It must be said:
Never trust a dancing Ewok to be the sign of a happily ever after.
After their pyrrhic victory all those years ago at the end of the Original Star Wars Trilogy, the journeys of Luke Skywalker, Leia Organa, and Han Solo led to a conflicted new world in the Sequel Trilogy, one that was still filled with war and heartbreak.
Luke, Leia, and Han had become legends. But the Empire had risen again in the form of the First Order, and another Skywalker had been forged into another Darth Vader.
In short, our heroes failed — both in their personal journeys and in maintaining peace throughout the galaxy. The cycle of Darkness was not broken, and the original sin of their family was not redeemed.
But the fires of resistance would have to be passed on to the next generation, led by Rey, a scavenger from Jakku.
It was their fight now.
And by establishing that each Star Wars trilogy would center around the next generation, wherein their ancestors would pass on the torch and become supporting characters, George Lucas created a unique kind of cyclical storytelling that truly deepens the Skywalker Saga’s myriad themes.
And that torch was admirably picked up by Irvin Kershner, Lawrence Kasdan, Leigh Brackett, Richard Marquand, Johnathan Hales, J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt, Rian Jonson, Chris Terrio, Derek Connolly, and Colin Trevorrow throughout the prequels (Anakin’s story), the originals (Luke’s story), and the sequels (Rey’s story). An undeniably impressive feat.
The writing, the visuals, the score, everything builds on what came before, leading to infinite layers of meaning. Everything is a mirror, meant to show us how history rhymes and how every generation must contend with similar obstacles and forge their own paths.
The Sequel Trilogy also incisively points out how crucial it is for the previous generations to provide proper guidance to their children, almost as a form of penance. And that’s because, in truth, the descendants of the future are too often burdened by obstacles that are created by the previous generations. This is evocatively allegorized by the fact that Rey lives among the husks of old war machines — the ghosts of past sins, haunting the third Star Wars generation every day.
That’s why it works so well that the ST was treated like an epilogue for our beloved OT trio of Luke, Leia, and Han, giving each of them the spotlight in one of the three films. Collectively, it all functions as a final trial for three very human heroes in their twilight years - all of whom must face their demons one last time as they ensure the next generation is ready for the torch.
In keeping with the idea of old demons, failure then becomes the final obstacle to overcome in this story. And once you factor in the multilayered ways in which the sequel filmmakers were trying to tie everything together in the end, it’s clear that bringing back Emperor Palpatine - the original demon himself - as the personification of failure was a thematically wise move.
Palpatine represents the spectral evil that hangs over the entire story, the demonic presence that has haunted all three generations of the Skywalker family. The revelation that he was able to come back as a rotting clone who has been pulling the strings for three decades comes across as the ultimate payoff, set up over nine episodes, foreshadowed by his machinations in the prequels.
Of course Palpatine would have a backup plan to cheat death.
Of course Palpatine would send his newest pawn Supreme Leader Snoke out to get a revenge plot going while he gathered his strength and secretly manipulated another Skywalker.
Of course Palpatine would build a mega-fleet in the shadows while the Light was fighting the remnants of the war he started.
This is what he has always done. He is the phantom menace.
All in all, this makes a final confrontation with Palpatine feel both inevitable and unifying. And by challenging our OT heroes anew with an old threat that catches the next generation in the crossfire, the ST only enriches the cyclical themes, motifs, symbols, and lessons George Lucas instilled in his six films.
Undoubtedly, from a writing standpoint, it would have been a lot easier to give us a Sequel Trilogy that sidestepped all that - wherein Han and Leia were blissfully married and still bantering like the old days, Luke was swashbuckling around with his well-adjusted Padawan nephew, the galaxy was at peace, and Palpatine’s defeat had been final.
But then nothing would hold weight.
If the Skywalkers had lived happily ever after — if they had not failed — then there would not have been a need to continue the story.
In that same vein, if the Skywalkers had faced just any old villain in the sequels — a new threat with no connection to what came before — then you wouldn’t need Luke, Leia, and Han to complete the circle. And that would diminish their importance in the ending of their own story, since the lesson of “learning from the past” is the Saga’s beating heart.
As such, the Sequel Trilogy directly taps into that beating heart by exploring the “now what” of what happens after you win, and how even legends can repeat the mistakes of the past. Especially if they think that “winning” is the end of the story.
If we don’t make it count, then the confidence that comes from winning will only lead to complacency in the face of other evils, and we will be doomed to fight the same fights forever. Because winning is empty on its own — it’s “the after” that matters.
Enter Han Solo. He was the first hero from the second generation who made “the after” matter.
Han Solo and The Force Awakens (2015)
When we meet Han again, he is a changed man (or at least as changed as Han can get). Once a devout Force atheist, Han is now a humbled believer.
As he stands in the exact same spot where he once denied the Force to Luke, Han acknowledges that all the legends of the Jedi are true. And this shows Rey a path toward belonging to something bigger.
Later, when Han offers Rey a place on his beloved ship the Millenium Falcon - just as he did with Luke all those years ago in the OT - Han was symbolically offering Rey a place in the larger story.
And this all means that Han was the first of Rey’s mentors to make her feel like she had a purpose.
And by reaching out to Rey in his Han way, it was clear: He should have reached out in the same way to his misguided son Ben Solo, who had taken up the mantle of Kylo Ren so he could honor his grandfather Darth Vader.
But then, something monumental happens: Han Solo, the swaggering space pirate who always ran away from everything in life, ran straight to his death for the sake of bringing Ben back home.
Han takes a peaceful last stand against his son — as Luke did all those years ago against his father in the OT — trying to win Ben back with his love.
And thus Han Solo’s sacrifice was the first sign that the unbroken multigenerational cycle of war was evolving toward change.
Luke Skywalker and The Last Jedi (2017)
Anakin and Luke. Han and Ben. Fathers and sons confronting each other atop massive symbolic chasms. Very different resolutions to very similar journeys. A masterstroke of cyclical storytelling.
In particular, Ben Solo’s fight against the Light is a mirror image of his grandfather’s struggle with the Dark.
Feeling betrayed and abandoned by his family - the so-called legendary champions of the Light - Ben yearned to join the Dark Side, which is why he willingly became Kylo Ren. But Anakin turned to the Dark Side and became Darth Vader as a last resort. He wanted to prevent his wife Padme’s death. But instead, he caused her death. He killed her.
Years later, like his father before him, Luke Skywalker also conjured a self-fulfilling prophecy.
One fateful night, Luke received a premonition of a possible dark future for his nephew and student Ben Solo, one filled with death and destruction. Then, in a weak moment of hubris, Luke contemplated killing Ben in order to prevent the formation of the next Darth Vader.
It was only a split-second thought, but its repercussions were infinite.
Luke pushed Ben toward the Darkness and put into motion the very tragedy he was trying to stop. He enflamed a new war that is still the old war because he had learned the wrong lessons from his father’s downfall. He forgot that no one’s destiny is set, and anyone can be guided back to the Light.
And so, failing to live up to the legend he had always felt burdened by, Luke Skywalker retreated from the Force.
Thankfully, as part of this second generation that learns to evolve along with Han, Luke’s soul is enlightened by the guidance he gives his new student Rey and the mistakes he made while he was training his old student Ben. (Along with a tiny nudge from his teacher Yoda, who appears in Force Ghost form and reminds Luke that masters are what students grow beyond.)
Rey and Ben free Luke from his disillusionment. They help him see that he had forsaken his defining ideals, peace and purpose. They help him not to let the past die like Kylo Ren wanted, but to learn from it and create something new.
In short, by challenging their teacher in very different ways, Luke’s students end up teaching him.
Consequently, Luke takes a pacifist last stand against the boy he failed, as Han did. He returns to the battlefield of the old war he resurrected and sacrifices himself for the good fight, as Anakin’s teacher Obi-Wan Kenobi did. And he projects his essence across the galaxy, brandishing the Force like no one has before.
And as his legend spreads anew, Luke Skywalker once again becomes the new hope he was always promised to be.
In the end, Luke becomes Obi-Wan and Yoda in one. He retains the best aspects of the first generation because he evolved on his cyclical journey alongside the third generation by learning from failure. A truly poetic ending for that restless farm boy who was always looking beyond the horizon.
At last, he will walk across the sky.
Leia Organa and The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
When we catch up with Leia in The Force Awakens, it’s clear she never stopped fighting.
But then Han Solo dies. Murdered by their son. And all the loss Leia has endured hits her at once.
In the quiet moments, we see her sag under that weight. And she comes very close to giving up the fight.
Then, in The Last Jedi, there is even more slaughter. The Resistance is pared down to a handful of scared people. And they lose. “The spark... is out,” Leia whispers — just before Luke appears.
And in another resonant full-circle moment, this brother and sister reunion in The Last Jedi is constructed very similarly to their parallel scene in Return of the Jedi, the third film in the Original Trilogy.
Framing-wise, Luke and Leia are on the same sides of the screen as they were in that earlier scene, creating yet another mirror of the past. They are both lit in such a way that makes them appear younger, their eyes shining with love for each other. And the maestro John Williams reprises Luke and Leia’s theme, perfectly unifying both moments with a deep sense of gravitas, dignity, family history, and cyclical finality.
In the first scene, Luke tells Leia the truth about their bloodline - in a way, that is where their family began. In the last scene, their family ends, at least on this plane of existence.
And so, just like that, Luke becomes Leia’s new hope. He reignites the spark within his sister. He inspires her to keep going.
And then, just like that, Leia Organa becomes the galaxy’s last hope. Just as she was always promised to be, way back in the Original Trilogy when Obi-Wan feared that Luke was lost, and Yoda said, “There is another.”
But even with that last hope in mind, Leia knows this isn’t her fight anymore; she foresaw that the next generation would finish what she started.
Thus, as Leia takes over Rey’s training in the ensuing year that leads up to The Rise of Skywalker, she comes to understand how crucial it is for Rey and Ben to form a Dyad - a powerful anomaly unseen for generations, in which two become one in the Force.
Leia must bring her student and her son together, reflections of each other, to wield the inherited strength of the past and the evolutionary power of the future to end the Great Evil once and for all. But first, Leia had to prepare Rey. And she had to bring Ben Solo back to the Light.
Because remember, as Luke said, no one’s ever really gone.
Leia, using Han Solo’s old Death Star medal as a totem, reaches into the Force. As far and as wide as she has ever reached. Just as Luke did when he projected himself across the galaxy to say goodbye to his sister and give her hope.
Leia forges a bridge between herself and her son. She whispers his name, and it echoes across the cosmos, hitting Kylo Ren in his very soul — right as he’s about to kill Rey during their final duel.
This disorients Kylo enough for Rey to strike a killing blow. She stabs him with his own blood-red lightsaber, turning the Dark Side against itself, right there on the Death Star — the shattered remnant of the old war that is still the new war.
But then, Rey heals Kylo, infusing him with her essence. She uses the gift Leia taught her in the Force, stemming from their mutual compassion for all luminous beings. Thanks to Leia’s guidance, Rey performs a pure sacrificial act, like a true Skywalker would. And in turn, the compassion Rey shows Kylo Ren connects him to his mother, and it lights Ben Solo’s way home.
Then, something miraculous happens: Han Solo appears, as a memory. Somehow brought forth by Leia’s unfathomable power. And in a mirror image of their first fateful encounter above another wide chasm, Leia gives her son and his father a way to find closure.
Right there on the shattered Death Star - the same place where Ben’s grandfather Anakin was saved by his uncle Luke - a mother saves her family with her dying breath.
And they in turn would go on to save everyone.
During their last training session together, Leia reminded Rey never to underestimate a droid. Knowing the importance droids played in both their fates — they were brought into each other’s lives by loyal little BB-8, for starters — this of course has a double meaning. And the emotion only deepens when Rey says, “Yes, Master,” and looks at Leia with love in her eyes. Because we know what Rey is really saying.
In the same way, Rey’s white hooded outfit serves as an unspoken homage to the white hooded outfit worn so long ago by her surrogate mother, who took Rey into her arms when Rey was alone in the world — just like Leia’s adoptive parents did for her on Alderaan.
And in those small moments, Rey and Leia’s relationship is etched so movingly that it honestly feels like a gift for Leia to have been used so well by the sequel storytellers, bringing the Saga to a close as the heart of it all.
And this only becomes even more moving when we realize that, just as Leia rescued her son, she also rescued her surrogate daughter. And that’s because Leia spent the final year of her life preparing Rey for the rest of hers.
After all, Leia broke the cycle. She did it right this time. She evolved, as Han and Luke did, and trained Rey with patience and understanding; she didn’t neglect Rey’s fears; she didn’t send Rey off to fight ill-prepared; she provided Rey with the right guidance to make the right choices; and she was just there for Rey, no matter what.
In the end, it all really did come down to Leia Organa, the princess who became a general and then became a Jedi.
The last hope.
Rey Skywalker and the Legacy of Light
And right when that hope is needed the most, Rey appears on the Resistance’s radars, piloting Luke’s old X-wing. A totem of strength, resurrected by Luke himself in Force Ghost form, as a payoff to his failure while training with Yoda all those years ago.
And so master and apprentice, showing how far both of them have come, join together in the Force to guide the Light into the Heart of Darkness, where Rey will face down her grandfather Palpatine by wielding the generational weapons that once belonged to Darth Vader and his children.
And it’s moments like these where the full-circle symmetry of the Saga makes this story feel like no other.
With that symbolic symmetry in mind, it’s plain to see that Rey is a full-circle reflection of her mentors. She possesses the resilience of Han, the wisdom of Luke, and the compassion of Leia. At the same time, Rey stood up to her heroes when it was necessary, thus conveying another key lesson of the ST: When it matters, students must provide guidance to their mentors in the pursuit of doing what’s right. Because even legends can become trapped in the myopic ways of the past and fail anew.
Rey’s arc takes her full circle as well. She went from wanting to be a part of the story to thinking she had no place in the story, only to find out she was the worst part of the story because she was a direct descendant of the insidious parasite who had infected the galaxy all those years ago.
And just like Anakin and Luke before her, Rey must then learn to conquer her worst fear: herself.
Ben Solo, aka Kylo Ren, is a cyclical character in his own right. He is what his grandfather Anakin was in the prequels: a broken youth falsely convinced that he was betrayed by those he loved, seeking to belong, who joins with the wrong cause.
And I must confess, at first I didn’t want him to be redeemed, if only for the sake of the story doing something different. (Plus he killed Han Solo, man, that’s blasphemous!)
But then, after Kylo Ren killed Snoke in Last Jedi and became the big bad - with no one else above him in the food chain - I realized there was nowhere for a non-redemption arc to go. What would the endgame have been? Rey and Kylo Ren fight one last time… again? They had already fought repeatedly; any variation I could think of felt anticlimactic.
But then I saw what the story had in store: Ben was redeemed via his parents’ love in an ethereal, Force-infused way, harkening back to what Leia said to Han in The Force Awakens: “We can still save him. Me. You.” And this moment of prophetic salvation was in turn augmented by the empathic compassion Rey displayed when she healed Ben.
And not only did I adore this gorgeous scene, but now I can’t imagine it any other way. Most crucially, it reminded me that forgiveness and redemption are simply the Star Wars way.
Even so, I definitely wasn’t expecting the sequel storytellers to use Ben’s redemption to tie things together across the entire Saga.
When we first meet Ben Solo, we know him as Kylo Ren, and his jagged red lightsaber feels like an external symbol of the jagged rage burning within him. Ren tries to temper that rage with a meditation ritual wherein he communes with the burnt, shattered mask that his grandfather Anakin once wore as Darth Vader.
Ren asks for the strength to “finish what you started.” Of course, since Ren has clearly been lied to about his family’s history, what he means by this is mastering the Dark Side and becoming all-powerful. But instead, by trilogy’s end, the sequel storytellers have Ben Solo finish what his grandfather started by using the Force to save the one he loves from death. Which is exactly what Anakin wanted to do, and it’s exactly what sent Anakin down the wrong path in the first place.
It was a surprising, moving, full-circle callback that, once again, is a testament to the power of cyclical storytelling.
In the end, the third Star Wars generation uses the spiritual strength of the first and the enlightened guidance of the second, accumulated over nine cyclical films, to finally defeat the phantom menace who started all these damn star wars.
Most importantly of all - via the mirror images of Rey and Ren, via the final lessons learned by Han, Luke, and Leia - the Sequel Trilogy shows us that our fate is up to us.
We determine our legacy, no matter where we come from. We even get to choose our family and define what it means to be part of something bigger.
We decide how to complete the circle.
All we have to do is rise.