In this past year or so, Luke Skywalker just might’ve been the most frequently referenced character of the Star Wars: Episode IX rumor mill, and this almost certainly has more to do with the willingness of alleged leakers to tell fans what they want to hear than Mark Hamill’s actual length of screen time in next year’s release. That being said, J.J. Abrams will still have to find some way of granting continued relevance to the character if Lucasfilm is to follow through on their claim that this will be the final installment in the Skywalker Saga, and this latest rumor, though unverified, at least offers a suggestion of how this could be done.
According to claims relayed by Express.co.uk, the upcoming trilogy-closer features a couple scenes in its opening minutes which see Kylo Ren lecturing the Knights of Ren on the continued threat of Luke Skywalker, even showing them a holographic image of his uncle to remind them who the enemy really is. But since Luke already met his end in The Last Jedi, it’s said that Adam Driver’s character is less worried about Luke coming back from the dead, and more concerned that the Jedi’s story, and his heroic self-sacrifice on Crait, could be spread as a means of rallying new Resistance fighters.
Sure enough, it’s also alleged that there’s a scene of Rey and Leia spreading word of Luke’s deeds while in a large base reminiscent of the Great Temple on Yavin 4, a planet that was referenced in another rumor just a few days ago.
As it stands, there’s little to back any of this up, but even if these scene descriptions are pure fan fiction, it’s easy to imagine Kylo’s obsessive hatred of his uncle continuing into the next film and escalating into some paranoid territory. But while the odd mention of Luke is one thing, what a lot of fans are really curious about these days is what sort of screen time Hamill will be getting, and we’ll get our answer when Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.