I defend the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy a lot more than other folks on the internet despite my mixed feelings about The Rise of Skywalker, but one of the most baffling things about Disney’s handling of the franchise post-2019 is its refusal to do anything that continues the story beyond the second death of Emperor Palpatine. The Rey Skywalker standalone film is seemingly in limbo, Star Wars: Starfighter is evidently its own thing and everything else fills in the 30-year storyline gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
Rey is “all the Jedi” … what’s next
Well, it was nearly The Hunt for Ben Solo.
Indeed, after Han Solo and Leia Organa’s Dark Side-favoring son Ben (a.k.a. Kylo Ren) sacrificed himself to save Rey at the conclusion of The Skywalker Saga, the redeemed grandson of Darth Vader was at one point set to, like Palpatine before him, “somehow” return. Actor Adam Driver told AP News that he was not only enthusiastic about reprising his role in a future Star Wars film, but was actively developing one alongside Steven Soderbergh over two years. Lucasfilm was enthused, and Scott Z. Burns (The Bourne Ultimatum, Contagion) was enlisted to pen a script that was, Driver says, “One of the coolest [expletive] scripts I had ever been a part of.”
But it wasn’t meant to be.
“We presented the script to Lucasfilm,” Driver told the AP. “They loved the idea. They totally understood our angle and why we were doing it.”
He continued, “We took it to Bob Iger and Alan Bergman and they said no. They didn’t see how Ben Solo was alive. And that was that.”
Now, in a universe that has brought Darth Maul, Boba Fett, Ahsoka Tano and, yes, Palpatine back from death – or at least the brink of death – one has to imagine that there could be a creative way to resurrect Ben Solo. Heck, there are plenty of Force ghosts in that galaxy far, far away at this point. Why not have Kylo team up with Rey from the great beyond as she rebuilds the Jedi Order? Perhaps now that the story is out there, Disney will reconsider the possibilities.
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