“The Rise of Skywalker” is probably going to suck.

The “Sequel Trilogy” mercifully comes to an end this Friday. There are a lot of questions that still need to be answered in this final installment, and if I’m being honest I don’t expect most of them to be answered in a satisfying (or cohesive) way. To me, this latest set of movies is a life lesson in how a lack of foresight can ruin even the greatest of franchises.

Let’s bring it back to 2016. Believe it or not, JJ Abrams was given the reins to the new SW trilogy and then proceeded to make moves without any semblance of a plan at all. SW buffs will remember that the original release date for ‘The Force Awakens’ was pushed back 7 months so JJ could figure out what the hell he was trying to do. Despite the positive reviews of TFA, as an entry into the universe it really didn’t add much that was new. It was really ‘A New Hope’ in new packaging: Stormtroopers are back, but under the new name “The First Order.” A desert planet that is NOT Tattooine plays heavily into the first act of the movie. It even had a ground based Death Star knock-off where the final battle took place. Inspired, I am not.

People that I complained to all responded the same way: “It’s a setup for the entire trilogy! You can’t expect too many ground-breaking things. Besides, they killed Han Solo!” And that argument does hold value - the first entry into a long narrative can’t be too extreme in what it offers, otherwise you’ll lose the audience members that can’t hang. But ‘The Force Awakens’ was a little too conservative for me. Like ‘when you’re trying not to offend someone that you know is particularly sensitive about the meat industry but you want to talk about the new Popeyes chicken sandwich’ conservative. Like walking on eggshells, you know?*

So now we address the elephant in the “sequel trilogy” room: The Last Jedi.

Rian Johnson has come under a lot of fire for this movie for a variety of reasons, but I will defend him and this movie to the death because he was given the ending of TFA and told, “do something with it.” No, “hey, I think it’d be cool to explore this,” or “wouldn’t an explanation for why Snoke looks like a testicle be nice?” Despite being the director of a second movie in a trilogy he had no material to work off of, or more alarmingly, nothing to work towards.

There are a lot of arguments about the Last Jedi, but the one I’ll focus on is the treatment of Tattooine’s pride and joy, Luke Skywalker. Fervent Star Wars fans absolutely hated the way Luke’s character was treated, but I think that it added considerable depth and complexity to a character that otherwise low key acted like that annoying teacher’s pet in grade school.

A recap for the people with actual things to do in their lives other than think about Star Wars all day: in The Last Jedi it is revealed to the audience that Luke has basically isolated himself from the universe and cut himself off from the Force because he inadvertently created Kylo Ren by definitely / possibly / not** trying to kill Ben Solo in his sleep. The reason for that attempted murder? My guy saw powerful Force visions of everyone and everything that he loved being destroyed by Ben. If I could see how terribly any of my relationships would end at the start, you don’t think I would have preemptively tried to do something about it? But alas, I cannot use the Force and instead it’s a Tuesday night and I’m drinking White Claw to numb the pain.

Again, Rian was given the director nod and nothing else - no overarching Marvel-esque plan, no narrative guidance, nothing. So he tried to do something different and also had to answer this one extremely important question:

Where the hell was Luke Skywalker in “The Force Awakens”?

All you cotdamn mouth breathers are so busy complaining about how “Luke would never try to kill a child” and “Luke would never drink fresh titty-milk in front of Rey” that you guys are forgetting that in ‘The Force Awakens’ he’s already AWOL. He’s so off the grid that the main characters think he’s a myth, and his BEST FRIEND DIES and he’s nowhere to be seen! If we’re going off the merits that the original trilogy has established for Luke, then to me his absence in his friends’ times of need is more unlike ‘Luke’ than getting super bummed out about his nephew murdering everything and everyone. For Luke to throw in the towel and effectively say “f*ck it” to the universe and it’s issues, he must have seen or gone through some crazy life-altering event to completely remove himself from the equation. THAT is why Rian had to be so drastic with ‘TLJ’ Luke. Because if Luke showed up and was like, “Hey, what’s up gang? Why the long faces? The Force will guide us!” that would be infinitely worse than what we ended up getting.

If you’re going to criticize, you have to be consistent. If you’re going to take over a world famous movie franchise with pre-existing rules and characters, you have to have a plan in place regarding how you’re going to use them. I go on this somewhat (ok, very) tangential Luke Skywalker rant to show how a lack of planning effectively brought this character arc into existence - and how if you’re trying to create a coherent storyline and you make dumb decisions on a whim, it’s going to come back and bite you in the butt.

I will undoubtedly go see The Rise of Skywalker in theatres. I will go with an open mind and I really do hope that JJ & company manage to dig themselves out of the hole that they put themselves in! But even if it is an enjoyable experience, I’ll always be thinking in the back of my mind about how the whole trilogy could have been better. Thankfully I have The Mandalorian to remind me of everything I love about Star Wars… as well as my one true love, Baby Yoda.***

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*Finally had the new Popeyes chicken sandwich. Can confirm it is the greatest chicken sandwich to ever exist.
**The Rashomon nod in the ‘The Last Jedi’ is one of my favorite things ever.
***Yeah… I’m not very good at ending these things.