Star Wars: Episode VII’s Villains May Have Been Hiding In The Shadows All Along

By Brent McKnight | Updated

This article is more than 2 years old

Star WarsHey, did you know that there’s another Star Wars movie being made? I know, we were as shocked and surprised as you. Apparently the guy who created that Alias show (remember that?) is directing it. News is sparse, but a hot-off-the-presses report has a bunch of fresh rumors for you to mull over.

It should go without saying, but I’m going to throw this out there anyway, there are potential SPOILERS for Star Wars: Episode VII beyond this point. Use that information as you will.

Latino-Review, ever the busy little beavers when it comes to Star Wars scoops, is back in action—as is the production, which started rolling again the other day after taking two weeks off while Harrison Ford healed up—and they’ve got a ton of new “information.” Who knows if any of it is legit, but they have a solid track record with this kind of thing, and since it’s going to be a while until we see the movie (we won’t even see the animated series Star Wars Rebels until October), it’s fun to fill the time with speculation.

Han SoloFirst off, apparently all of the people claiming Ford broke his leg on the Millennium Falcon set are wrong, it was actually on an entirely different set. But of course, security is tight, so no one is going to say yay or nay on the subject because that would spoil some other aspect of the film.

Then we get into the more serious stuff.

We’ve heard rumors that the Inquisitor (or Inquisitors), who plays a big role in Rebels, will figure into Episode VII, though LR is hearing that’s not the terminology that’s going to be used. Piggybacking on the prequels, which focused a lot on the whole one-apprentice-one-master thing, it sounds like these Sith villains may be getting shoehorned into the franchise retroactively. (Maybe it will be like Hydra in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where they were there hiding the whole time.)

Star Wars Episode VIIWe’ve seen that piece of concept art floating around that we’ve heard could be the main Inquisitor (or whatever), a cyborg, or even possibly the Emperor, holding what appears to be Darth Vader’s helmet. How does that happen, you ask? Listen to this:

At the end of Return of the Jedi – someone(s?) absconds with Luke and possibly the remains of Vader pretty soon after we cut to credits in that film. Luke has been a captive of this person/team/group ever since and it’s the search for him that will kickoff Episode VII.

That would be pretty damn big, and, like many other rumors we’ve heard, indicates that our collective celebration at the end of Jedi may have been a wee bit premature, and perhaps things aren’t as rosy as they seemed after the Death Star went boom.

Mark HamillPeople have speculated that new cast member Domhnall Gleeson could be Luke’s son (he bears a somewhat notable resemblance to Mark Hamill), but if the Jedi has been a prisoner all this time, he probably hasn’t had too many opportunities to get anyone pregnant. So Gleeson is not continuing the Skywalker name.

This report also claims that the production is going to go on a bit of a field trip again this November, and return to the island Skellig Michael off the coast of Ireland. They spent three days shooting there earlier, and according to the latest scuttlebutt, this ties into what we’ve previously heard about “Sith Witches” and Sith hiding out on a remote, desolate world working on a weapon of mass destruction.

According to LR’s sources:

Skellig Michael Island is the location for the Sith Homeworld. Like in the Expanded Universe, the Sith were founded by a Jedi who practiced moral relativism thousands of years ago (a long LONG time ago in a galaxy far, far away). He met up with Plagueis and started going by the Sith name Darth Ruin. He split off to unite the Sith tribes under the Dark Side of The Force. I don’t know if all of that is going to be in the movie, but it’s going to get called back as we’ll have a new Ruin in the movie, whomever fancies himself the biggest threat.

Skellig MichaelAnd there’s more. According to what they’ve been told, “Skellig Michael Island is the Sith Homeworld, the stone hut ruins on that island are a control center and the planet itself is somehow the weapon.” That would be nuts, like a crazy, even more massive, powerful Death Star. We heard that this new weapon was going to put the previous two attempts to shame, but damn, turning an entire planet into a tool of destruction of some kind, that’s hardcore. If, of course, that’s actually how it plays out.

As always, all of this is unconfirmed hearsay based on unnamed sources, and no one officially tied to the production is going to go on record in regards to any of this. I feel like J.J. Abrams will flog you for that and Disney will likely imprison your entire family beneath the Magic Kingdom. We probably won’t know if any of this is real until we sit down in theaters on December 18, 2015, but until then we have a lot of time to wonder.