George Lucas never intended for his treatments for Episodes VII, VIII, and IX in the deal to sweeten the pot.
However, the Mouse House decided to do away with Lucas’ vision for the end of his own story and instead recruited J.J. Abrams to beat the dead horse of the original trilogy. So, here are the 10 best unused concepts from the Star Wars sequel trilogy.
No Redemption For Ben Solo
When Colin Trevorrow was attached to direct and co-write Episode IX, he wrote a script entitled Duel of the Fates that Kathleen Kennedy was unhappy with. In this script, Ben Solo didn’t achieve redemption at the end. Despite the best efforts of Luke, Obi-Wan, and Yoda’s Force ghosts, Ben would’ve been too far gone to return to the light side of the Force.
Ben’s arc was telegraphed as a redemption arc from the beginning and he did irredeemable things like mass murder, so it would’ve been both less predictable and more justifiable not to redeem him at the end of the trilogy.
Visiting The Whills’ Microbiotic World
The prequel trilogy was about the birth of the Empire and the original trilogy was about the reign and fall of the Empire. To up the ante, the sequel trilogy needed to be about something more. In its final form, it’s just about the rise and fall of another empire that uses all the same tech as the previous one.
But according to lacking in Disney’s sequel trilogy.
Luke’s Lightsaber Kills A Porg
The Porgs were essentially the sequel trilogy’s Ewoks; the cutesy animals that were only created to sell merchandise. While younger viewers adored them, older viewers cynically rejected them. Early in The Last Jedi, some Porgs can be seen playing with Luke’s discarded lightsaber. There’s a fear that they’ll accidentally ignite it and one of them will die, but it ultimately doesn’t happen.
Some unused concept art shows the lightsaber blade going through a Porg’s head. This would’ve been a great moment of dark humor in a movie that often gets bogged down in its lofty philosophical ideas.
Leia Is A Full-Blown Jedi
After revealing Leia to be a Skywalker in Return of the Jedi, George Lucas wanted to show off her Force sensitivity in the sequel trilogy.
In The Last Jedi, Leia flew through space like Peter Pan, and in The Rise of Skywalker, there was a shoehorned-in flashback to Luke training Leia with an arbitrary reason given for why she gave it up. In Lucas’ version of the sequels, Leia could’ve been a full-blown Jedi.
Moving On From The Jedi And The Sith
At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, Emperor Palpatine declares himself to be “all the Sith,” and Rey declares herself to be “all the Jedi,” before triumphing over evil and bringing peace back to the galaxy. In Colin Trevorrow’s original script for Episode IX, Leia encouraged Rey to give up her pursuit of becoming a Jedi to instead become “something new.”
The dichotomy of the Jedi and the Sith clearly doesn’t work, as it keeps leading to empires and superweapons and genocide. It would’ve been an interesting conclusion to the Skywalker saga to see the galaxy moving past those antiquated religions.
Stormtrooper Laundry
In The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, there’s a storyboard for the scene in which Finn and Rose infiltrate the First Order’s fleet. They turn a corner on the ship and find a bunch of Stormtrooper suits hanging in a laundry room, drying off after a wash.
The Star Wars movies have never wanted us to take the Stormtroopers too seriously as a threat, and often include sight gags that undermine their power as a military force. This would’ve been a fine example of that.
Luke Dies In Episode IX
George Lucas kept the Star Wars cast informed of his plans for the sequel trilogy, and according to Mark Hamill, Lucas didn’t intend to kill off Luke Skywalker in the middle of the trilogy.
Luke still died in Lucas’ version of the trilogy, but it wasn’t until the very end. Hamill explained, “I happen to know that George didn’t kill Luke until the end of [Episode] IX.”
R2-D2 Is Telling The Whole Saga
Originally, George Lucas planned to end the Star Wars saga definitively with a flash-forward to the distant future in which the only survivors of the story’s events are the droids.
It would be revealed that the whole saga has been recounted to a Keeper of the Whills by R2-D2. This would’ve been a nice way to tie everything together in a neat bow.
Kylo Ren Meets Tor Valum
When J.J. Abrams took over Episode IX and turned it into The Rise of Skywalker, he resurrected Palpatine to be the movie’s antagonist. In Colin Trevorrow’s Duel of the Fates script, Palpatine wasn’t the main villain, and he remained dead. But he did appear in a holographic message he’d recorded to be played in the event of his death.
Instead, Kylo Ren would travel to Vader’s castle on Mustafar, find this message, and be directed to Palpatine’s master, Tor Valum. This character (who may or may not have been Darth Plagueis) was described as a 7,000-year-old Lovecraftian beast.
Luke Skywalker Has A Wife And Kids
One of the most controversial points of the Star Wars sequel trilogy was Luke Skywalker’s characterization as a bitter hermit who couldn’t care less about the Jedi or ridding the galaxy of evil. Even Mark Hamill was disappointed by where Rian Johnson took Luke’s arc in The Last Jedi.
Originally, Luke was going to be characterized closer to his Expanded Universe counterpart, with a wife and kids (who may or may not have been Mara Jade and Ben Skywalker). Timothy Zahn, writer of the Thrawn series, said that the Star Wars saga was intended as a generational thing, with the prequels focusing on Anakin, the original trilogy focusing on Luke, and the sequels focusing on Luke’s children.
