George Lucas’ Scrapped Idea For The New ‘Star Wars’ Trilogy Revealed

It’s hard to believe it’s only been five years since Disney‘s blockbuster announcement that the studio was purchasing Lucasfilm. The mouse house has moved swiftly ever since, delivering three new “Star Wars” movies for fans, with much more to come. George Lucas has seen his brainchild passed to new creative voices and filmmakers, however, when the Disney/Lucasfilm deal was first announced, it was his material that was making headlines.

“What we’re buying, along with the overall company, is a pretty extensive and detailed treatment for what would be the next three movies. The [new] trilogy,” Disney CFO Jay Rasulo said in 2012 shortly after the ink was dry.

However, once everyone rolled up their sleeves to start work on what would become “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” Kathleen Kennedy and co. essentially said “Thanks, but no thanks” to Lucas’ vision and embarked down their own path. Where his version might’ve gone we’ll perhaps never know, but some kernels of his idea did seem to survive, as outlined in “Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi” book (via Slashfilm):

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In the book, we learn that one of the first meetings to visualize The Force Awakens happened on January 16, 2013 at Skywalker Ranch with George Lucas himself. Among the pieces presented at the meeting were portraits of an older Luke Skywalker training a new disciple named Kira (later renamed Rey). The idea was that, 30 years after the fall of the Empire, Luke had gone to a dark place and secluded himself in a Jedi temple on a new planet. The paintings show Luke meditating, reassessing his whole life.

Of course, the training of a new Jedi — formerly named Kira, now named Rey — doesn’t happen until the second film, with J.J. Abrams and co. introducing a whole new legion of heroes first. They also turned around the idea of Luke Skywalker leading the new story, and instead position him as a mythic character that is sought out by the new ensemble. Whether or not one approach better served the new saga, we’ll let fans debate in the comments section.

However, here’s an interesting tidbit — the name Kira is still kicking around. Over the summer, it was revealed that the name of Emilia Clarke‘s character in  “Han Solo: A Star Wars Story” is, you guessed it, Kira. So maybe there’s still a little bit of Lucas left in these movies.