Movies

THE LAST JEDI Will See Leia Handing Off the Reins of Power

by Amy Ratcliffe
Jan 29 2017 • 11:30 AM

The next Star Wars film will continue the saga films. The Last Jedi, directed and written by Rian Johnson, will pick up where The Force Awakens left off and carry us further into the post-Return of the Jedi era. Yes, it’s exciting. Now that we have a couple new Star Wars films behind us, many fans are taking off the Leia buns for The Last Jedi, uncovering their ears, and soaking up all the information they can before the film’s release. If you’re ready to learn every fact we know about The Last Jedi so far (just like the title says!), you’re in the right place. Let’s break it down.

Latest Updates

Update, November 19, 2017:https://twitter.com/EW/status/932292643769409537

Entertainment Weekly (EW) has more The Last Jedi stories coming in the November 20 issue, and that means four different covers featuring some duos that will be working together or in conflict in the upcoming film. One item is particularly interesting in their preview of the issue: Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo will be the new leader of the Resistance. Poe Dameron is less than thrilled about that.

https://twitter.com/Breznican/status/932302350831697920

EW has a gallery of new images from Episode VIII with some character notes, including what Leia’s role will be. The Last Jedi marks Carrie Fisher’s final appearance in the films and according to EW, “her job in this movie is to hand off the reins of power.” Leia has always been the sort to put duty ahead of personal needs, so perhaps she’s just ready to hand over the responsibilities to someone else.

The most recent teaser for The Last Jedi featured a hugely emotional moment with Luke Skywalker walking into the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. When you consider how intense that must be for Luke given his history with the ship and that he’s recently lost Han, well, it’s a lot. And it was a lot for Mark Hamill, too. EW discussed the scene with Hamill and what it meant for him to be aboard the ship once again. “It was sort of like visiting an old house that you lived in when you were a kid,” he said.

Much has been made of Rey’s possible turn to the dark side in teasers, TV spots, and trailers for The Last Jedi. Luke is scared of her power, and she’s looking for help to understand what’s happening with her. EW focuses on the Kylo and Rey of it all and said the bigger danger in Episode VIII is that they might become allies instead of remaining enemies. EW says their dynamic is at “the heart of” the film (Rian Johnson paired the duo together on the cover for that reason), with their similarities rising to the surface. Rey’s been abandoned. Kylo has too, in a way, because his parents were so devoted to fighting the First Order. They’re both feeling a little lost, and that could draw them together.

Update, November 15, 2017:

Both Dolby (above) and IMAX (below) have released posters for The Last Jedi, and both of them lean into the red tones we’ve seen previously on the theatrical and character posters. The use of color is ominous and points to the strong influence of the dark side over everyone in the film. Is what’s happening with Kylo Ren and Supreme Leader Snoke enough to cloud the Force a la what Palpatine did to the Jedi in the prequel trilogy?

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A few more peeks at Episode VIII have been released, including the above highlighting one particularly exciting moment: Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon. This spot also highlights Snoke and the rising darkness.

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For something more joyful, check out this behind the scenes reel focusing on Rian Johnson and his enthusiasm and directing.

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Brief TV spots are hitting the air, too. They mostly feature previously shown footage, albeit a bit remixed. The above trailer (via The AV Club), however, has a couple of moments from new scenes, including Leia speaking and Poe Dameron getting very passionate about fighting the First Order.

Title

Lucasfilm has announced the title of Episode VIII is The Last Jedi. With the cat finally out of the bag as of January 23, Johnson shared a post on Instagram showing the title in the opening crawl.

Felt so good to drop this into the cut this morning.

A photo posted by Rian Johnson (@riancjohnson) on

I’m not freaking out. You’re freaking out.
Thanks to io9 for bringing that to our attention.

https://twitter.com/pablohidalgo/status/823581524888981505

The working title for the film may very well have been Space Bear. Yep.

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Release Date

Star Wars: The Last Jedi will arrive to theaters on December 15, 2017.

Returning Cast

Many faces seen in The Force Awakens will be back for Episode VIII. These returning cast members have been confirmed: Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Leia Organa), Adam Driver (Kylo Ren), Daisy Ridley (Rey), John Boyega (Finn), Oscar Isaac (Poe Dameron), Lupita Nyong’o (Maz Kanata), Domhnall Gleeson (General Hux), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO), Gwendoline Christie (Captain Phasma), and Andy Serkis (Supreme Leader Snoke).

The production announcement video featured Hamill and Ridley on Ahch-To:

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A little peek of Maz, courtesy of Johnson’s Tumblr:

http://rcjohnso.tumblr.com/post/142244762595

And John Williams isn’t exactly what I would call a cast member, but this is where I’ll note he’s returning to compose music for The Last Jedi.

Update, February 14, 2017:

R2-D2 will return for The Last Jedi, but it’s time for another actor to step inside the astromech. Kenny Baker played the character since A New Hope, but he passed away in 2016, and so Jimmy Vee is taking on the role for The Last Jedi. His talent agency, Oh So Small, shared the news. Vee said, “It’s been an absolute pleasure to have worked alongside the legendary Kenny Baker. Kenny was a fantastic actor and taught me all the ‘tricks’ on how he brought R2-D2 to life which I will continue to portray in his honour. I’m so excited to be a part of the Star Wars universe and can’t wait for everyone to see what we’ve been working so hard on for the last year.” [CBR]

Update, February 16, 2017:

Curious about what Rey, Finn, and Poe will look like in The Last Jedi? New toy packaging released ahead of Toy Fair shows off the trio as they appear in Episode VIII. [Nerdist]

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Update, April 14, 2017:

Thanks to The Last Jedi panel at Celebration, we have some new character details. They’re slim, but we’ll take them. Ridley said of Rey: “It’s difficult when you meet your heroes. They may not be what you expect.” So, Rey’s interactions with Luke may not play out like they did in her head. He has been on his own for a while and didn’t particularly want to be found, so…

Hamill pointed out what we learned about Luke in Episode VII–that he’s a hermit and we don’t know what’s happened to him in the last few decades. Kennedy added Luke has a key role in The Last Jedi but also that “it’s not Luke’s story anymore.”

New Cast Members

And how about some new faces and characters? Disney and Lucasfilm confirmed Benicio Del Toro, Laura Dern, and Kelly Marie Tran are all on board for The Last Jedi. No details have been revealed about who they’re all playing yet.

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Update, April 14, 2017:

We have the tiniest bit of information about Kelly Marie Tran’s character thanks to that Last Jedi panel at Celebration. She’ll be play Rose. Johnson said Rose is addition with the most significant part to play. She’s a maintenance worker for the Resistance, but she gets pulled into an adventure with Finn.

Story Details

The Last Jedi will continue the Skywalker saga. We don’t have any kind of official synopsis yet, but we do have vague comments from cast members, less vague comments from Johnson, and straight up rumor and speculation (you’ll find that in its own category below). Let’s stick with firsthand tidbits.

In a January 9 interview with USA Today, Johnson said we’ll learn more about our new heroes, Rey, Poe, and Finn in Episode VIII: “I wanted to know more about each of them, and that doesn’t just mean information or backstory. Figure out what’s the most difficult thing each of them could be challenged with now — let’s throw that at them and dig into what really makes them tick by seeing how they handle that.”

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He also said The Last Jedi will go into the relationship between Luke and Rey with Luke being the “emotional entry point” into the film. The movie will begin exactly where The Force Awakens left off.

And in unsurprising news, the Millennium Falcon is back. Johnson posted a photo of the Falcon’s Dejarik table months ago:

A photo posted by Rian Johnson (@riancjohnson) on

Update, February 17, 2017:

You know how Jedi is both singular and plural? That double meaning makes it hard to interpret the title of Episode VIII, but we have an update on that front. In other languages, “The Last” qualifier determines whether Jedi is being used as a singular or a plural, and as IGN points out, the official German translation, Die Letzten Jedi, points to plural. Spanish, Italian, and French translations support the plural. So, who does/do The Last Jedi refer to?

The obvious answer is Luke and Rey. They could be the last Force users following the Jedi way. Luke trains Rey, they become The Last Jedi. And part of me wonders if they will come up with another way of interacting the Force that isn’t constrained by the rules of the Jedi Order. Or! Luke does die, and he leaves Rey and Kylo Ren behind. Kylo Ren isn’t a Sith; he’s a dark side user. Him turning to the light would take some doing because no one forgets that you murdered Han Solo, Ben, but he could change his path. Star Wars is about hope and considering Darth Vader’s redemption-like ending, it would be interesting for Ben to parallel his grandfather and to make the move to the other side before the last few scenes of the final movie of the trilogy.

Update, March 8, 2017:

During the 2017 Disney annual meeting of shareholders, company CEO Bob Iger shared a little bit of footage from The Last Jedi. L.A. Times reporter Daniel Miller shared some of what they saw. It picked up with Rey handing Luke his lightsaber and featured a line of dialogue. Luke asks Rey, “Who are you?” Uhh, if she was Luke’s daughter, wouldn’t he know? Or maybe he’s lost his noodle and doesn’t feel any sort of connection through the Force to her?

Miller also says the following was in the footage: Chewbacca, General Organa, Finn, and some different locales.

Update, April 14, 2017:

The first teaser debuted at Star Wars Celebration!

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The final line sticks with me. Luke says, “I only know one truth. It’s time for the Jedi to end.” That plays into my idea of The Last Jedi meaning not the end of Rey or Luke, but the end of the Jedi Order as we know it. Which I’m okay with.

Anyway. The beats of the teaser play out similarly to what we saw for The Force Awakens. It hints at Rey’s training and also, I think, Kylo’s–his theme plays when she mentions “darkness.” She’s training with Luke. Finn’s recovering. Things are blowing up. We noticed more than the bare bones though:

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Update, May 23, 2017:

It’s that time! Vanity Fair has released four covers featuring photos from The Last Jedi by Annie Leibovitz. The covers feature: Rey and Luke; Phasma (with her helmet off!!), Kylo Ren, and Hux; Poe, Finn, and Rose; and General Leia. This is just a tease of Leibovitz’s photos on set. Drool over the covers now and prepare for a release of the full portfolio tomorrow.

At first blush, the Resistance group has new outfits… except for Finn, still draped in his epic jacket that once belonged to Poe. Leia is looking regal as hell. And Phasma without a helmet could mean we actually see the character’s face in the film!

Update, May 24, 2017:

One day after teasing us with a quick glimpse of their The Last Jedi-centric cover shoot (which you can view below), Vanity Fair has dropped one behemoth of a story from the set of the forthcoming Star Wars chapter. The large part, the piece chronicles the emotional experiences of Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, and director Rian Johnson in returning to this new leg of the Star Wars saga; Hamill weighed in about the physical tolls of shooting on the remote island of Skellig Michael, and weighed in once again on his mixed feelings about Han’s death scene. Unsurprisingly, the cast and crew spoke with heavy hearts about Carrie Fisher, whom has clearly left a profound impact on all of her colleagues and friends.

Additionally, the story does give us a few interesting tidbits about what to expect from The Last Jedi.

First off, it seems as though Luke hasn’t been as lonely as we may have thought. Johnson reveals that the film’s crew constructed a small village of “beehive-shaped huts” on Skellig Michael, which doubles for the planet of Ahch-To, home to a society of monk-like “caretaker creatures” among whom Luke has been residing.

On the other end of the spectrum of new worlds we’ll be exploring is Canto Bight, a “glittering casino city” where Finn (who will begin the film in a state of medical recooperation, inside a “bacta suit”) and his new ally, Resistance maintenance worker and ostensible aspiring hero Rose Tico (played by Kelly Marie Tran) will find themselves setting out on a mission. Johnson calls Canto Bight “a Star Wars Monte Carlo–type environment, a little James Bond–ish, a little To Catch a Thief,” and asserts that this is where we’ll find the mass of Star Wars alien beings that are always so much fun to observe. (Johnson goes on to call Canto Bight “a playground for rich assholes.”)

Rose isn’t the only new character of note. Vanity Fair has given us pretty thrilling first looks at the characters played by Laura Dern and Benicio Del Toro: “a prominent officer in the Resistance named Vice Admiral Holdo” and “a ‘shady character’ of unclear allegiances…who goes unnamed in the film but is called DJ by the filmmakers,” Johnson says, assuring us that we’ll understand why when we meet him onscreen.

We also got a hint of how fan favorite Poe Dameron will be spending his time. The article alludes to a scene in which he’s seen training Veronica Ngo’s character, a gunnar named Paige, who happens to be Rose’s sister. More intriguingly is this bit of info from Oscar Isaac himself: “. “We did this scene where Carrie has to slap me,” he said. “I think we did 27 takes in all, and Carrie leaned into it every time, man. She loved hitting me.” And Leia won’t just be relegated to a slap sequence–Fisher reportedly has much greater screentime in The Last Jedi than she did in The Force Awakens.

So what else can we expect? Other than the influences of World War II movies and “funky ’60s samurai stuff” (Johnson cites Henry King’s Twelve O’Clock High and Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! and Hideo Gosha’s Three Outlaw Samurai), we’ll just have to wait for the next batch of info!

Update, July 17, 2017:

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Director and writer Rian Johnson brought a special look at The Last Jedi to D23 Expo 2017. The reel goes behind the scenes of Episode VIII and shows glimpses of General Organa, Luke, Rey, Rose and Finn in First Order officer disguises, and so much more. You can spot several new creatures, new characters, the casino, and Daisy Ridley training with a lightsaber against many lightsaber-wielding foes. There are even glimpses of the caretakers on Ahch-To. Review a break down of the featurette here at Nerdist.

New character posters for The Last Jedi dropped during D23 Expo, too. They showcase the likes of Leia, Kylo Ren, Rey, and more in bold, stylized red ensembles. View all the posters right this way.

Updates, July 21, 2017:

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Kylo Ren’s ship in The Last Jedi has been revealed thanks to The Star Wars Show. He’ll be flying a TIE silencer, which shoots laser cannons and missile launchers and has a fancy, intimidating name. It doesn’t only fight, it silences. The StarWars.com databank entry says there’s no other First Order craft like the TIE silencer.

A wave of books will be released leading into The Last Jedi. Entertainment Weekly shared an exclusive look at the Journey to Star Wars: The Last Jedi earlier this week ahead of Comic-Con. Though there aren’t direct connections, titles like Phasma and Leia Princess of Alderaan will give additional insight into the characters that will help inform their actions in The Last Jedi. There will even be a book that collects short stories about Canto Bight, the casino planet set to be featured in Episode VIII.

StarWars.com followed up with a report from Comic-Con confirming The Last Jedi novelization by Jason Fry, the Visual Dictionary, and more.

Update, July 21, 2017:

Porgs are confirmed! The creatures hanging out on Ahch-To were rumored to be called porgs, and the rumor is true. StarWars.com confirmed their names after the cute little beings were shown in The Last Jedi behind-the-scenes reel. Porgs reside on the cliffs of the planet and are kind of like puffins. Important to note: baby porgs are called porglets. They’ll be in Episode VIII, and an upcoming book, Chewie and the Porgs, will feature the creatures.

Update, August 7, 2017:

Need more porg in your life? We all do. Star Wars is helping scratch the porg itch by taking to Twitter to share concept art for The Last Jedi by Jake Lunt Davies. You can really see their puffin-like nature in these illustrations. Who else is imagining porgs on parade?

Update, August 11, 2017:

The last part of EW’s The Last Jedi cover story touches on a variety of characters, including one Kylo Ren. Episode VIII will delve into how he’s dealing with the fact that he murdered his father. The loss of Han Solo plays into the events of the upcoming film. Johnson explained, “a figurative ghost of Han had to be present throughout this entire film.”

Chewbacca is especially affected by the absence of Han. He’s processing his grief and as a result, EW says he “is a little more volatile than usual.”

The biggest takeaway for me from this last story is that EW also mentions Maz Kanata has an even smaller part in The Last Jedi than she did Episode VII. Considering that she wasn’t in the film for terribly long, I’m guessing this won’t be when we get the story about how she ended up with the lightsaber that used to belong to Anakin and then Luke.

EW’s The Last Jedi cover story is on stands Friday, August 11, and they’re sharing a couple more stories online (see additional reports from the past week below). First up, they have information on Rey’s family. Well, information about how it could be important to the movie. EW says The Last Jedi “will finally resolve the question that fans have been debating for two years.”

But how key is Rey’s past? Star Wars has had family at the heart of its saga films with a focus on the Skywalkers. Does Rey need to fit that model? Johnson told EW, “To me, it’s important insofar as it’s important to her. And I think it’s important to her in terms of what is her place in all of this? What’s going to define her in this story?”

Daisy Ridley weighed in what Rey expects to get from finding out about her origins versus how much it makes an impact. It will affect the character, but the discovery may not provide all Rey has been searching for. “You can always look for answers and that doesn’t mean that the rest of your life is so easy. It’s not like, oh, I know who my parents are so now everything falls into shape, especially in the Star Wars world,” Ridley said.

The article also touches on Finn’s past and how much it will be explored (tl;dr: not so much in The Last Jedi). Read more at EW.

Update, August 10, 2017:

EW’s coverage of The Last Jedi includes a look at Carrie Fisher in her final performance as Leia. In The Force Awakens, Leia lost Han and her son, in a way. She’s also leading a Resistance movement in a time when the primary governing system in the galaxy, the New Republic, has taken a major blow. She’ll be carrying all that with her in Episode VIII, and according to EW, her story will be tied to Poe Dameron’s. Oscar Isaac said Poe has become a surrogate son for Leia.

“I think Leia knows she won’t be around forever and she, with tough love, wants to push Poe to be more than the badass pilot, to temper his heroic impulses with wisdom and clarity,” Isaac told EW.

Writer director Rian Johnson confirmed the story for The Last Jedi remained the same following the loss of Fisher. While they couldn’t have known to bring closure to the character, Johnson said, “Watching the film, there’s going to be a very emotional reaction to what she does in this movie.”

How about more information on Benicio Del Toro’s character in The Last Jedi? EW has a tiny bit of intel on DJ. Including this description from Lucasfilm: “DJ is an enigmatic figure whose tattered, threadbare clothes and lackadaisical attitude conceal a sharp mind and expert skills.” He’s a slicer/codebreaker, too, and in it for the money, which reminds me of Han Solo.

I can get behind a lackadaisical attitude.

DJ is connected to Finn and Rose’s jaunt to Canto Bight, but no one gave up details on the hows and whys. They did share more of how the casino looks–you can find an image of the exterior in the article. It has quite a prequel trilogy look.

Update, August 9, 2017:

It’s that time! Entertainment Weekly (EW) is here with a cover story for The Last Jedi; it will be on stands on August 11, but you can get a preview of the covers above. They feature either Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker or Daisy Ridley’s Rey, which means you’ll probably buy two issues of EW.

To go with the cover story, EW has a gallery of exclusive images from Episode VIII. They show look at all the main characters and will tie to stories EW is releasing in the next two days. See Finn at the helm of a ship, the TIE silencer, a shot of the exterior of Canto Bight, and more in this gallery.

The initial story to be released from EW’s The Last Jedi coverage focuses on Rey and Luke Skywalker. It’s centered on a single theme: what’s it like to meet your hero? And not just any hero, a hero on the level of Luke freaking Skywalker. Rey knows a Luke from stories and legends. It can’t be easy for him to live up to what she knows.

EW’s Anthony Breznican writes this Luke is a broken man. Hamill told him Luke’s line about it being time for the Jedi to end shook him. “What would make someone that alienated from his original convictions? That’s not something that you can just make up in an afternoon, and I really struggled with this thing.”

So, Rey doesn’t exactly get a fuzzy, emotion-laden greeting from Luke. And as someone who was abandoned on Jakku and knows rejection intimately, it’s a gut punch. “Regardless of everything else, she’s been welcomed. No one ever really turns away from her,” Ridley said.

Maybe we’re getting a get-off-my-isolated-island grumpy Luke. I’m curious to see if we’ll learn what made him that way. He thought Ben Solo was the chosen one (that statement is from Hamill), and that didn’t turn out so well what with Ben/Kylo Ren murdering Luke’s other students. Something like that is going to leave a mark.

What’s that, you want more Rose and Finn details? EW has those, too! Finn didn’t work with the Resistance in The Force Awakens because he was devoted to their cause. He escaped the order and by befriending Rey, he sort of got tangled up in it. The Last Jedi sees him going back to the goal of ditching it all and heading to the Outer Rim–after he recovers from his injuries inflicted by Kylo Ren.

But to some, like Rose Tico, Finn is a hero. She thinks Finn is a big deal. Actor Kelly Marie Tran told EW Rose is good at what she does–being a mechanic–but she’s not known. “She’s not cool. She’s this nobody, this background player, which is what makes her interesting. She’s not the best. She’s not royalty. She’s someone who is just like everyone else,” she said.

Rose’s admiration of Finn helps him stay with the Resistance, and as we’ve already learned, they end up on a mission on Canto Bight, a casino city on the planet Cantonica.

Part three of EW’s coverage is all about the creatures and aliens on Ahch-To, including the popular porgs. The puppets created by Neal Scanlan’s creature shop have stolen the heart of the interwebs. They were inspired by puffins that sometimes cover the island of Skellig Michael.

But they’re not the only life on Ahch-To besides Luke. There are the Caretakers, which The Last Jedi writer director Rian Johnson calls “fish-bird type aliens.” They’re all female a la “a remote sort of little nunnery,” according to Johnson.

https://twitter.com/Breznican/status/895337550885277696

The Caretakers aren’t pumped about having Luke on the island, but they do communicate with him in ““a blubbery sort of Scottish fish talk.”

https://twitter.com/Breznican/status/895338197323988992

Next, it’s time for a look at the villains of The Last Jedi. EW has the deets on Supreme Leader Snoke’s protectors, the Praetorian Guard (which we discussed on Nerdist News in June, dontcha know). Johnson said their name was pulled from Roman history, while their costumes were influenced by samurai in that they need to be ready for combat. Since they’re bodyguards for Snoke, Kylo Ren will be going face to face with the enigmatic character in Episode VIII.

So, we’ll meet Snoke, but Johnson cautioned we’re not going to learn every minute detail about him. “Similar to Rey’s parentage, Snoke is here to serve a function in the story. And a story is not a Wikipedia page,” he told EW. He mentioned we didn’t really learn any background details about Darth Sidious/Emperor Palpatine in the original trilogy.

Tl;dr: the internet will probably be able to keep the Snoke theories rolling for years. Decades, even.

Update, September 5, 2017:

https://twitter.com/therealkzq/status/902722903606734848

Hungarian film magazine Cinemania Mozimánia shared an image of Luke Skywalker in a darker than usual look on a recent cover. Does it mean we’ll see the Jedi Master being pulled towards the dark side? Or is it just what he happens to have on hand in his closet on Ahch-To? It does seem like the kind of climate that requires warmer gear and a rain coat. We discussed the possibilities for Luke’s style choices in Nerdist News Talks Back:

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Meanwhile, Empire Magazine has another image of Luke in his moody threads, and he’s alongside Rey on a holographic cover. To go with the cover, the October issue of the publication will feature stories abou the upcoming movie, and they’ve released some tidbits online. The biggest takeaway: The Last Jedi won’t go into Supreme Leader Snoke’s history. Rian Johnson told Empire: “We got the whole story of Palpatine’s rise to power in the prequels, but in the original films he’s exactly what he needs to be, which is just The Emperor. He’s a dark force: the scary thing behind the thing. That was entirely how I approached Snoke. I wasn’t interested in explaining where he came from or telling his history, except where it serves this story.”

When you think of Snoke like Palpatine, Johnson’s approach makes total sense. We don’t need to know everything for Snoke to serve his purpose.

Empire also has a photo of Poe Dameron’s upgraded X-wing. It’s been retrofitted with a temporary accelerator pod. It suggests Poe will be involved in some key missions–even more so than before. It’s going to come in useful when he needs to get away in a hurry.

Update, October 8, 2017:

A new trailer for The Last Jedi is arriving on October 9, 2017. Lucasfilm and Good Morning America shared the news that the trailer will arrive during halftime on ESPN’s Monday Night Football. Based on past trailer releases, it will be online immediately, so don’t panic if you don’t have ESPN.

To increase hype and excitement for the trailer, Lucasfilm released a couple of teases. The above video is all about lightsabers with Kylo Ren picking up his lightsaber in one shot and Luke taking his lightsaber from Rey. I cannot deal with his trembling hand.

This tease shows a little more of Rey’s training:

Update, October 21, 2017:

Laura Dern made an appearance on Ellen and shared a new image of Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo in The Last Jedi. She’s surrounded by members of the Resistance. We discuss what we know about the character in this post.

Update, October 10, 2017:

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The latest trailer for The Last Jedi arrived on October 9 and gave us a look into the current bleak state of affairs. Rey, who was left behind on Jakku by her family, has gone to Luke for guidance and training, and he’s scared of her. He recognizes she has incredible “raw” power, and it seems Snoke senses the same power within Rey. She looks like she’s feeling lost, and that can drive people to make desperate decisions–you know, like asking Kylo Ren for help.

Things don’t look optimistic for Rey or Luke, and they’re not looking particularly sunny for Leia either. The scene we see her in is cut with a scene with her son, Ben/Kylo, and he’s considering blowing up the ship she’s on. Way to keep being a jerk, Kylo.

Besides the Force users, the trailer shows a glimpse of First Order forces moving against the Resistance hideout on the planet Crait. Finn is elsewhere in the galaxy, undercover as a First Order officer and he faces off with Captain Phasma. His buddy Poe is trying to rally the Resistance. Read about everything we noticed in the trailer here.

Update, October 9, 2017:

A new trailer for The Last Jedi is coming in mere hours, and Lucasfilm has released a poster for the occasion. Luke Skywalker looms tall over the poster. He and Leia are in the middle of the light side and dark… wait a minute! Why is Poe with the other dark side characters? Is he also going undercover? Has he changed alliances? What does it mean? Maybe the upcoming trailer will have some clues.

Rumors and Speculation

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According to the rumor mill at Making Star Wars, we’ll learn Luke Skywalker is hanging onto a memento from his past in The Last Jedi. Specifically, he kept the red kyber crystal from Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker’s lightsaber. He keeps it close and wears the crystal as a necklace. Is it a keepsake? Is he wearing it to keep it safe from Kylo Ren? Jessica Chobot speculates in the above video.

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Kylo Ren has a new ride in The Last Jedi. His new starfighter design was leaked via a Star Wars toy (which happens); Making Star Wars provided a closer look at the ship, and Nerdist News breaks down what it means in the above edition of Nerdist News.

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A big reveal could be ahead in The Last Jedi. StarWarsNews.net reports Japanese promotional material for the film states “The most shocking truth in Star Wars history will soon be revealed!” Shocking is a word open to subjective interpretation, and in a universe with Darth Vader revealing himself as Luke’s dad and Kylo Ren being Han’s son, there’s no shortage of big surprises. So what could it mean? Jessica Chobot speculates about the possibilities in Nerdist News. Watch the above video and learn all about ’em.

Update, June 1, 2017:

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If one were to analyze the source of leaks about blockbuster films, I’d wager toy packaging would be responsible for a decent percentage. LEGO images that leaked and were pulled in a hurry showed information about the look of Snoke in The Last Jedi. We learned about them from Making Star Wars. The images show the mysterious Supreme Leader wearing a gold robe. What could this stylish apparel choice mean for the character? Jessica Chobot breaks it down in Nerdist News.

Update, June 7, 2017:

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Supreme Leader Snoke is on the brains of many Star Wars fans. Who is he? What’s his story? What will he be doing in The Last Jedi? So many questions, and the interwebs has all the speculation. That speculation is fueled by rumors, such as a recent one from Making Star Wars about Snoke’s personal guards. They have a sketch of one of the Praetorian guards at their site. The red armor makes them look reminiscent of Emperor Palpatine’s Imperial guards. What could they mean for Episode VIII? Nerdist News‘s Jessica Chobot breaks it down in the above video.

Update June 14, 2017:

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Creatures occupy all sorts of fascinating corners in the Star Wars universe. The Force Awakens brought us the rathtar and happabore, and it looks like The Last Jedi will feature a massive sea creature of sorts. StarWarsNews.net reported the beastie is around nine feet tall. They shared a rendering of the creature, and you can check it out in the latest Nerdist News.

This post will be continuously updated as we learn more about the film, so stay tuned for the eventual synopsis, trailer, poster—all the juicy information.

Images: Lucasfilm/Disney