy to look back on what might have been. Now, not every fan theory was good. Many of them were bad. Yet being bad didn’t stop the Rey is a Palpatine theory from coming true. Here are the best Star Wars sequel trilogy fan theories that would have been better than what we got.
Snoke Was Actually a Giant
Of all the characters in the sequel trilogy, no one had more than Supreme Leader Snoke. The mysterious leader of the First Order and seeming big bad of the franchise was theorized to be everyone under the binary suns, from Mace Windu to Boba Fett to Darth Plagueis. While the actual reveal of Snoke being a clone created by Palpatine was really dull, it’s not like a big reveal about him being a previous character would have been satisfying. Yet you know what would have been cool…if Snoke was actually a giant.
Snoke is only ever viewed in The Force Awakens through a hologram, one that he projects to tower over Kylo Ren and Admiral Hux. He looks like the giant Zeus statue in Hercules. This was meant for Snoke’s ego, projecting a sense of power. However, many hoped that this was not an illusion but instead an actual reflection of Snoke. With one of the most powerful Jedi, Yoda, being so small, having the new dark side user being a giant would have been a nice inverse. Plus, Star Wars doesn’t have giants, and that needs to be rectified.
Kylo Ren Built BB-8
In 2016, video essayist and Disney enthusiast Jenny Nicholson posed the theory that Ben Solo built BB-8. While the theory was made in jest, part of Nicholson’s deadpan style of comedy, she laid out some compelling details in her video BB-Gate. The idea was that if Kylo Ren/Ben Solo grew up idolizing his grandfather, Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader, he might also have built a droid as Anakin did with C3PO. The big hint is Poe Dameron’s line, “a BB unit, one of a kind,” with that specific detail meaning he was the only type of his model created, one by Ben Solo.
Notably, Kylo Ren and BB-8 never share a scene together in the sequel trilogy, so it would have had echoes of Anakin’s relationship with R2D2 and how Vader and R2D2 never share a scene in the original Star Wars trilogy. Obviously, this might have felt like a bit too much of a copy of what had come before and would have shrunken the world, but it could have added new layers to both characters and further established Ben Solo’s pre-dark side history.
Finn and Poe Romance
As soon as The Force Awakens came out, many began to ship Poe Dameron and Finn. While the movie clearly establishes this is a budding friendship, it is certainly understandable why fans would read a romantic connection. Not only does Oscar Isaac naturally have chemistry with everyone, but it felt like an appropriate subversion of the classic Star Wars formula. The series’s new leads were one woman and two men, so instead of following the pattern everyone would assume, have the romance form between the two men and allow this new Star Wars for a new generation to feature an openly queer romance.
This sadly never happened, as Oscar Isaac said Disney got “cold feet” about a gay romance. Almost in an attempt to affirm the characters’ heterosexual nature, both Finn and Poe are given romantic interest in The Rise of Skywalkerwith Zori Bliss and Jannah, respectively. Whereas both the original and prequel trilogies were built heavily around romances, the sequel trilogy does not feature any and instead opts for platonic friendships. While nothing is wrong with that, and on paper it is a good idea, it can’t help but feel disappointing.
The Knights of Ren Don’t Exist (Yet)
The Knights of Ren might be the most wasted element of the sequel trilogy. A mysterious group of warriors that work for Kylo Ren was teased in The Force Awakens, but is absent from The Last Jedi entirely. They get slightly more to do in The Rise of Skywalker as Kylo Ren’s enforcers, but they are largely wasted. Their absence from The Last Jedi was disappointing, but Reddit user AviviaStorm came up with an interesting theory surrounding the Knights of Ren and why they were absent for much of the sequel trilogy: they didn’t exist.
The Knights of Ren only appeared in The Force Awakens through a vision Rey had in the Force, which at the time everyone took to be that the moment was him slaughtering Luke’s Jedi temple. However, the theory suggests that what Rey saw was the future, and indeed, Kylo Ren would have had a similar vision of the future after touching Darth Vader’s helmet, seeing the Knights of Ren, which would inspire his persona and also lead him to create his own order. It wouldn’t be the first time the Force showed someone the future, as Anakin Skywalker could see Padme’s death. Had the sequel trilogy revealed Rey’s vision was of the future, the Knights of Ren could have been formed in The Rise of Skywalker as a result of Kylo Ren becoming the Supreme Leader as a sort of Dark Side spin on the Knights of the Round Table. Sadly, that isn’t what happened, and later Star Wars comics established that the Knights of Ren have been around for centuries.
Skywalker Becomes a Title
Much has been said about the controversial ending in which Rey adopts the surname “Skywalker.” This is part of both The Rise of Skywalker and the sequel trilogy’s overarching theme of choosing one’s identity. However, an interesting theory emerged when the title The Rise of Skywalker was officially announced. What if Skywalker was not a name, but a title for what the Jedi would evolve into?
This felt like it was building off the idea set up in The Last Jedi that it was time for the Jedi to end. Not that the organization would die, but instead evolve into something new, similar to the Empire into the First Order or the Rebellion into the Resistance. The name Skywalker already had a mythic sound to it, so members of an organization like Rey calling themselves Skywalkers seemed like a logical step. It gave The Rise of Skywalker a new level of meaning, one that would be more satisfying than what the actual title meant.
Finn Leads a Stormtropper Rebellion
Ever since the first teaser for The Force Awakens dropped, and John Boyega was revealed to be a Stormtrooper, fan theories immediately began forming that his character arc would be to lead a Stormtrooper rebellion. This becomes even clearer in the finished film, as the movie not only shows Finn break free from the First Order, but they establish that this class of Stormtrooper has a more tragic backstory: they are all children who were abducted and brainwashed since birth to serve the First Order. They never had a choice, giving all the action a bit of tragedy. The logical step would be to have Finn not only become a legend among Stormtroopers for breaking free, but also the key to weakening the First Order’s army by leading a Stormtrooper rebellion.
This idea seemingly was originally part of Duel of the Fates, the original plans for Episode IX. Sadly, that idea was scrapped for The Rise of Skywalker, and Finn’s character takes a backseat for much of the film. The finished movie suggests that Finn has become an inspiration to Stormtroopers, as Jennah and her group were former First Order soldiers who broke free. Yet it feels like a missed opportunity not to give Finn his Spartacus moment, inspiring a bunch of Stormtroopers to take up arms for him and turn against the First Order in what could have been a reverse Order 66. It would have allowed Finn to become his own legendary figure without needing to be a Jedi.
- Release Date
-
December 18, 2015
- Runtime
-
136 minutes
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
