We are about to see not only the end of Disney’s first ‘Star Wars’ trilogy since acquiring Lucasfilm, but the end of a 9-movie saga. We know that Palpatine will return, but that’s pretty much the only thing we know about the plot. Among the many promises of how it will be a satisfying ending, we can now add Poe Dameron himself, Oscar Isaac who says the film is like a “chess match.”
Speaking with Total Film, Isaac teased that the final installment in the Skywalker saga, “The Rise of Skywalker” will see the fight between Sith and Jedi come to an end. “What’s amazing about the story and the script is that you learn that both the Sith and the Jedi have been playing a very long game,” the actor said. “From the get-go, there’s been this chess match. All these pieces have been played. And now we get to see who gets checkmate.”
It makes sense, probably. In the prequel trilogy, we saw how Palpatine planned an entire war just to plan a genocide and place himself as the sole force-user in the galaxy. We haven’t exactly seen the Jedi plan anything like that before, but you can sort of see how hiding Luke and Leia from Darth Vader was a good move, even if they didn’t exactly foresee how it would all turn out. But if there’s anything the Jedi and the Sith had planned for the endgame, this is the last chance to show it to us.
Meanwhile, the same article has J.J. Abrams comment on how difficult it proved to end the saga. “The ending of this trilogy of trilogies is a tricky thing,” he said. “This movie has to work on its own. It’s got to have its own beginning, middle and end. It can’t make the mistake of a lot of sequels, where you just assume a character is beloved, where the movie suffers because the character is suddenly lacking. We can’t assume anyone cares.” It remains to be seen how it all turns out.
“Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” is set to be released on December 20, 2019.