Unless you live under a rock or are on a social media blackout to avoid The Last Jedi spoilers you heard the news yesterday; Rian Johnson is going to be making a new Star Wars Trilogy with his collaborator Ram Bergman. WHAT? OK lets look at the VERY little information dropped yesterday and make some wild guesses on what that new trilogy will encompass.
The news was released last night here on Starwars.com. Lets pull out the most important quotes
In shepherding this new trilogy, which is separate from the episodic Skywalker saga, Johnson will introduce new characters from a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored.
Rian will do amazing things with the blank canvas of this new trilogy.- Kathleen Kennedy
Rian Johnson and long-time producer Ram Bergman also provided their sentiment and excitement on the news.
Star Wars is the greatest modern mythology and we feel very lucky to have contributed to it. We can’t wait to continue with this new series of films-Johnson and Bergman
So there are three things in these statements that inform us on where the new trilogy will go. First this will be “new characters form a corner of the galaxy that has never been explored“. So any idea we have that would incorporate known characters, planets, or even TIME frames would likely be excluded. So if you want KOTOR or KOTOR era, forget it. Yoda trilogy? Not happening. Smugglers during the Republic or Empire era? Nope! Solo is taking care of both.
Next would be the blank canvas statement from Kennedy. This re-enforces the above, there is no precedent for what Rian is going to be doing. He doesn’t have to be concerned with anything anyone else is doing either, its a completely new thing that takes place in the universe of Star Wars. No books or games are going interfere with his story. The final bit is Rian’s statement on mythology and “continuing” what they contributed. This tells me that the story Rian wants to tell was inspired by the work that was done on The Last Jedi. So what does all this mean?
My thought is this will explore the lore backstory that Rian created for The Last Jedi. The new trilogy will explore the foundation that the Jedi rests upon and how they came to be. We will see the force users codify the rules, fight each other as some chose the dark and others the light, the lightsaber will be created, and the robes will be first worn. The culmination will have them settle on Ahch-to to create the first Jedi temple.
It’s interesting to speculate how much of the traditional Star Wars forumula will be included. Will we have a heroes journey? It would seem to fit with the story of the first Jedi, so I see no reason not to have such elements. The galaxy far far away is so advanced, we can expect space ships, and given that hyperspace travel is ancient, I would expect that too. We might see the story begin on Jedha, and make its way to Ahch-To. We could see the first lightsaber created, and a huge expansion of the lore of kyber crystals. We could see the beginning of the Sith in addition to the Jedi.
This could be a trilogy that gives us more lore than the previous 9 movies will have given us, not through exposition but through action and discovery. The opportunities with showing where the ancient Jedi books in The Last Jedi come from are huge. We can expect to see new aliens, new worlds, and characters that will be the basis of what Jedi become. I can’t wait.
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