Rian Johnson may have split the fandom in two with The Last Jedi, but J.J. Abrams was the one who brought the nine-film Star Wars saga to a close with little more than a whimper via The Rise of Skywalker.
Going out of his way to retcon as much as possible and substitute it with far too much in the way of nostalgia, nods, winks, callbacks, and cameos to the glory days of the franchise, a 52 percent Rotten Tomatoes score sounds about right. And yet, in offering new details to Entertainment Weekly regarding Daisy Ridley’s feature-length comeback as Rey, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy appears to be either ignorant or completely oblivious of the backlash.
“As we move into the future space — this story is about 15 years outside of The Rise of Skywalker — obviously we realized post-war, post–First Order rise of the New Jedi Order, we left Episode IX with Ray making a commitment to Luke Skywalker that she would rebuild the Jedi order. And so here we are – we’re ready to do that. And it took a lot of discussion because obviously we’ve been developing stories in different spaces, and television has been a big focus of our attention right now. But there’s still so much interest in what happens after The Rise of Skywalker. So we’re excited to be doing that.”
Is there really “still so much interest in what happens after The Rise of Skywalker, though? Sure, fans would love to see Star Wars take some swings for a change instead of playing it so consistently safe, but there are a thousand different stories out there to be told that don’t even have to be remotely connected to the events – or characters – of Episode IX.
If that happened, then there wouldn’t be any room for even more wistful returning faces and fan-baiting surprises, so Kennedy was never exactly going to rock the boat.