Rian Johnson, director of Episode VIII, really painted the franchise’s storyline into a corner. There was a lot of burning away, literal and narrative-wise, what was thought to already be established: “The Force and the Jedi are like this, which isn’t what you thought it was. Heh.” This is the fashion of things after Disney relegated a lot of the ancillary, though canon, material from the Lucas years—the decades of comics, books, video games—to the “Legends” timeline, and everything (I think) being produced after Disney-ownership, from 2014 going forward, is “Canon.”
Naturally, longtime fans were bug-up-the-butt annoyed, and I don’t blame them; there is a ton of really good stories that suddenly got demoted; their impact on the primary, cinematic universe has vanished. The events that built up the universe’s lore in “Legends” probably wouldn’t be reflecting in any of the Disney sequels (Thrawn notwithstanding). To wit: Kathleen Kennedy, Lucasfilm’s president, (in)famously said in a recent interview that “[t]here’s no source material. We don’t have comic books. We don’t have 800-page novels,” as a giant bookcase filled with hundred of examples of source material glared at her menacingly from across the room*.
But a prediction of mine for Episode IX has basis on events in “Legends,” and has support in what’s happened in the previous two episodes. Rey is a Skywalker, but not a traditional offspring. She’s a clone created from Luke’s hand in that iconic duel scene on Bespin. There are two obvious hints of this in the previous two episodes: in Episode VII, when we find out Luke’s lightsaber, lost in the Bespin duel, was recovered and in working condition; and in the scene in Episode VIII, with the multiple “clones” in Rey’s Force Vision on the island. This could be a reference from The Last Command trilogy, where Luke fights his clone, Luuke (lol), created by Joruus C’baoth from the DNA of Luke’s hand. Luuke, too, used Luke’s old lightsaber**. The Last Command, though, is part of the “Legends” canon, so there’s no narrative obligation to adhere to that past event.
I’ll be seeing the movie tonight and posting a review of sorts soon after.
* A part of me thinks there could be a legal issue with lifting material from the “Legends” canon, and Rolling Stone conveniently didn’t want to mention any restrictions Kennedy might have, in order to inject some outrage into the interview.
** Perhaps a less direct clue Maz Kanata’s maddening offhand explanation of how she came across Luke’s lost lightsaber, and that it was a “story” for another time.
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