We have a poster, we have a trailer, we have a lot of news and spoilerific info about The Force Awakens. The question I’m going to revisit today is might we get a shot of everyone’s favorite little green Jedi? What are the chances of seeing Yoda in The Force Awakens? Let’s take a stroll through the internet and see what we can dig up.
A recent post over at StarWarsNewsNet (formerly StarWars7News) caught my eye, and is the main impetus for this post. There were a couple of rumors in this post, but the point that Yoda will be in The Force Awakens jumped out at me. The exact wording is:
I know someone who works in the ****** media (dubbing) who assured me that there was indeed a scene with Yoda in The Force Awakens.
So, it is pretty tough to evaluate this claim given that we don’t know this source, and SWNN claims their sources are just readers of SWNN making this claim. However, given the decent credibility of SWNN, I couldn’t help but stop and think how this could even happen.
We of course know that if Yoda is to make an appearance, he’ll have to be a Force ghost. That is, if he isn’t a hologram. We’ve only seen Force ghost Yoda talking to Luke in any of the films. Therefore, we can assume that the most likely scenario is if Yoda is talking to Luke. The possible exception could be that Maz Kanata is some kind of old wise alien that somehow also knows Yoda. We’ve speculated before that Maz is also some kind of a Jedi, or perhaps a non-Jedi mystic with deep knowledge of kyber crystals and the Force.
So Maz is the only other character I can imagine at this point that could communicate with Yoda other than Luke. However, as it turns out some of the earliest rumors about The Force Awakens was that Yoda would make an appearance.
Going back to December 2nd 2014, we have this report from Galactic News One (found via Star Wars Underworld) that gives a lot of alledged details on The Force Awakens. Actually the post just references a 4chan post as the evidence. A lot of this post has held up, but there are a lot of statements that are flat-out wrong (for example Gleeson being some sort of a “scoundrel”). However, enough of them are correct that I think it is worth taking notice. Among them was the point that
Luke speaks to Yoda’s force ghost in the film.
Going back even earlier, we have a post from January 2014 suggesting that Yoda will be in the film. This article quote Cosmic Book News, who cites their “DC Entertainment Source”. Now this isn’t exactly DC Entertainment news, but maybe they have some inside info. The direct quote is:
‘We’re told that Yoda will have words with Luke Skywalker about a rising unbalance in the force and the need to preserve the Jedi.’
Where would it make sense in the film, given what we know about the film? We actually know fewer details about the second and third act of the film than we do of the first. But given the MakingStarWars plot synopsis, which seems to hold up pretty well, there might be some places where Yoda could fit in. If anything, such a scene might fit into two points in the film.
The first scene could be during the flashback scene. We don’t know many details, but there is a believed scene where Knights of Ren attack on Luke’s Academy. From the MSW synopsis:
VISION: There is what looks to be a Jedi Academy, and the dead bodies of padawans are on the ground. Luke Skywalker shows up, too late. He sits by a funeral pyre with R2-D2.
Luke returns too late to save them, and many padawan have been killed. Depending on how long the flashback is, there might be room for a quick shot of Yoda’s Force ghost consoling Luke, perhaps close to the shot of Luke consoling R2D2.
The second scene that could plausibly make sense is at the end, with a shot of Luke communicating to Yoda’s Force ghost while in his seclusion in the huts above Skellig Micheal.
This would have to be before Rey arrives, assuming that when Rey hands off the saber to Luke, we then immediately get the closing credits. We don’t know this is exactly how it ends, but that seems to be what MSW thinks. Therefore, we might have a scene with Luke and a Force-ghost Yoda talking before Rey arrives. I mean, hey, Luke has to talk to somebody while in his seclusion, right? The problem with this is it could steal the thunder of revealing Luke at the very end. However, and forgive a brief bit of fanfic here, what if the scene is Luke in a hooded Jedi robe facing away from the camera, talking to Yoda? Then the sound of a space ship causes the hooded Jedi to walk outside and greet Rey.
I’m not completely convinced that Yoda is needed, but perhaps some sort of statement to Luke, telling him that it is time to come out of seclusion and rebuild the Jedi order could work. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below if you’d like to see something like this.