Star Wars: Episode VII’s Post-Jedi Galaxy May Not Look Like What You Expect

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Star WarsAside from hearing that production resumed after a two week hiatus in August, there hasn’t been much on the Star Wars: Episode VII news front. Well that’s certainly changed as there are now a ton of rumors surfacing, some that contradict what we’ve heard, others that seem to corroborate earlier reports.

As should be clear, this contains potential MASSIVE SPOILERS, like even the end of the movie kinds of spoilers, so if you don’t want the movie ruined, maybe, stop reading now. You’ve been warned.

As with so many of these rumors, they come from the folks over at Latino-Review, who are dogged about such things. And we’ll ease into this with the first bit, which is interesting, but not particularly earth shattering. We know that production spent a couple of days in July filming on the picturesque Irish Isle of Skellig Michael, and the word on the street is that it will serve as the Sith homeworld of Moraband (which has been changed in the canon from Korrban now that they’re tinkering with that kind of thing).

The rumor was that they were going to head back later in the year, when the weather has turned bleak and grim and things aren’t quite as lovely as in the warmer months. That, apparently, may not happen. According to the Irish Film Board, “Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board can confirm that no filming has been scheduled for Skellig Michael in the coming months. Any comment on the international blogs with regard to this matter is pure speculation at this stage.” That doesn’t mean they won’t do some filming from the air or possibly the surrounding sea, but right now that situation is all up in the air, so we’ll have to wait and see.

Like I said, that’s all rather vanilla. We don’t really know anything about what the Skellig Michael scenes entail, so it doesn’t really tell us much of anything about the plot.

And now we get into the juicy stuff. Again, for the love of sweet baby Jesus, stop reading if you don’t want to run into huge SPOILERS.

Star Wars MuzzlewumpEarlier in the year, back in late March, an individual going by the name of Muzzlewump posted on one of the forums. He claimed to have read the J.J. Abrams/Lawrence Kasdan version of the Episode VII script, leaving a laundry list of bullet points about the plot, some of them rather big.

Here’s what was posted, we’ll dig into it more on the other side:

Leia is made leader of the Republic after her predecessor’s death

Han is a retired veteran of the Republic fleet

Luke hasn’t been seen in nearly 30 years

the lead character is Han and Leia’s daughter

the other lead is the child of Lando, and either a male or female depending on who is cast

the other lead is a Stormtrooper, also either a male or female depending on who is cast

dialogue for these two characters is very rough in the second draft

Luke has no known offspring

The Empire still exists in the form of a number of loyal galaxies and are in a state of cold war with the Republic

The Empire is simply referred to as the “Empire,” and the Republic is referred to formally only once, as the “Galactic Republic;” no “New” anywhere

There are no Jedi whatsoever, and people still speak as if they are extinct, with Luke being “the last of his kind”

The main antagonists are an older student of the Emperor, and his apprentice

The apprentice takes control of the power dynamic between the two pretty quickly…

The Republic are excavating ruins on a neutral world for a weapon; the world factors into tense negotiations the Empire have had with the Republic, and is referred to as the “Sith Homeworld”

Loredump: In the script, the Sith are a couple thousand years old, founded by an ancestor of Palpatine called Ruin; the apprentice in this film also goes by that name

the ruins within the Sith Homeworld are a control station; the planet itself is the weapon

Luke saves the day at the end, but in a bad way; he has changed

Like I said, that’s a lot to take in, you may need to read it twice.

A lot of this jives with things that we have heard reported elsewhere and from other sources. There’s the bit about Luke being missing for a long, long time, or Solo’s daughter and the stormtrooper, who we’ve heard could be Daisy Ridley and John Boyega, respectively. We’ve also heard of the links between the new villains and the Emperor, though this makes them more explicit, expanding on the role we’ve heard about this Darth Ruin individual that looks to figure prominently in the story.

One thing you can glean from this information dump is that you get a better picture of the post-Return of the Jedi universe. It’s been hard to reconcile the reports that the Empire still exists in any significant capacity in the wake of the Battle of Endor. The Republic is still there and going strong, but the Empire is still there as well, though in a diminished capacity, pushed out to the periphery. I actually kind of like the idea of there being a sort of Cold War between the two sides, maybe there’s some international espionage going on, like in a 1980s spy thriller, where each side is trying to get a leg up on the other. It certainly sounds like that is a possibility, and it could be cool if they handle it right.

And then there’s the Luke Skywalker bombshell. We’ve all been excited to see the old gang back together for some good times, but things may not be quite like they were in the old days. It’s going to be interesting to see how Luke has “changed,” and reportedly not for the better. If this is how things all work out, you can bet that’s going to have a huge impact on the franchise moving forward.

So there you have it. As usual, this is all unconfirmed hearsay, so take it with a grain of salt and make of it what you will. Still, the more we hear the same things coming up again and again, the more you start to think maybe there’s a ring of truth to them.

What do you think of these rumors? Are there any that you particularly hope are true, or any that you patently want to be completely false? Let us know in the comments below.

Mark Hamill