As to be expected, we don’t know much about STAR WARS: EPISODE IX, and we probably won’t for months until tons of details come spilling out all at once. While we don’t have any idea what the exact story is star John Boyega (who plays Finn) may have revealed a small tidbit of information, revealing how far in the future the movie takes place after the finale of last year’s THE LAST JEDI.
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The information comes from a scanned image from the upcoming issue of Empire, which covers some of the biggest movies of 2019. Obviously, EPISODE IX is in there, and in the second column of the text is says that Boyega confirmed to them that the movie takes place one year after the events of LAST JEDI. Though there's no exact quote to go along with it, it's followed by a quote from star Oscar Isaac, who said the remaining fighters in the Resistance are like “guerrilla fighters in Cuba…it’s that kind of ragged at this point.”
Here’s the image:
This gap in time is somewhat supported by a quote Boyega gave to the UK Finance (via SlashFilm) earlier this year where he said he’s been growing out his hair for the movie and that we would “wait for the trailer to see why.”
This time jump isn’t all that extreme, but it does show a difference than the time frame of THE LAST JEDI. When JEDI starts it takes place almost no time at all after the end of FORCE AWAKENS, which showed Rey (Daisy Ridley) extending the lightsaber to Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill). Time jumps are uncommon in the Star Wars series, a massive one being the jump between Episode I to Episode II, with the second movie having Anakin going from a boy to an adult. We didn’t even get to see him go to his first school dance!
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What we can presume from this time jump, if it’s accurate, it that the remainder of the Resistance will likely be on the run from the First Order, now spearheaded by Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). Rey is probably continuing her training on her own while fighting alongside the Resistance, as Boyega also said this new movie won’t have her and Finn separated, as they were in the last movie.
We’re a ways off from getting any official details about the movie, so anything like this sort of puts some elements into context in the meanwhile. It would make sense for a bigger time jump this time around, this way we can see how the characters have developed since the shakeups in the last movie. Who knows, maybe Rey has mastered the Force and do some sick backflips.