While the first trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has been revealed, it doesn't actually show us much about what the forthcoming movie is actually about. It especially doesn't show us much about how Luke Skywalker, the character whose name can be found in the title, fits into it all. While a number of things about Luke Skywalker's future would seem certain, fans obviously have a lot of questions.
One fan decided to put those questions directly to Mark Hamill. Hamill is a frequent Twitter user, though he tends to use the platform more to troll fans than give them any actual answers. In a recent case, he sort of did both, as when a fan asked him to describe The Rise of Skywalker in only three words, he did just that, and the answer, while humorously accurate, is also slightly heartbreaking.
This certainly seems to be true. From all reports, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will be the last episode for all of the original trilogy characters. It's possible it could even be the last episode for many of the new characters. While we know we'll be getting more Star Wars movies in the future, everything that we know that is coming is set to tell different stories, and thus is expected to have different characters.
Of course, this is nothing new. This trilogy was always expected to be a "passing the torch" story, so we knew that Mark Hamill wasn't going to make Star Wars movies forever. Still for those of us for whom Luke Skywalker has been an important character for our entire lives, knowing that the end is almost here is still a bit of a shock.
At this point it seems quite clear that Luke Skywalker will return in the final film as a ghost. It seemed the only way that made any sense based on what we knew of the Star Wars universe after Luke had apparently faded away at the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Hamill himself has seemed to confirm this, making it one of the few things that we know about the upcoming movie.
The trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker gave us Luke's voice, but we never saw him. Of course, the trailer for Star Wars: The Force Awakens also gave us Luke's voice, and the man never spoke in the movie, so what the trailer teases us with might never come to pass.
The next movie promises to be the end of the Skywalker Saga. The story has covered generations both within the world of the films, and among those that have watched them as well. It's going to be the end of an era. It will be difficult for the movie to live up to expectations, many think the new trilogy has already failed in that regard, but nevertheless, it's quite clear that The Rise of Skywalker will be a movie with massive impact when it arrives in December.
