If They Planned It All Ahead - The Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Part 2 (Rewrite Overview)
Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone.
This section will provide an overview of the main points of the Sequel Trilogy rewrite. We will be covering the following topics:
Themes
Ground Rules
Worldbuilding
Characters, to include characterization, arcs, and any added or deleted characters
What we will not be covering here is Plot. This will be handled through the movie-by-movie story treatments that we cover over the next few months.
All set? Great. Let’s dive into it.
THEMES
I think that the core theme of the ST should flow naturally from the OT, just as the PT flowed into the PT. Even if one intends to pump a countless parade of “Saga” films, going past Episode IX to infinity, it’s only logical to have the first trilogy of these new films serve as an extension of the original story. Let's start with the mindset that we are concluding the Skywalker Saga (ignoring for a moment that said story was concluded with RotJ).
So … what were the previous films about?
The OT was an iconic space opera that followed the Hero’s Journey of a farm boy who rose up from nothing to defy the forces of evil. It’s a story of an underdog rebellion facing off against a nigh-insurmountable empire and achieving victory through courage, ingenuity, and moral fortitude. The hero constantly sacrificed to save his loved ones, both through putting himself in danger and through the loss of a hand. It is through this sacrificial love that he ultimately redeemed his villainous father and enabled to destruction of the empire. To sum this up in two words, I would say the OT embodies “heroism” and “redemption”.
The PT was the story of how a once-glorious civilization fell and produced the setting seen in the OT. It is a story of political corruption and stagnant institutions being manipulated by nefarious and ambitious forces. It’s the story of another hero who rose from nothing nd constantly sacrificed to save his loved ones, only this time, the hero is consumed by his fear and his lust for power and ends up destroying everything he once tried to save. It is a story of arrogance, mistakes, and loss. I would sum this up as “tragedy” and “corruption”.
Going from the PT to the OT, we witness the tragedy of a great civilization being consumed by evil due to the flaws of both heroes and institutions and the subsequent acts of heroism and redemption that purge that evil. Extrapolating forward, we get:
Tragedy leads to Heroism leads to Healing
Corruption leads to Redemption leads to Reinvention
The ST should be a story about a galaxy that is still struggling to fully pull itself back together after the fall of the Empire. It should examine the lingering trauma of the OT era and the ripple effects this trauma has had through the present, exploring these ideas through both institutions and individual characters. It should also explore how factions are trying to reinvent themselves on this new galactic stage.
I feel like this is a direction George Lucas would agree with. Judging by the details that have been released about his original story treatments for the ST, he was planning to tell a story about the New Republic struggling to restore law and order in a galaxy made lawless by the Empire’s fall. However, this was not my inspiration for this theme. Instead, I was inspired by the introduction of Force healing in TRoS. It’s a power that damages the lore of Star Wars in its current iteration. However, I feel like it could provide an opportunity for powerful storytelling if an entire narrative were crafted around it.
GROUND RULES
Many wonderful creators have written their own versions of the ST, each with their own goals and motivations. I’ve seen iterations of Heir to the Empire, the Yuuzhan Vong War, and even reimaginings of the ST that focused on improving the worldbuilding. For this rewrite, we’re going to lean more towards that last option, albeit with limitations that are rooted more in the real world than in fiction.
In keeping with the spirit of a series named If They Planned It All Head, this rewrite represents what could have been if the Disney-run Lucasfilm had planned out the entire trilogy in advance. This means two things:
We are going to make every reasonable effort to work with the resources Disney had available to them.
Our cast will be limited to the actors Disney had available to them. Preferably, we will recycle characters where possible, but if a new character is needed for a major role, another character will need to be removed so that the actor can be repurposed. Actors whom Disney either filmed and then cut or whom were approached for roles and then dropped because a script went in another direction will be the exception to this. These are people who Disney reasonably could have cast if they had properly planned ahead, so they can be adding without cutting an existing character.
The number of locations on planets or ships will be limited to the number that we saw in the films. This is intended to reflect the limitations of creating sets. Locations will be repurposed if possible, and any new locations must be balanced by cutting other locations. This won’t apply to space scenes, since those usual deal with models (physical or digital) of spaceships rather than sets with actors.
We are going to make every reasonable effort to check the various boxes that Disney wanted to check with this series, provided that doing so does not interfere with the story.
Prioritize new characters over legacy characters
Recreate the narrative setup of ANH (specifically the good, underdog Rebels versus the evil, overpowered Empire - we’re not going to do a full reset on the Jedi Order)
Recycle classic Star Wars iconography
In short, we will be treating the existing ST as if they were first drafts that were made available to us prior to the start of production for TFA. We are taking those first drafts and revising them to ensure a quality series with a cohesive vision.
An important restriction to note here is that Disney could not have planned for the 2016 death of Carrie Fisher. They had to make do without her for TRoS - all the footage of her you see in the existing version of that film combined repurposed footage and audio with careful CGI work and body doubles. However, it is also important to remember that Disney did not have to resort to those specific means. They had nearly a full year to do reshoots for TLJ to account for Fisher’s death within the film, and given that Captain America: Brave New World had no fewer than three rounds of reshoots (the last of which was initiated with just three months to go before the release), Disney is clearly willing to throw money at that sort of thing if it thinks it will at least earn them audience goodwill. If they didn’t want to do reshoots to TLJ, they could have said that Leia died off-screen between films. All this is to say that our rewrite will keep Leia alive until TLJ and then write her death into that film.
WORLDBUILDING
Timeline
Disney’s ST is set 30 years after RotJ. This was clearly done to approximate the real-world time gap from RotJ to TFA and to account for the aging of legacy actors. However, I want to stretch the time skip from RotJ to TFA to 50 years. This will give Luke more time to rebuild the Jedi Order and make them a proper faction within the setting. While this may raise questions in the audience’s mind as to why the legacy actors look 20 years younger than they are supposed to, I feel like extended lifespans due to medical technology is a common enough trope in Sci-Fi for this not to be an issue (and, indeed, this is the case for Star Wars in the EU, with Han Solo being considered to be at the start of middle age in his late seventies).
The Force
Balance
It should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone that my rewrite of the ST will make it very clear that the Light is Balance, while the Dark is imbalance. However, this isn’t just going to be a philosophical issue. It will be reflected in the world itself.
In the PT, the Dark fed upon the corruption and stagnation of the Republic, growing stronger as the galaxy crumbled. In the OT, the Dark was domination, oppression, and destruction, feeding upon a system that sustained itself by consuming everything in its path. In our ST, the institutions of government will have been repaired, or at the very least, are actively working to improve; while the First Order will be about domination and destruction, they will not have control over the galaxy. So what does the Dark feed upon?
Pain. Trauma. Unsettled grievances and outright grudges. A sense of betrayal by those who hoped for better after the fall of the Empire, along with a sense of loss from those who lost everything when the Empire fell.
The galaxy in this rewrite trilogy will still be healing in the wake of the Galactic Civil War, and it will be chock-full of people who are still in a great deal of pain. The Dark Side will feed on this. The Force users will see themselves as victims, doing whatever they must to restore the galaxy to what it should be; the First Order will be an inflammatory response to the suffering of the disenfranchised, winning people over with a promise of a better life, if only they are willing to get their hands dirty.
The forces aligned with the Light will be doing their best to both heal the pain of the galaxy and to prevent those acting out of pain from doing more damage. This will be why the Jedi (more on them in a minute) will be fighting against the First Order. They are trying to control the spread of this inflammatory response while their allies rush to solve the problems that the wider galaxy is ambivalent towards.
The Jedi
This is a topic that I’ll need to cover twice. For now, let’s just talk about them in terms of their existence and role in the galaxy, something I’ll also do for the Dark Siders in a moment.
The rewritten ST will take place 50 years after RotJ. Luke has had five decades to rebuild the Jedi Order - and so he has. This new Order is far cry from the roughly 10,000 Jedi that existed at the time of the Clone Wars, but it still includes hundreds of Knights, apprentices, and initiates and a few thousand support personnel allied with the ideals of the Jedi. The organization is less monastic and more paramilitary. Luke hasn't had the time or the quiet to rebuild lost traditions, so the new order adopts many of the structures and conventions of the Rebel Alliance, with Knights only wearing robes for formal occasions and otherwise adopting utilitarian options such as fatigues, coveralls, and flight suits. While the Order has reclaimed a few satellite temples that were forgotten centuries before the Republic fell, its primary home is the Kenobi, a retrofitted MC85 Star Crusier (replacing the Raddus, the first of our repurposed locations).
At the time TFA begins, Luke has disappeared, going on a spiritual pilgrimage for an unknown purpose. In his absence, Leia Solo will have taken over as Grand Master of the Jedi Order.
The Knights of Ren
In the Disney ST, there's a passing statement by Luke in TLJ claiming that Kylo Ren took several of Luke’s students with him when he destroyed the Jedi Academy. It was implied that they became the Knights of Ren. However, this connection was not acknowledged at any other point. Supplemental media would also contradict this by having the Knights of Ren exist prior to Kylo’s fall to the Dark Side.
In the rewrite, the Knights of Ren will explicitly be Luke’s former students. They split off from the Jedi in a schism roughly ten years prior to the start of the story. This schism spawned from two causes:
Disagreement over the meaning of Balance.
Frustration with Luke for not letting the Jedi go far enough to restore the galaxy.
The Knights of Ren believe that fear, anger, and hatred are tools that can give one the power to prevent further suffering, believing that good intentions and self-discipline can allow one to become powerful through the Dark Side without being corrupted. They joined hands with the First Order in order to lend their skills to the faction willing to do what’s necessary to restore the galaxy. Their name is derived from a planet called Ren; when Luke was unwilling to resort to extreme methods to end the civil war on that planet, Kylo led his followers to the world to bring peace through the power of the Dark Side. This ultimately led to a showdown between Luke and Kylo when Luke tried bring these Knights back into the Jedi fold. When Luke failed, Kylo made contact with Snoke, forging and alliance between Ren and the First Order so that the Jedi couldn’t destroy the Knights before they were properly fortified.
You may have noticed that Snoke did not contribute directly to the schism in this version. This is because, while the Knights are willing to ally with him, they refuse to acknowledge him as their master. Snoke is blatantly a Dark Side presence. The Knights maintain that they are using Snoke out of mutual interest, not serving him. This serves Snoke just fine. The longer the Knights use the Dark Side, the more corrupt they will become regardless.
The Political Landscape
The Galactic Alliance
In the 50 years since RotJ, the former Rebel Alliance has beaten back the Empire to the fringes of the galaxy, establishing themselves as the Galactic Alliance. Democracy has been restored, and a volunteer military fed by the member worlds ensures that the various rump states left by the Empire's collapse cannot rise up to oppress the galaxy once more. Leia Solo was instrumental in the galaxy’s reconstruction, serving as Chancellor for more than two decades after the first Chancellor, Mon Mothma, stepped down.
However, much like how the Jedi Order of the Old Republic mistook peace and stability for all being well, the Galactic Alliance wrongly equates the thorough destruction of the old regime with the healing of the galaxy. Many still desire vengeance against the Empire, clamoring for war against the rump states. Many resent the Galactic Alliance for undermining power structures that survived the Empire in favor of giving power to Rebel sympathizers. The people of places that were ignored by the Empire are now angry at the Galactic Alliance for ignoring their needs as well. While Leia tried to address these problems, it grew harder and harder for her to muster the political will as the power players in the Alliance grew content and complacent after the rectifying of the wrongs done to them specifically.
The First Order
The First Order began its existence as a rump state controlled by an Imperial warlord. However, a popular revolt toppled the warlord and established a democratic government under the leadership of Chairman Snoke. This new state christened itself the First Order, for they believed that righting the imbalances in the galaxy should be the first priority of their new state. The Galactic Alliance offered membership to the FO, but Snoke refused, publically stating that the Alliance could not claim to be the FO’s friends when they had left the people of the FO to free themselves from tyranny.
The First Order drew in the disenfranchised from across the galaxy with the promise of opportunity, both economically and in the sense of righting the wrongs that the Alliance ignored. They rapidly militarized beyond even what the Empire had done. When the world of Ren called for help, the FO sent forces to protect it, and with the support of the Knights, they began an aggressive campaign to topple the other rump states and restore order to lawless regions. The Alliance observed this activity, but did not intervene, observing that the FO went out of their way to avoid any action that might harm Alliance worlds and even offered to help liberated worlds integrate into the Alliance instead of the FO.
What the Alliance didn’t realize at first, and later chose to ignore, was that the First Order was making an active effort to secure planets that were either historically important to the Jedi or Sith or else strong in the Force. No one in the government cared that the FO had claimed Moraband and renamed it to Korriban, and very few even noticed that warships were now quietly orbiting Dagobah.
The Jedi did notice, and their efforts to take action cost them the backing of the Alliance.
The Jedi Order
The Jedi Order strives to be the guardians of peace and justice for the Galactic Alliance. However, they are not welcome as they were in the time of the Old Republic.
Between old grudges against the Jedi, echoes of Imperial propaganda, and the backlash when it was revealed that Darth Vader was once a Jedi, the Alliance has never fully trusted the Jedi. Luke inadvertantly compounded this problem by refusing to submit to the same official relationship that the Jedi had agreed to under the Old Republic. Thus, while many welcome the aid and intervention of the Jedi, much of the Galactic Alliance views them as mavericks at best and dangerous radicals at worst.
This came to a head after the rise of the First Order. The Jedi were concerned by the actions of the FO from the moment Korriban was claimed and renamed. However, it was the pact between the Knights of Ren with the FO that spurred them into active opposition. Under Leia’s guidance, the Jedi began to actively petitioning their allies in the Galactic Alliance to intervene in crises before the FO could and to claim Force sites before the FO can get there.
The Alliance tolerated this - at first. However, after Jedi forces ended up in a shootout with the FO over the world of Jakku, Snoke threatened the Alliance. The Alliance disavowed the Jedi and expelled the Order from their borders.
Now, the Jedi fleet is the sole force operating against the First Order. They race across the Outer Rim, rendering aid or fighting back where they can. Many among the Jedi believe that Luke’s spiritual pilgrimage, which began after the Knights joined the FO, is really a pretense for a mission to learn the FO's true objectives. Jedi Knights are constantly on watch for any sign of where he’s gone or any signal that he needs them to rush to his side.
CHARACTERS
Rey
I think the problems with Rey in Disney’s ST can be boiled down to four points:
She is generally too capable, invalidating both stakes and the contributions of any other characters.
Her immense prowess in the Force isn’t explained by background or justified through the training (such that it is) that we see on-screen.
Her personal journey is a mess.
Her characterization is very bland.
The first problem is easy enough to fix. We just need to narrow Rey’s skill set. Since Disney pushed her as the heir to the Skywalker legacy, we’ll keep her as the most powerful Force wielder of the cast. This will mean that we’ll need to dial back her mechanical skills and fighting abilities accordingly.
The third problem is one that can be addressed by making Rey’s personal journey synonymous with the themes of the story. Much like Luke in ANH, Rey needs to begin her journey with personal tragedy. This will lead to her eventual descent into the Dark Side as she struggles with the trauma and seeks a means to right the wrongs done to her. Her journey will then end in her either returning to the Light as she accepts her trauma and seeks to return to a state of balance or else dying as she fails to rise above her pain.
As you might have guessed if you’ve read my Captain Marvel rewrite proposal, I don’t want to address the second problem by taking Rey’s immense power away from her. Instead, I want to use it as a tool for exploring the themes. In doing this, we will also address the fourth problem. You see, Rey’s immense starting power will be explained by characterization.
To explain this, let’s look at a pair of airbenders.
Aang and Zaheer
In The Last Airbender, Aang started the series as an airbending master, despite being only 12. This was explained by both his being the Avatar, meaning he inherently possessed immense power and talent, and by the rigorous training he endured from the moment he was identified. Furthermore, the fact that he had to earn his skills is demonstrated by his struggle with the other elements. His initial success with firebending was then hampered by shame after he burned Katara; he struggled with earthbending due to the vast difference between its philosophy and the spiritual mindset taught in the temples. Even with waterbending, he swiftly fell behind Katara because she possessed greater motivation and worked harder at him than him. Aang didn’t even have the Avatar State handed to him, needing a whole arc about mastering it. The only skill in Aang’s toolkit that was just handed to him was energybending. He still almost died using it.
Then there’s Zaheer from Season 3 of Legend of Korra. This is a man with no formal airbending training, yet within weeks of unlocking airbending, he chews through talented benders and even comes close to defeating Aang’s son Tenzin in a one-on-one fight. At no point is his power ever directly explained within the show. Instead, his power is implied through his characterization from his very first scene.
Zaheer is first introduced as a prisoner of the White Lotus. Despite him being a non-bender when he was imprisoned, they still saw fit to seal him in a metal vault whose heavy door could only be unlocked and opened by metalbenders (to say nothing of the rocky pinnacle the vault was perched on). Beside that door was another door, a more conventional barred one, and they still wouldn’t slide food to him through the slot on this door until he stood against the opposite wall and faced away from them. Before Zaheer made a single move to escape, the audience fully understood that this was an incredibly dangerous man. Once the fight began, it became apparent that the source of the danger was his skill in martial arts.
Airbending in a very spiritual discipline. Zaheer opens his attempt to escape by telling the story of Guru Laghima, demonstrating a deep appreciation of airbender philosophy. This would become more and more apparent as the season progressed. In short, Zaheer was already spiritually primed to be an airbender.
Combine these two factors together, and Zaheer had already earned everything needed to be a powerful airbender before his introduction. Gaining the powers from Harmonic Convergence was more a formality than anything else. All the show’s creative team needed to do to sell his abilities from that point onward was customize his fight choreography to show that he didn’t train with the other airbenders.
Application to Rey
I want to combine the approaches taken for both Aang and Zaheer for Rey.
First, let’s consider the lessons taken from Zaheer. A core element of Rey’s characterization will be a deep spiritually. She has a connection with the Force that was cultivated over the many years that she’s lived on Jakku, learning from her mentor, Maz Kanada (more on her later). She will, in a sense, start her journey at the place Luke was at the end of Return of the Jedi, reflecting his legacy upon the galaxy.
Now, for the lesson taken from both airbenders. Rey will have an innate connection to the Force that grants her immense power. However, her training will only have taught her how to be one with the Force and to use specific techniques. She will be able to do a few useful things very, very well, but she’ll have no clue how to use a lightsaber effectively (or safely), no hope of pulling off a mind trick, and telekinesis that could charitably be described as limited (albeit powerful in those limited uses). Part of her journey in this trilogy will be learning to use the Force in other ways, for good or ill.
Power and Themes
Force healing is an ability that breaks the lore of Star Wars …
… but only because it was applied incorrectly.
Yes, the ability to magically heal people from any injury within seconds is insanely broken and calls into question why Qui-Gon and countless other Jedi couldn’t be saved. However, in concept, it makes sense as something that exists in this universe. The Force binds the universe together and flows through all living things. Darth Plagueis could reportedly manipulate midichlorians and affect life with it. The idea of a character with power over life and death isn’t incompatible with the setting. The trick is to restrict this power and make it clear to the audience why it is limited.
Rey will be a mystic who has spent years meditating in the desert on a world with a strong connection to the Force. (This aspect of Jakku is technically Canon, but I don’t recall if Disney did anything with it, even in their tie-in novels.) Her power to heal will be derived from spending her life piggybacking on this connection. Furthermore, it will be established that Jakku wasn’t discovered until the era of the Empire, after the Jedi had already fallen. This will make Rey a special individual who a combination of hard work and circumstances that are hard to replicate.
What’s more, healing is not going to be just a gimmick. Rey’s temptation to the Dark Side will come from the ease by which it lets her access other aspects of the Force. She already has power; the Dark Side will broaden the skills over which she has mastery, allowing her to affect the world in ways that a healer can’t.
Arc
If you can’t already tell from the amount of thought I’m putting into Rey, I want to keep her as a main character of the Sequel Trilogy. She will therefore have the most complex and focused-upon arc.
Rey’s story will, at the start, mirror Luke’s (much like in the Disney ST). She will start off as the girl on the desert planet who experiences a call to adventure. Initially, she refuses it, but then she will suffer great personal loss that spurs her to fight against the First Order. This will more or less compose her arc for TFA.
However, in TLJ, things take a darker turn. Whereas Luke was tempted by darkness due to his recklessness and his desire to help his loved ones, Rey’s loss will twist her towards darkness. Her power, coupled with her negative emotions, will send her careening towards the Dark Side, despite the best efforts of those around her. She will choose wrath and vengeance over grief and healing. In the darkest hour of the trilogy, at the point where Luke learned Vader’s identity and lost a hand for his recklessness, Rey will complete a heel-turn and join the villains of the story.
TRoS will, like RotJ, be a story of redemption - except this time, it will be the rest of the heroes trying to redeem Rey, rather than Rey redeeming another villain. We will see her final struggle. Ultimately, Rey’s arc will end on the pivotal choice to either turning her back on the Dark Side and take the harder road towards healing the galaxy or forcing her friends to try to destroy her.
Finn
Much like in the Disney ST, Finn’s story will be about running away. However, rather than being a stormtrooper who runs away from combat, Finn will be running away from shame, from the horror of acts he committed in behalf of the First Order. His journey from the darkness back into the light will be about finding the courage to face his past and atone for the wrongs he’s done.
As a result, the Finn in this version of the story will be a darker, more serious character, more akin to the concept John Boyega originally had for playing the character. He will not be unrelatable or utterly devoid of humor, but he will definitely be a more serious and introspective character.
Poe Dameron
Poe is bit of a weird character for this edit. I don't want to change his overall characterization that much, just the context. Poe will remain the scoundrel of the cast, yet in this iteration, he will be a Jedi Knight.
This version of Poe is Leia’s former apprentice. He eschews the elegance of a lightsaber in favor of blasters and slugthrowers, using the Force to guide his aim.
Poe’s journey of trauma and healing is one of revenge. He has an axe to grind with the Knights of Ren for their betrayal, needlessly engaging them in combat. His story will be about learning to let go of the past, or at the very least, to not let the pain of the past dictate his actions.
Kylo Ren / Bail Solo
The broad stokes of Kylo Ren’s story will change very little in this rewrite, though the details will be getting a significant rework.
Born Bail Solo (neither Han nor Leia had a close, personal connection to Obi-Wan in the OT, so naming him “Ben” made zero sense at the time the ST was made), Kylo chafed against the limits that Luke Skywalker put on the Jedi, namely how Luke held the Jedi back by refusing to touch the Dark Side (both in the literal and spiritual sense) even if doing so would address injustice. This led to the schism at Ren. Since then, Kylo Ren has served as the the master of the Knights of Ren, working closely with Snoke but refuses to fully submit to him. This colors his relationship with General Hux, who is a devoted follower of Snoke and doesn’t like obeying orders from someone outside of the First Order’s hierarchy.
Much like in the Disney ST, Kylo’s story in TFA will see him trying to emulate Darth Vader, though this time with a measure of restraint. He wants to be a better version of Vader, to touch the Dark Side and heal the galaxy without being consumed and made into a puppet. Snoke will try to council him on this, but Kylo will be holding that advice at arm’s length, until Snoke finally convinces him that killing his father will symbolically sever his connection to the past, much like Anakin striking down Windu. This leads to him striking down Han.
This situation progresses in TLJ. While Snoke and Kylo will not have a master-apprentice relationship, Kylo will still report to him, resulting in the interactions where Snoke belittles Kylo for his indecisiveness and unwillingness to fully commit to the darkness. Kylo will again hesitate to kill Leia with a missile strike, leaving it to his fellow Knights. This moment deeply shakes him and fully turns him against Snoke.
When he begins to Force Skype with Rey (yes, I am keeping that - it’s just going to go in another direction), he tries to turn her - but for a very different reason. Kylo has decided the Snoke is a threat. He convinces Rey that Snoke specifically, not the Knights, is the real threat to the galaxy, urging her to join him to overthrow Snoke and steer the First Order towards the right path.
Kylo will get everything he wants. Rey will join him, and Snoke will be killed. However, by dragging Rey to the Dark Side, Kylo unleashes something he can’t control. Realizing his mistake, he tries to rally the Knights against Rey, but Phasma (we’ll get to her in a second) interferes, turning the Knights against him and rallying them all behind Rey. Kylo is forced to flee, limping back to the Jedi.
TROS will see Kylo serving alongside the Jedi, not fully trusted by them but accepted as an asset against the Knights and Rey. His quest will be to redeem Rey and bring her back to the Light as a means to redeem himself.
General Hux
Hux will keep to his TFA characterization throughout the new ST, rather than becoming limp comic relief in TLJ and TROS. He will be a devout follower of Snoke who despises the Knights of Ren for not fully committing themselves to the First Order and for holding themselves separate from Chairman Snoke. This will come to a head in TLJ, when Kylo makes his bid to kill Snoke. Without getting too much into the details here, Hux will do what he can to defend Snoke; however, when Rey falls completely to the Dark Side, he will blow down to her, bringing the entire First Order with him.
Captain Phasma Ren
In this version, Phasma will not be an elite stormtrooper; she will be a Force user, a Knight of Ren who serves as Kylo’s lieutenant. While her role in TFA will be small, she will be instrumental in TLJ, rallying the Knights behind Rey. In doing so, she will become the new master of the Knights, working with the First Order under Rey’s command.
Snoke
There’s not much I would change about Snoke from the ST. He’s still going to be a shadowy figure ruling the First Order, will still be overwhelmingly powerful, and will still be revealed as a puppet for the true nemesis of the story. There will, however, be one pivotal change to the moment of his death.
When Snoke dies, he will not be shocked. He will not be surprised. His body will not comically flop to the floor.
Instead, he will look at Rey and Kylo, grin, and say, “Well done. Now we can begin,” before his body crackles with Force lightning and crumbles into ash.
Maz Kanata
Maz will not run the cantina in this version of the story. Instead, she will be Rey’s spiritual teacher on Jakku, a former apprentice of Luke Skywalker who stepped back from the struggle to restore the galaxy for unknown reasons. She will provide the framing device for how Rey is such a spiritual person and how Rey knows what she does about the Force. Her death by the midpoint of TFA will rob Rey of a mother figure and propel Rey’s journey towards the Dark Side.
Vice Admiral Admiral Natasi Daala
Those of you familiar with the EU will understand just how deadly of an adversary Daala is. It will be much the same in this version.
Daala, played here by Laura Dern (wearing the white uniform of an Imperial Grand Admiral and having a short red hair, not a ballgown and long purple locks), will be the warlord of one of the surviving rump stats. She will be introduced in TLJ as an ally the Jedi turn to in a moment of sheer desperation. While she has no love for the First Order and has been actively preparing for war against them, she also has no tolerance for any sort of Force users, thanks to both the role of the Jedi in the Empire’s downfall and how Palpatine being a Sith drove him to make unwise leadership decisions. She is not the first person the Jedi would have chosen to aid them, but without the aid of the Galactic Alliance, she is the best hope they have.
Rose Tico
I had to move Rose down to the end to properly explain her role in the story.
In this version of the ST, Finn reflects a soldier of the First Order who finally falls away from he faction when he realizes how far they’ve fallen towards being part of the Empire. Rose will be someone to test his new beliefs. She will be an aide to Admiral Daala who fully believes in the mission of the Empire to bring peace through order, only opposing the First Order because of their obvious Force use.
Rose will provide a character who can present Finn with the positives of what he has left behind. Her idealism will force Finn to question whether fully abandoning the tools of an authoritarian regime will truly help the galaxy. Finn will need to convince her (and himself) that there is a point where things have gone too far.
Up front, I will say that I plan to kill Rose at the end of TLJ. Her, “Not fighting what we hate, saving what we love,” moment and the associated sacrifice will be critical for Finn to understand what he is doing and why. I will, however, be removing the kiss. This isn’t a romantic moment. This is a moment of two people with differing ideologies finding a moment of common understanding.
Matt Smith (the actor)
Matt Smith, of Doctor Who and House of the Dragon fame, has confirmed that he involved in TROS early in production, though his role was completely scrubbed during reshoots. I fully intend to make use of him. I don’t want to spoil how at this time, but those of you familiar with the rumors around TROS production can probably guess.
Legacy Characters
In this version of the story, our legacy heroes will be … well, heroic.
Luke Skywalker in this version will be the Jedi Master we expected him to be at this point in the story. His absence from TFA and failure to use every means necessary to redeem Kylo will not be an exile born of shame or cowardice. Rather, as we will learn in TLJ, he realized the full danger posed by Chairman Snoke and disappeared on a quest to deny Snoke that ultimate objective. When Rey catches up to him, he will gladly train her, seeing her potential to carry on his mission in the wider galaxy while he continues to serve his crucial role in isolation.
Leia Solo will be the Grand Master of the Jedi Order. She is still married to Han, and her relationship with Poe is that of a Jedi Master and her former apprentice. Other than that, there’s very little I’d change from how she was characterized in the Disney ST.
Han Solo will still be married to Leia, and he will still be a smuggler. However, rather than reverting to his old status as a scoundrel, he will be running missions for the Jedi Order. He’ll be the one who brought Poe to Jakku, and the escape from Jakku will be directly facilitated by him.
Lando will also appear in this series. However, he will not be part of the Jedi Order. Rather, we will see how he has moved up in the world since the ending of the OT.
I am not bringing back Palpatine in this version of the ST. He will, at most, appear as a form of Dark Side phantom or illusion (I have still not decided which) in TROS.
THE REWRITE AWAKENS
With that, all of the pieces are in place. It is time for us to begin the rewrite proper with The Force Awakens, which will release as Parts 3 through 5.
At the time of writing this conclusion, I don’t have a firm timeline on when those parts will be posted. Onyx Storm releases a few days, so a lot of my time will be taken up by reading that book and getting the ball rolling on the review for it. I am tentatively targeting late April and May. All parts for The Force Awakens will be complete before I release Part 3, so once Part 3 releases, you can count on Part 4 two weeks later and Part 5 two weeks after that.
Thank you all for your patience and support. I hope you’ll enjoy coming on this journey with me. Until then, have a good week.