The Rise of Skywalker



The ninth entry of the main Star Wars films, The Rise of Skywalker (also known as Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker) is the Grand Finale of the Skywalker Saga.

In the year since The Last Jedi, a galaxy-wide transmission swearing Revenge has been broadcast by the late Emperor Palpatine sending both the Resistance and the First Order into a mad scramble to discover the truth behind the message with Rey caught squarely in the middle of it all as she finally uncovers the truth about her past. ..


 * Abusive Parents: Is anyone really surprised by this?
 * Advertised Extra: The Knights of Ren.
 * All for Nothing: renders Vader's Heroic Sacrifice in Return of the Jedi, and indeed the whole prophecy of the Chosen One, null and void as the Sith returned. In fairness though, the prophecy never said that the Sith would stay destroyed.
 * All There in the Manual:
 * The Visual Dictionary reveals more information about how the Xyston-class Star Destroyers were built. The 2020 Darth Vader comic shows the early stages of their construction and more about the experiments conducted on Exegol.
 * Wanna hear Palpatine's message to the galaxy? Go play Fortnite.
 * The novelization offers some more explanation on how returned. It also reveals that  was a failed clone. It also explains that Ben Solo used a TIE scout, which has a hyperdrive, to leave Kef Bir rather than the standard, hyperdrive-free, TIE.
 * The novel Shadow of the Sith reveals the names of Rey's parents. Her father were named Dathan and her mother was Miramir.
 * Attack Its Weak Point: The main gun on the Xyston-class Star Destroyers is linked to the ship's main reactor. Damage it enough and the ship blows up.
 * Awesome but Impractical: The Holdo Maneuvers (ramming a ship at lightspeed). There's a huge cost to it and the chance of success is very low.
 * Be Careful What You Wish For: Rey had clung to the fantasy that she was Lost Orphaned Royalty and descended from some great, important lineage. Then Kylo tells her that she's a.
 * Beauty Is Never Tarnished: Averted with Rey. The final fight leaves her bleeding and covered in grime.


 * Big Bad:
 * Black Speech: Sith tongue.
 * Body Surf: How came back. He later intends to take Rey's body.
 * Bond Villain Stupidity: . First he broadcasts that all the Xyston-class ships will launch in sixteen hours rather than covertly launching them one at a time (scaring everyone enough into rallying against him) and then tells Rey about his Body Surf plans, bringing a screeching halt to her plan to kill him.
 * Boring but Practical: General Pryde. He didn't care for Starkiller Base and would have preferred that the First Order instead devoted its resources to building a large fleet.
 * Broken Aesop: Played with. At first glance, by, this film ruins the previous one's message that anyone, even if they are a nobody, can make a change. But the film also stressed that Rey's parents fully intended for her to be a nobody and kept her far away from everything.
 * Came Back Wrong: Not outright wrong but it's hinted, both by his corpse like appearance and his seeming Sanity Slippage, that 's resurrection was a botched job. The novelization confirms that the new body wasn't fully ready to accommodate him,, but he had no choice but to jump into it.
 * Came Back Strong: Though once he harvests enough Life Energy from Rey and Ben Solo, his powers surpass what they were during the early days of the Empire, being able to fire a storm of Force lighting powerful enough to disable a fleet of starships.
 * The Cameo:
 * Han Solo makes a surprise return as one of Kylo's memories.
 * The Ghost from Star Wars Rebels appears behind the Falcon when The Cavalry arrives. You can also hear Kanan and Ashoka among the Jedi Force Ghosts.
 * Wedge Antilles then appears as the Falcon's gunner.
 * The Ewoks appear at the end, watching a Star Destroyer fall victim to a Holdo Maneuver.
 * Lin-Manuel Miranda cameos as a Resistance soldier in the final celebrations.
 * Career-Ending Injury: Leia using the Force to fly back into the Raddus is revealed to be this in the novelization. Having channeled all her Force powers to survive the vacuum, using them again proves too great a toll on her ravaged body.
 * Clone Degeneration: Because the clone wasn't ready to fully contain 's dark side essence.
 * Cloning Blues: is a clone of . He was physically healthy but didn't inherit his father's Force sensitivity.
 * Death World: Exegol. It's Always Night, lighting storms pound the surface, and its surrounded by a host of hostile space anomalies. In addition to all that, it's also a conduit for the dark side of the Force and is the seat of the Sith throne.
 * Demoted to Extra: After her prominent role in the last film, Rose Tico has very little to do here.
 * Did Not Get the Girl:
 * Played for Laughs with Poe. He non-verbally suggests that he and Zorii go have some celebratory sex but she rolls her eyes and turns him down. He takes it quite well.
 * Earthshattering Kaboom: The Xyston-class Star Destroyers. They're about twice the size of the Imperial-I class but come with a Death Star level cannon on their underbelly.
 * The End - or Is It?: Poe and Finn discuss this in the novel. If cheated death at Endor, whose to say he didn't cheat it again on Exegol?
 * Eucatastrophe: Twice.
 * When the Resistance arrives on Exegol, their motley fleet is quickly overwhelmed by the Final Order's turbolasers and legions of TIE Daggers. It's bad enough that Rey consents to 's plan if it means calling off the attack. Had Ben Solo and the Citizens' Fleet not shown up then, the Final Order would have won through sheer military might.
 * After stealing enough Life Energy from Ben and Rey, fires a massive storm of Force lightning that disables the Citizens' Fleet. If Rey hadn't gotten Backup From Otherworld to overpower him, he would have bought enough time for the Xyston-fleet to launch.
 * Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Teased but ultimately subverted. When Rey arrives on Exegol, the film teases that is, in his own twisted way, proud of his granddaughter and considers her a worthy heir. Even when he heals himself, he's content to leave Rey unharmed while he tried to murder Ben Solo. But when she finally makes clear that she will not submit to him, he has no issue trying to kill her.
 * Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: The Final Order cannot comprehend why the people of the galaxy are rising up against rather than rolling over in fear.
 * Evil Cripple: . He's stuck to a life-support machine, is missing several fingers, his body looks like a corpse and he's blind. Despite this, he's an incredibly effective Handicapped Badass, able to lift Rey and Ben off the ground with but a flex of the wrist.
 * Evil Is Petty:
 * tossing Ben Solo over a cliff is payback for what Vader did to him in Return of the Jedi.
 * Exact Words: As Kylo Ren himself lampshades with regards to Rey's backstory. Her parents were nobodies who worked in the wastes of Jakku who indeed sold her for drinking money because they chose to be that. It was all an attempt to hide from Rey's grandfather, . Mind you though, they weren't exactly shakers and movers before fleeing to Jakku.
 * The Exile: Rey heads to Ahch-To and fully intends to live out the rest of her days trapped there.
 * Extremely Short Timespan: The whole film takes place over a sixteen hour period.
 * Explosive Overclocking: Channeling the power and soul of every Jedi . She gets better though.
 * General Failure: The higher-ups of the First Order are not too impressed with Kylo Ren. It's why they're quite eager to replace him with when the chance presents itself.
 * Grand Finale: The Star Wars franchise will continue, but this is the end of the Skywalker saga.
 * Hand Wave: How did come back? the dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities. Some consider to be... unnatural. The novelization reveals it to have been part of a Body Backup Drive scheme.
 * Healing Hands: A skilled enough Force user can use their own Life Energy to heal someone else. Or vampire it away from someone else.
 * Hijacked by Ganon: is the hidden mastermind behind Supreme Leader Snoke and the First Order.
 * Hoist by His Own Petard: On such a dark side power high, cannot stop himself from channeling Force lightning at Rey, even when she begins deflecting back at him in an Advancing Wall of Doom. Results in quite a Karmic Death.
 * "It" Is Dehumanizing: He never refers to Rey by "it", but is clearly using this trope, never using her first name and talking about her in detached terms such as "the girl", "my grandchild" and "Empress ".
 * Irony: It's now Luke, well his Force ghost, who tries to convince Rey to leave Ahch-To. He lampshades it.
 * Last of His Kind: After Leia dies, Kylo Ren/Ben Solo is the last of the Skywalker lineage.
 * Luke, I Am Your Father: Rey is  granddaughter.
 * Love Redeems: never being able to get rid of his attachments always were the reason of his internal conflict and eventually his love for his parents and Rey result in his redemption.
 * Love Transcends Spacetime:
 * Meaningful Name: The First Order. Most of their members thought "the first order" was referencing Palpatine's command to restore the Galactic Empire. The Emperor's reveals that "first" meant "vanguard", keeping the galaxy soft and divided until the Final Order could arrive.
 * Mythology Gag: The legions of Sith troopers are all named after old Sith Lords from Legends; Revan, Andeddu, Tanis, Tenebrous, Phobos, and Desolous.
 * Never Trust a Title: Despite the title, 's machinations see the Skywalker line finally extinguished.
 * Not in This For Your Revolution: Why is leaking information to the Resistance? Not because he believes in the cause, but simply
 * Not in This For Your Revolution: Why is leaking information to the Resistance? Not because he believes in the cause, but simply


 * Ragnarok Proofing:
 * Despite spending decades underwater, Luke's X-Wing is still perfectly functional. The novelization says that Rey fixed it up a bit during the events of The Last Jedi.
 * The same goes for the TIE scout that Kylo salvaged from the wreckage of the second Death Star. That's a bit more forgivable as the ruin that the sequence takes place in survived the explosion more or less intact. That a hangar might still be in one piece is hardly implausible.
 * Reality Ensues: Without any Drama-Preserving Handicap to impair his fighting ability, Kylo Ren easily wins his duel against Rey on Kef Bir. No matter how powerful Rey is, Kylo has had years of Force and lightsaber training whereas she's but a Jedi apprentice.
 * Technological advancements mean technology can be smaller. But shrinking the Death Star's gun onto a Star Destroyer means that the blast isn't as powerful.
 * Though much of the First Order all but worships, they don't flock back to him simply based on unconfirmed rumours of his survival. They need concrete proof that he's still alive.
 * Redemption Equals Death:
 * Rescue Romance: As soon as 's Heel Face Turn happens, he runs to save Rey and is what motivates her to fight instead of submitting to his wishes.
 * Sins of Our Fathers: 's attempted murder of Ben Solo is motivated purely by his hatred for Vader.
 * Spin Offspring: Rey's lineage is finally revealed. She's the granddaughter of.
 * The novelization and the Visual Dictionary hint, but never confirm, that Jannah is Lando's daughter. Lando's daughter was abducted by the First Order as a baby, as Jannah was, and their ages line up...
 * Star-Crossed Lovers:
 * Strong Family Resemblance: As a flashback reveals, Rey is damn-near the spitting image of her mother.
 * Too Dumb to Live: What does do when he sees Rey deflecting his Force lighting back at him? Double its intensity.
 * The Un-Reveal: What did Finn want to tell Rey? Per Word of God, it's that he's a Force sensitive, something that's hinted it when he immediately knows that it's her piloting the X-Wing.
 * Undying Loyalty: Pryde to . The second he sees his old master, he pledges the entirety of the First Order to him.
 * Wham! Line:
 * "I [] made Snoke."
 * "You're [Rey] his granddaughter. You... are a ."
 * Whole-Plot Reference: The overall story has more than a few similarities to Dark Empire from Star Wars Legends, one of the earliest pieces of EU Star Wars media. Both feature a new class of Star Destroyer that incorporates Death Star tech (the Eclipse there, the Xyston-class here) launched from a planet steeped in the energies of the dark side of the Force (Byss there, Exegol here), with everything revealed to have been orchestrated by a reborn who is being tended to by Dark Side cultists and has Body Surf plans for a young Jedi.
 * You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Upon realizing that he can just drain the Life Energy from Rey and Ben Solo, chucks them both aside, ditching his Body Surf plan.