The following contains major spoilers for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
After 42 years, eight cinematic episodes, two official spin-off films, one (un)official holiday special, hundreds of now-decanonized books, multiple TV series and straight-to-video specials, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has finally arrived. It hit screens this weekend and sparked a discourse unseen since… well, the last Star Wars film. Here at Nerdist we’ve reviewed the flick and written about our feelings both good and bad. But despite all of that intense processing, we still have a lot of questions… 100, in fact…
1) How did zombie-Palpatine Return? The recent finale of Star Wars Rebels opened the door for Force time travel but instead, we got… “dark science, cloning, secrets only the Sith knew.”
2) Who is Rey’s grandma? Like, really, who in the galaxy was making sweet Sith love to the emperor?
3) What exactly is a Force Dyad?
4) Was the original Force Dyad Leia and Luke?
5) When did Rey start calling Leia “master”? How did that relationship transpire?
6) Are there still any other Force users in the galaxy apart from the core crew?
7) What happened to Broom Kid?
8) How did Maz Katana get Luke’s lightsaber in The Force Awakens?
9) Why was Rey killing Palpatine at first supposed to be good for Palpatine, but then when she killed Palpatine it was actually bad for Palpatine?
10) Has J.J. Abrams ever watched Star Wars: Rebels?
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11) What did Finn want to tell Rey?
12) Was Finn Force-sensitive? If so…
13) Why didn’t he use the Force to help Rey against Palpatine?
14) Why couldn’t he have been the other half of Rey’s Dyad? How would Palpatine know?
15) Why did Rose allow Finn to potentially sacrifice himself on a suicide mission after risking her own life to save him in The Last Jedi?
16) How did Rose get the Commander title and why didn’t we hear anyone say it or see her commanding anybody?
17) Why did J.J. and Lucasfilm do Kelly Marie Tran and Rose so dirty?
18) Why couldn’t Rey’s parents just have been nobodies? Literally every emotional beat in this movie still works without her being a Palpatine.
19) Despite all of that, how cool was it that Villanelle was Rey’s mom?
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20) Are we going to talk about the fact that the First Order was apparently stealing brown babies and turning them into Stormtroopers?
21) Would Star Wars: The Final Order have been a better title?
22) How horrifying was it when C-3PO was like, “I don’t wanna get mind-wiped,” and then everyone else was like, “Sorry, doing it anyway!”?
23) Do people in the Star Wars universe see droids as people or not? They seem to walk a fine line.
24) Did anyone fill C-3PO in on the sacrifice he made after his memory was restored?
25) What’s Lando been up to all this time, other than helping Luke with that one mission?
26) How come there aren’t any Ewoks in the Resistance?
27) For that matter, why didn’t we see more Ewoks on that shot of Endor?
28) Why didn’t Rey use her sick lightning fingers after she blew up that transport? (But for good this time.)
29) Can you really Force heal someone back from the dead? And if so, why didn’t Kylo and Rey just continuously smooch and heal and die and heal forever?
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30) If you can Force heal someone back from the dead, why didn’t Anakin do that for Padme instead of going all Darth Vader?
31) Why did Ben have no lines after he was redeemed?
32) How much of the movie was it Adam Driver actually in the Kylo suit?
33) Why did Kylo fix his helmet?
34) Why didn’t the Emperor just present himself to Kylo instead of making Snoke?
36) If he was a clone, who was he a clone of?
37) What drove Clone Snoke?
38) Did he know he was just a clone?
39) What were his overarching plans?
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40) Did the Emperor just create him to be killed so Kylo Ren would become Supreme Leader? Seems a bit convoluted.
41) How many Snoke clones were there?
42) How did Clone Snoke become the Supreme Leader?
43) Why wouldn’t Palpatine just have made Kylo Supreme Leader or done it himself?
44) If Richard E. Grant’s character was a Sith leftover, where had he been hiding?
45) And when did he first infiltrate the First Order?
46) If the Emperor had a fleet of planet-killing Star Destroyers, why did the First Order have to spend so long making Starkiller Base?
47) Who was flying all of those planet-killing Star Destroyers?
48) Were the hooded figures in Palpatine’s lair really there? Or were they just the spirits of the Sith?
49) How many clones did Palpatine actually make?
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50) How long had Palpatine and his gross buds been in the Unknown Regions?
51) Where did all of Palpatine’s friends go in between Kylo meeting them and Rey arriving? Were they simply an illusion?
52) In that case, were the Clone Snokes also not real?
53) If Rey and Kylo are massively strong Force users, why wouldn’t they have sensed Palpatine?
54) Why can’t we just admit that both Rey and eventually Kylo are the definition of a Gray Jedi here?
55) What was the awakening that sparked the whole Sequel Trilogy? If both Rey and Kylo were already alive and Palpatine had been chilling in space the whole time, what was the change that was sensed?
56) By killing zombie Palpatine and his collection of Sith energy, did Rey just release all of it out into the universe and seed a massive new Sith army in the process?
57) Was Rey’s ability to talk to animals a hint at her Dark Side roots?
58) Was that ability an homage to the classic EU character Jacen who could do the same and eventually turned to the Dark Side?
59) Why does Disney insist on taking powerful concepts like the Rule of Two and, rather than utilizing them, shifting them into less nuanced versions of themselves?
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60) Why didn’t they actually put Ahsoka in the movie?
61) Was Han inside Kylo’s mind or a Force ghost or something else entirely?
62) Was it Leia’s sacrifice that enabled Ben to see his father?
63) Does J.J. Abrams really think that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kiss satisfies the desire for queer representation?
64) Why didn’t they just roll with the natural chemistry between Finn and Poe?
65) Is Chewbacca immortal?
66) Where was the second First Order transport—the one Chewbacca was actually aboard?
67) Why didn’t Ben and Chewie’s relationship come into play at all? Surely that was like his big furry uncle and yet even when they were on the same ship there was zero impact or connection.
68) Why did they hire one of the guys who wrote Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice to write The Rise of Skywalker?
69) Why did they insist on writing in the obvious The Last Jedi shade?
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70) Why didn’t Disney just commit to the ghastly and impressive horror film that the Palpatine stuff hinted at?
71) How come there were only like 15 Jedi in Rey’s head when she took on their spirits?
72) Why did Anakin say, “Bring balance to the Force like I did…”? Lol if you’d done that none of us would be here!
73) When Lando asked Jannah where she was from and she stated she didn’t know, what did he mean when he said, “Let’s find out?”
74) Will we see a Lando/Jannah spin-off?
75) How come Leia gave up her lightsaber and Jedi path to protect Ben but he ended up dying anyway even though she didn’t pursue being a Jedi?
76) Where was Leia’s lightsaber this whole time?
77) If it was on Ahch-To, wouldn’t Rey have heard the call of that saber while she was there?
78) Where were the Ahch-To Guardian nuns when Rey returned?
79) What’s Rey planning to do on Tatooine?
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80) Did she just move into Luke’s old house?
81) Has Rey ever had a tall, frosty glass of blue milk?
82) Did she at least stay and chat for a while with that lonely old Tatooine lady?
83) How long until a new scavenger/underdog finds those two buried lightsabers?
84) Did Rey make her new saber from Kylo’s old one?
85) Does that mean she went back to the second Death Star to find it?
86) Are there yellow Kyber crystals? Or did she combine two other ones? What two colors make yellow?
87) Do the Jedi continue on from here?
88) Luke seemed to state that if the mission was won, the Jedi would continue, but under whose tutelage?
89) Did Lando keep the Falcon? (We certainly hope so!)
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90) Are we thinking too much about this?
91) Why were they all so surprised when the Stormtroopers had jetpacks?
92) Was Hux actually dead or just critically injured?
93) Why did the Empire and the First Order hate all colors except for black, white, and red so much? What’s so objectionable about purple and green?
94) Why is everyone in the Resistance so okay with killing Stormtroopers, especially now that we know they’re mostly forced to be evil grunts after being abducted as children and brainwashed to the cause? (This seems like a silly question in what is ostensibly a war film but they kill SO many Stormtroopers in The Rise of Skywalker that it starts to feel slightly gross with the context around their creation.)
95) What happened to all the characters from Rebels, Resistance, and other Star Wars properties who would have seemingly been around during this period?
96) What are Poe and Finn doing now?
97) Does the Resistance still exist? If so, what is it resisting?
98) With Rey and Leia gone, who will establish the future governing body?
99) What happened to the Knights of Ren, and what was the point of them?
100) …do we need to get a life?
We’re sure you all have your own questions after the divisive new film and we’ll do our best to keep answering them as we head into the holidays and the new year!
Feature Image: Disney/Lucasfilm
