Star Wars 9 is going to continue down the path set by both Star Wars: The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. That’s the opinion of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker director J.J. Abrams, who recently quelled any fears that the divisive eighth episode of the Star Wars franchise complicated the trilogy’s finale plans.
“The story that we’re telling [in Star Wars 9], the story that we started to conceive when we did Force Awakens was allowed to continue,” Abrams told ET Canada.
Abrams went on to say, on the topic of plans he may have had well in advance, “[The Last Jedi] didn’t really derail anything we were thinking about.”
Star Wars: The Last Jedi, of course, shook up a galaxy far, far away more than perhaps any movie in the Star Wars universe before it. Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker faded away during the closing moments while Supreme Leader Snoke – seemingly set up as the Big Bad in The Force Awakens – was unceremoniously dispatched midway through by Kylo Ren.
Any Star Wars fans worrying about Rise of Skywalker veering across story beats from JJ Abrams’ original Force Awakens plans, to The Last Jedi’s big moments, though, can rest easy. Lucasfilm has an 11-strong Story Group, which oversees the canon of Star Wars, ensuring there aren’t any monumental slip-ups.
After all, a billion-dollar trilogy going in without a plan in advance would really see the Sith hit the fan in a big way. It’s clear that, for Abrams at least, it’s very much business as usual.
Ready for more trilogies? Here are all the new Star Wars movies coming your way over the next few years.
