Forty-two years and nine films later, the story begun in Star Wars (1977) unveils its final apocalyptic chapter. In 1999's The Phantom Menace, the first of the prequels, the Sith—the ancient enemy of the heroic Jedi—returned after a thousand years. How they survived their initial extinction was never explained, at least in terms of the films. In 1983's Return of the Jedi, audiences saw the defeat of the Sith at the hands of one of its own. But evil rarely dies so easily, and with 2019's The Rise of Skywalker, all truths are made known. It turns out the Sith have been hiding and thriving in the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, quietly toiling away for generations on a secret planet, calling on forbidden Sith magic and building a fleet of starships the likes of which has never been seen before, each equipped with the power to destroy an entire planet. And their master is revealed to be none other than Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), the dark lord who once ruled the galaxy, long believed dead.In The Phantom Menace, there is an interesting exchange between two characters regarding the Sith, explaining that there are always two of them: a master and an apprentice. Why this "rule of two" was established has never been explicitly dealt with until now. One of the most curious aspects in all of Star Wars had to do with the Emperor's temptation of the series' original hero, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). "Take your weapon," he goaded the young man. "Strike me down with all of your hatred and your journey toward the dark side will be complete." It's a bit of an odd thing for someone consumed with power and attaining eternal life to say, unless there is a bigger game afoot. And with The Rise of Skywalker, there certainly is a bigger and more ominous game being played. As part of a dark and ancient ritual, when a Sith is cut down in hatred, his essence transfers into the one who deals the death blow. So, the apprentice strikes down the master, whose spirit transfers into the apprentice, who now becomes the master. On and on the cycle goes, down through the ages, so that Palpatine is revealed to not only be himself, but the purest manifestation of ancient evil in the galaxy. He is all the Sith inhabiting one body. And in The Rise of Skywalker, his dark machinations come to pass.
The film does what all final chapters should do—wrap up major storylines while re-contextualizing what is not set in stone, providing closure while twisting and turning its way to an unexpected yet inevitable end. The Rise of Skywalker, under the direction of J. J. Abrams, does all of these things well. Mainstream critical opinion on this film is divided—this should come as no surprise, considering how most mainstream critics so profoundly missed the point of the previous chapter in the story, Rian Johnson's 2017 film, The Last Jedi. Johnson's film was legendarily divisive, scoring overwhelming critical approval (an unusual thing for a Star Wars film), but facing severe backlash from general audiences and longtime series fans. The irony, of course, is that the "subversiveness" both praised by critics and hated by audiences was not the point of that story. Case in point: go read reviews for The Rise of Skywalker, and tally how many of them talk about how this film "retcons" The Last Jedi. You'll need more than ten fingers. Johnson's clever style of storytelling took viewers by surprise—both critics and general audiences alike. And somehow, in the midst of his rather brilliant and literary take on traditionally pulpy material, viewers got lost in space. Reviewers began suggesting that the point of Johnson's story was, as one character says in that movie, to "let the past die." And while that certainly is a theme the story deals with, it is not the point of the narrative. In fact, the plot suggests it's the opposite—considering that the hero of the story, by the end, tells the character who says the past should die that, "Every word of what you just said was wrong." So reviewers largely missed the point of the story, applauding the film for something it never did, and longtime fans of the series came to hate the film for doing something it never did.
But, when we live in a culture with a compromised imagination more interested in finding ways for films to promote certain political agendas than actually following a story, we shouldn't be too surprised that people forget Star Wars is and always has been a fairy tale, best viewed with the eyes of a child, and approached in the same way we look to the mythic stories of old, the ones that so captured the imaginations of classic writers such as George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis. The Rise of Skywalker was destined to be divisive, because many of the people walking into this film went in with wrongheaded expectations for the story because of a terrible misreading of the previous chapter. At the risk of sounding arrogant—though that is not my intention—I predicted this outcome over a year ago, when I finally realized how badly most people—myself included—had missed the point of The Last Jedi. So, every creative decision that The Rise of Skywalker makes is now seen as dismissive of decisions made in The Last Jedi, when the opposite could not be more true. The Last Jedi—like The Empire Strikes Back (1980) before it—served the purpose of the middle chapter in any trilogy: deepening its characters through complicating the narrative. Now, The Rise of Skywalker must end the story, putting the characters through one final test, bringing them up against insurmountable odds, completing their arcs in a way that is in line with all that has come before. And in this respect, the film pays off in spades.
Rey (Daisy Ridley), the doe-eyed heroine of this new trilogy, finally learns the truth about her parents, a backstory that has been teased and tangled over the course of the last two films, and must make a final choice regarding her destiny. Finn (John Boyega), the stormtrooper turned rebel hero, must confront the villainous First Order that abducted him as a child and subjected him to the atrocities of war. Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) must step fully into the role of leader of the Resistance, leaving behind a less-than-honorable past. And, finally, the villainous Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) must confront his own dark legacy as the grandson of Darth Vader, the man responsible for destroying both the Jedi and the Sith in former generations. Each must overcome a past that says they should be something other and someone far less, than what and who they are, or have the potential to become.
Perhaps the most common criticism one will hear about The Rise of Skywalker concerns Rey's parentage. The story reveals that she is actually the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, the daughter of the Emperor's secret son who betrayed his father and fled for his life with his wife and young child. Abandoning the child on a distant planet, far from the reach of his evil father, Rey's parents gave their lives to protect her, and she grew up an orphan, alone in a vast galaxy. All of these plot threads were put into place in 2015's The Force Awakens, the first film of this new trilogy. But that film's sequel, The Last Jedi, complicated things. In a moment of temptation, Kylo Ren tells Rey that her parents were "nobodies" who sold her off "for drinking money" and were now "buried in a pauper's grave." And somehow these strange words, coming from the mouth of the film's villain, no less, became the rallying point for viewers of this film. For some reason that I don't know I'll ever understand, critics and audiences alike took the bad guy at his word, even when it is contextually clear this is a moment of attempted seduction and manipulation. In fact, in this same conversation, the villain tells the heroine to "let the past die," which has somehow become what people believe to be the thesis statement of that film, pretending as though the rest of the movie never happens, wherein this entire philosophy is rejected by the heroes. Narratively, it is quite clear that Kylo's words to Rey were not to be taken at face value. And anyone who understands that Star Wars is about the cyclical nature of storytelling also understands that Rey's journey is meant to mirror Luke's, is meant to mirror Anakin's. In fact, the decision to tie Rey's backstory to the Sith Emperor raises the stakes against her in this final chapter. The Last Jedi hinted that Rey had a certain predisposition toward darkness, just like Luke's nephew, Ben Solo, who would eventually come to embrace that darkness and become Kylo Ren. That plot point is given contextualization here, showing that Rey is not simply a random nobody, but that her lineage is one predisposed toward the greatest darkness of all. As the literal heir to the Sith throne, the dark side is, as Kylo says to her in The Rise of Skywalker, within her very nature. Rey now has something inside of herself, more than mere doubt, that must be overcome.
Her story parallels that of Kylo Ren, with whom she shares a very unique bond first elaborated upon in The Last Jedi. They are revealed to be a "dyad," two beings who are united as one through the mysterious Force that permeates the Star Wars galaxy. Their connection becomes important in this final chapter as they participate in one another's stories. As Rey grapples with the revelations of her lineage, Kylo is haunted by the ghosts of his own legacy. It would seem that the two of them are destined to the rule the galaxy together—again foreshadowed in The Last Jedi, when the two of them see two different visions of the future—just like their ancestors did with Palpatine as the master, and Vader as the apprentice. But the Star Wars story has always been one of redemption. Luke says to his twin sister, Leia (Carrie Fisher), in The Last Jedi, when speaking of her son Ben's descent into darkness, "No one's ever really gone." And just as one Skywalker redeemed the father from the dark side at the end of the original trilogy, so does another Skywalker redeem the son in The Rise of Skywalker. Only this time, Ben is redeemed not by his uncle Luke, but by his mother, Leia.
In what has to be a once-in-a-lifetime marvel, Carrie Fisher lives on in The Rise of Skywalker as the iconic and stalwart Leia Organa, despite the actress's untimely passing in 2016. Using footage salvaged from the cutting room floor, director J. J. Abrams managed to work the character into this final film in a way that is both astonishing and a bit eerie. Leia is at the very heart of this story, sacrificing herself to reach out through the Force to her son, calling to him across the stars in a final, desperate attempt to bring him back to the light. Regardless of how the audience felt about the film during my own viewing, there was a soul-shaking silence in the theater the moment Leia whispered her son's name and breathed her last, and halfway across the galaxy, Ben hears his mother calling and is paralyzed. This becomes the catalyst for Ben to shed his identity as Kylo Ren, and in a stunning scene, Harrison Ford makes a surprise return as the ghost haunting Ben's memory. As the father's ghost embraces his prodigal son, Ben Solo emerges from the darkness to embrace his legacy as the last Skywalker.
As Ben confronts his father's ghost, Rey confronts her own undead grandfather, who finally reveals his true identity as the living embodiment of all the Sith of previous generations. Mirroring his temptation to Luke in Return of the Jedi, Palpatine goads Rey to strike him down out of anger so that his essence might transfer into her, and she can ascend to the throne, taking her rightful place as the ruler of the Sith. With the fleet his acolytes have built, she can finally rule the galaxy as both a Palpatine and a Sith Lord. But that last minute intervention of the redeemed Ben Solo saves Rey from herself, and the two of them move as one to confront the Emperor. Skywalker and Palpatine un-break the circle, having rejected the throne and the darkness within their natures. The battle is won, but at great cost—Rey is killed. And in a final, stunning act of sacrifice, Ben Solo uses their connection through the Force to restore her life at the expense of his own. As Rey is resurrected, Ben's body fades away into the Force—and on the other side of the galaxy, his mother fades away too. The Skywalker lineage comes to an end. A story that began with a Palpatine seducing a Skywalker to the dark side sees a Palpatine ultimately joining a redeemed Skywalker in the light.
The story ends where it began in 1977, at the homestead where Luke grew up on the desert planet of Tatooine. Rey returns there to bury the last remnants of the Skywalker line: the lightsabers of Luke and Leia. As these mystical weapons fade into the sand, a lone woman approaches the girl and asks who she is, as there has been no one around these parts for many, many years. With the spirits of Luke and Leia watching over her, Rey gives her surname for the first time in the series—only the name she gives is not Palpatine, but Skywalker. And in the light of the iconic twin suns setting over that familiar place, hope is reborn in that galaxy far, far away.
The Rise of Skywalker is a film of devastating power. A haunting, ethereal story sure to be misunderstood by those looking to find some message about identity politics or the "democratization of the Force" hidden inside its relatively simple plot. Those things were never the point of The Last Jedi, nor were they ever the point of Star Wars. There is a certain playfulness, a childlike wonder to this final chapter that recaptures the magic of what made the original trilogy such a beatific vision of mythic storytelling. After the necessary and brilliant complexities of The Last Jedi, this film represents a distilled, almost skeletal form of a fairy tale. The characters all click into archetypal place, and despite the darkness of this, at times, truly frightening movie, manage to have a lot of fun along the way, bringing in the swashbuckling spirit of those old movie serials that originally inspired filmmaking virtuoso George Lucas to create this galaxy in the first place. Old characters like the charming scoundrel Lando Calrissian, still played to charismatic perfection by Billy Dee Williams nearly forty years later, return to rally against the Final Order. Eagle-eyed viewers will even spot Dennis Lawson reprising his role as Wedge Antilles, one of Luke Skywalker's oldest allies from the original trilogy.
Of course there are contrivances and coincidences in the storytelling—that's part of mythic storytelling in general, and part of Star Wars in particular. Coincidences are never really coincidences in this world, because there is always a greater force at work. And no, the film is certainly not going to work for everyone who sees it. In a world where the sexualized and gratuitous Game of Thrones has become such a pronounced cultural icon, Star Wars will undoubtedly seem naïve, archaic, and even trivial by comparison because it doubles down on the heroic instead of the fallen. There are complexities to The Rise of Skywalker, but it is not complicated, not in the way it seems audiences demand there be moral quandaries in storytelling today. Part of the fuel that drove audiences into terrible misinterpretations of The Last Jedi is the post-secular philosophy that says we need our new heroes to compromise in order to be "relatable," to be painted in moral shades of gray, so that we feel less bad about our own wrong choices in life. But consider the words of Star Wars creator George Lucas, from journalist Dale Pollock's biography of him, Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas: "I wanted to make a kids' film that would strengthen contemporary mythology and introduce a kind of basic morality."
The story really is as simple as that. The Star Wars story began with the words: "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away," Lucas's own version of "Once upon a time." And for three generations we learn about the rise, fall, and redemption of a family whose name is Skywalker, as they contend with a great and powerful evil called Palpatine. The journey is long, dark, and scary, but everyone manages to have some fun along the way. Many of our heroes fail us and are lost to the darkness. There are moments where hope's flame seems to have died away. But, in the end, the light overcomes the darkness. Hope is restored to the galaxy.
And they all live happily ever after.
