The ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’ teaser trailer ending is a true shame
The greatest strength of the latest Star Wars trilogy has always been Kylo Ren/Ben Solo’s villainous arc. Despite the abundance of nostalgic callbacks in in The Force Awakens, his struggle with the dark side and the light set him apart as a truly great villain. Additionally, his connection with Rey in The Last Jedi continued the struggle, created an emotional bond with the hero, and set up an iconic battle between good and evil with real emotional stakes.
In both of those films, Ren, of course, wasn’t the main villain. Snoke was pulling all the strings. However, now that Snoke is dead, the logical decision for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker would be to make Kylo Ren the main villain.
All signs pointed to this happening. That’s why the ending of the teaser trailer for The Rise of Skywalker is a true shame.
No one expected nor asked for Emperor Palpatine to return as a villain. His return not only undercuts Kylo Ren’s rise, but raises a whole slew of questions that I doubt JJ Abrams will answer in this movie.
The other problem is context. JJ knows his audience knows Palpatine. He was the main villain for the last two trilogies. For many fans, bringing back Palpatine is something familiar. They understand that he’s evil. But, here’s the rub: the only people that don’t know anything about Palpatine are Rey, Finn, and Poe.
Sure, they might have heard of him, just like they heard of Luke and Han, but they don’t have any emotional ties to the villain. They do, however, have emotional ties to Kylo Ren.
Everything has been building up to the moment for Rey, Finn, and Poe to take the fight to Kylo Ren and defeat him once and for all. It makes more sense to make him the main villain.
Instead, Kylo Ren only appears for a brief moment before we saw all of our heroes staring into the abyss of a derelict Deathstar with the Emperor’s ominous laughter. Everything the last two films did to build momentum toward Kylo Ren becoming the big bad has been totally undercut.
I’m sure JJ created narrative reasons to bring Palpatine back (my guess is he wanted Ren to have another chance at redemption, ala. Darth Vader) and I have no doubt there will be endless speculation about why the emperor was brought back in the first place.
Whatever the case may be, The Last Jedi did a good job of cleansing the palette and moving on from nostalgia and turning the page to a new chapter. The appearance of Emperor Palpatine felt like a retread when it would have been refreshing to see the new trilogy move forward.
You can watch the new Star Wars teaser trailer here.
