After Devouring the Rise of Skywalker Trailers, We Have Some Questions and Theories

No one's ever really gone. The first trailer gave us an eerie sendoff with Palpatine's iconic chuckle closing out on a dark screen. In the most recent trailer we got actual lines from him, seemingly directed at Rey or Kylo Ren. For those who have delved into the wider universe of Star Wars media, the survival of Palpatine may not be all that surprising. After all, in Episode III, he flat-out told us he was the apprentice of a Sith Lord capable of cheating death (and potentially creating life itself, but we'll get back to that in a second). There are more concrete hints as to how Palpatine may have achieved this, however. In one of the recent Darth Vader comics (volume 22 of Darth Vader: Dark Lord of the Sith), a previous Sith Lord called Darth Momin preserved his own consciousness in his helmet before death. Said helmet actually made its way to Disney's Galaxy Edge park in Disneyland, hanging as a prop in Dok-Ondar's gift shop. Could Palpatine be haunting the ruins of the Death Star we saw in the trailers?

Despite Rian Johnson attempting to shut down any further debate on Rey's origins in the previous film, most fans didn't buy Kylo Ren's assured proclamation that Rey came from a couple of anonymous, drunk desert-dwellers. After all, Star Wars is a story about family and generations and making our hero for a new age someone completely unrelated to the previous heroes? Seems a bit odd. But, it's 2019 and we've got new sensibilities and Star Wars' source materials (The Hero With a Thousand Faces) are a bit out of date at this point. So, our options are Rey could be a Skywalker — she had a strong connection to Leia and regarded Han as a father figure — or she also could be something else entirely.

Everyone's least favorite addition to the canon might be making a comeback. The concept of midichlorians was introduced in The Phantom Menace as a more concrete, scientific explanation for the Force (subatomic particles that acted as the liaison between the Force and matter, not so different from our real-world Higgs-Boson particle). It was met with pretty negative backlash as many felt it was an unnecessary explanation for the spiritual elements of the series. But midichlorians were further explored in Revenge of the Sith when Palpatine subtly hinted that he and his master harnessed the power of midichlorians to create human life (specifically Anakin). If Rey is not a Skywalker, the theory that she is some sort of clone or artificial creation of Palpatine (who we know from the Aftermath book series had a secret base on Rey's home planet of Jakku, aimed at clandestine scientific experiments) is starting to gain a lot of traction. If Palpatine is talking to her in the most recent trailer, it certainly lends itself to the theory.

Possibly the most talked about part of the trailer was Rey's appearance at the end where she sported some classic Sith clothes and an angry-looking red lightsaber. While some have speculated she's going to turn out to be the Big Bad of all of this, I, on the other hand, don't see Star Wars making the same blunder that Game of Thrones did earlier this year. Most likely, this is Kylo Ren's vision from The Last Jedi that Snoke tried to manipulate him with. It is interesting to note the lightsaber in this scene has the same crackling, unstable energy as Kylo Ren's. Showing this in the trailer also negates really any shot of this being more than some nice pre-movie hype. When The Last Jedi was in its marketing phase, there was a list of what previews and trailers could and absolutely could not show, and I imagine it's the same with Rise of Skywalker. But it still looks pretty awesome.

When The Force Awakens came out, JJ Abrams made a point to hammer home that Kylo Ren and Snoke were not Sith, but affiliated with another sect of Dark Side users known as the Knights of Ren. And yet, here we are with some new villains, called Sith Troopers, revealed this Summer at San Diego Comic Con. Traditionally, Sith operate very minimalist: one master, who holds the power and attempts to retain their place importance, and one apprentice, who covets the power and seeks to kill and replace their master. Only two exist at any given time, and this weird tension of mutual trigger fingers keeps it all in balance. Now, it seems the Sith have put together an army. I think these guys are most likely affiliated with Palpatine, a known Sith Lord, rather than Kylo Ren or his folk. Perhaps Palpatine, in whatever form he survived, put together an army on his own, quietly waiting for his moment to strike? Perhaps the one thing going against that theory is how much these guys stylistically look similar to the First Order troopers. But maybe Palpatine is also up on contemporary Storm Trooper fashion?