J.J. Abrams says The Rise of Skywalker brings the saga to a cohesive ending

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

We're pretty much two months away from the release of STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER, and in addition to bringing the Sequel Trilogy to a close, the film is also set to serve as the culmination of the entire nine-film STAR WARS saga. No small task to wrap up over four decades worth of stories, but it's a task which J.J. Abrams has hopefully pulled off.

THE RISE OF SKYWALKER co-writer/director recently spoke with Entertainment Weekly about the responsibility of concluding the STAR WARS saga. "This is about bringing this thing to a close in a way that is emotional and meaningful and also satisfying in terms of actually answering [as many] questions as possible," Abrams said. "So if years from now, someone’s watching these movies, all nine of them, they’re watching a story that is as cohesive as possible." That said, Abrams admitted that "endings are the thing that scare me the most." Abrams also said that although the film needed to answer questions, there was also room for co-writer Chris Terrio and himself to include the unexpected.

While there were many things that were planned for and discussed — George Lucas himself said when he created this he saw it as three, three-act plays — that doesn’t mean there isn’t discovery, that doesn’t mean there aren’t things that come up that make you realize, ‘Oh, here’s an opportunity.' It also doesn’t mean that there’s a list of payoffs that we have to do because of setups. But we also were very much aware this is the end of the trilogy and it needs to satisfy. We went into this thing knowing it has to be an ending. We’re not screwing around.

I've got my fingers crossed that J.J. Abrams will be able to bring the saga to a satisfactory conclusion, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see. Co-writer Chris Terrio recently teased that there are two simple yet key questions which fuel the story of STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER.

One of them is a simple one: ‘Who is Rey?’ Which is a question that people not only wonder about quite literally, but wonder about in the spiritual sense. How can Rey become the spiritual heir to the Jedi? We kept coming back to ‘Who is Rey?’, and how can we give the most satisfying answer to that not only factually – because obviously people are interested in whether there's more to be learned of Rey's story – but more importantly who is she as a character? How will she find the courage and will and inner strength and power to carry on what she's inherited?

"'How strong is the Force?'" is the second question, which Chris Terrio admitted also sounds a little simple, "but actually when you get down to it, that is a sort of Zen Koan that we would really meditate on – not literally in yoga poses or anything, but like we would discuss, ‘What is the Force and how strong is the Force?' Those two things were really important." STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER will hit theaters on December 20, 2019.