Throughout the saga, weapons have offered a window to their owners’ soul – a theme revisited in The Rise of Skywalker trailer
Recent
Star Wars trailers have been masterpieces of tickling fanboy excitement while steering almost perversely clear of spoilers. That’s certainly true of the latest glimpse of The Rise of Skywalker – the ninth film in the series – which landed online on Monday, having premiered at Disney’s D23 Expo over the weekend.
It’s the climactic shot of the new clip that has
Twitter fingers twitching. The final moments of the
trailer feature Daisy Ridley’s heroic Rey clad in distinctly Sith-like robes and wielding a red lightsaber. This is almost certainly a piece of misdirection from director JJ Abrams – known for loving “mystery box” plots even more than he loves blinding lens flare – rather than a grand heel-turn for the franchise’s new leading lady. But it’s the lightsaber itself that is particularly exciting. It’s a dual-bladed weapon, with Ridley’s character snapping the two parallel halves together to form a double-ended staff akin to the one wielded by Darth Maul in the widely derided prequel The Phantom Menace.