Following the massive shakeup to the status quo that was Star Wars: The Last Jedi nobody knows quite what to expect from the forthcoming Episode IX, but a new report indicates it may go back to a familiar place. It appears that the final episode of the current Star Wars trilogy is planning on doing some filming at the Cardington Airship Sheds in Bedforshire, UK. The location was previously used in both Star Wars: A New Hope and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as the rebel base at Yavin IV.
The report comes via an airship historian who informed Star Wars News Net that multiple people at the Airship Sheds informed him of the plans to film there. The fact that we're not dealing with anonymous sources, and that the same source originally confirmed the plans for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story to return to the location, gives us some degree of confidence that this report is more than simply a rumor.
Of course, even knowing that Star Wars Episode IX is returning to this location is no guarantee that the plot will return to Yavin IV. A change in set dressing and a few careful camera angles and the movie can make the same place look like somewhere totally different. The hanger is little more than a large enclosed space, and that's good for filming lots of different things. It could be any large building but it could just as easily be dressed like any soundstage to be a cave or something of the sort on literally any alien world the movie needs to create. It could be a large hanger at Black Spire Outpost on the planet Batuu, the location created for the new Star Wars Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland and Walt Disney World which has been referenced in the films and will almost certainly be used as a location in one of them eventually.
Still, the idea of seeing Yavin IV again is certainly an attractive one. The location on Crait where The Last Jedi ended was also presented as an old rebel base that had been abandoned. Yavin IV would be the same thing. The Rebel Alliance abandoned the location following the destruction of the Death Star since the Empire knew where it was. One assumes they haven't been back since. Perhaps the remaining Resistance is hopping between old bases as they stay one step ahead of the First Order. They likely couldn't stay there long, as the location is almost certainly known to the First Order, some pretty famous stuff happened there once, but perhaps it's where the new movie starts. It would be a fitting location for an opening scene I fully expect to see.
