Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker - 15 Biggest Unanswered Questions
Warning: Major SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker left behind numerous unanswered questions - and here are our 15 biggest. J.J. Abrams' film had the daunting task of not just finishing Disney's sequel trilogy that he started with Star Wars: The Force Awakens but he also had to provide a fitting conclusion to the 9-film, 42-year Skywalker saga.
Picking up from (and in many cases retconning) the events of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the galaxy is faced with its greatest threat of all: the return of Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), who has a new fleet of warships called the Final Order that can crush the Resistance. Palpatine's comeback also brings answers to the true origin of Rey (Daisy Ridley): she is actually Rey Palpatine, the Emperor's granddaughter, which explains her tremendous power over the Force (and her links to the dark side). In The Rise of Skywalker's final breakneck, action-packed adventure, Rey, Finn (John Boyega), and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) must lead the Resistance and find a way to stop Palpatine and the First/Final Order while Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) pursues his connection to Rey for his own ends.
Fans are divided over The Rise of Skywalker and how the film written by J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio is jam-packed with concepts and ideas that could fill another movie's worth of story, while critics have not been kind to Episode IX overall. Regardless of whether or not fans enjoyed The Rise of Skywalker, it's hard to argue that the film introduced numerous elements that opened up a slew of new questions that it had no time to answer. While Star Wars novels, comics, and games will likely flesh out the lingering threads of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, here are the biggest questions we wish the movie provided satisfying answers to.
So many questions surround the return of Emperor Sheev Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker. He presumably died after Darth Vader threw him down a shaft and when the second Death Star exploded during Return of the Jedi's climactic Battle of Endor. Yet 30 years later, Palpatine lives on Exegol - however, he is even more decrepit, is missing fingers, and is supported by a robotic apparatus.
If this was the same Palpatine who was on the Death Star, how did he get to Exegol in the Unknown Regions? Was his body somehow retrieved after plummeting and spirited away to Exegol (maybe by his mysterious Sith followers) before the Death Star exploded? Or is the Palpatine Rey and Ben Solo fought on Exegol a clone? (Just as Snoke was cloned by Palpatine's helpers.) The only explanation Palpatine offers is dialogue recycled from what he told Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) in Revenge of the Sith: "The dark side of the force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural." This is a mere hand-waving of the major issue of how Palpatine is alive. There will doubtless be future Star Wars novels and comics that will labor to explain Palpatine's presence in The Rise of Skywalker but the movie itself just leaves the questions wide open.
The revelation that Rey is Palpatine's granddaughter also brings with it massive logical questions as to when the Emperor fathered a son? Simply put, Rey is about 20 years old and Return of the Jedi happened 30 years before The Force Awakens. This means Rey was born a decade after the Battle of Endor - which Palpatine was aware of - since he wanted young Rey brought to him on Exegol. This also means that, given the approximate age of his son (Billy Howle) in the flashbacks, that Palpatine must have fathered his son sometime in the years between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope - after he already was transformed into a grotesque, monstrous old man - or right before Revenge of the Sith.
But then who is Rey's grandmother? And why wasn't Palpatine's son Force-sensitive - or was he and he rebelled against his father to hide his family, including his wife (Jodie Comer) and baby daughter Rey? Also, why did Rey's parents, who pretended to be no one, hide Rey on Jakku, which, according to Chuck Wendig's canonical Star Wars: Aftermath novel, was a planet where Palpatine had a Sith observatory and contained ties to the Emperor?
Palpatine is the great mastermind of the Skywalker saga but his plans for Rey and Kylo Ren made little sense and the Emperor seemed to be rewriting his own scheme on the fly. At the start of The Rise of Skywalker, Palpatine orders Ren to kill Rey and offers him control of the Galaxy as the new Emperor. However, he didn't really want Rey dead, he wanted what he planned for all along: that his Force-sensitive granddaughter brought to him so he could imbue his essence (and that of all of the Sith) into her so he could live on inside Empress Rey Palpatine. If this had worked, it's also not if Rey would still be Rey but with all the powers of the Sith or if Palpatine intended to completely take control of his granddaughter's body.
So, why order Kylo Ren to "kill the scavenger" at all? What if Kylo Ren succeeded - what would the Emperor have done then? Regardless, once Palpatine discovered Ben Solo and Rey were connected as a Force Dyad, he switched plans in midstream and stole their Force powers to fuel his own. So he didn't need Rey to strike him down after all? So much of the climactic confrontation between Rey and her grandfather, along with Ben Solo, seemed to be improvised moment to moment, creating confusion.
The idea of Rey and Kylo Ren's connection through the Force was established in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker cements it as a Force Dyad. The pair are able to not just communicate from across great distances but take objects from each other through the Force and even have a lightsaber duel. It's also because of their Dyad that Palpatine was able to siphon off their combined Force essences to fuel his own Sith powers.
Still, The Rise of Skywalker kept the details of what a Force Dyad is and how Rey and Kylo are connected through it vague, with Palpatine offering that it's a rare thing that hasn't happened in generations. It's also not confirmed whether their Force Dyad exists because of a possible bond between the Skywalkers and Palpatines since the movies never clarified whether Darth Sidious used the Dark Side of the Force to create Anakin Skywalker. Again, there will be novels and comics which will one day delve into the details but The Rise of Skywalker offered little in the way of answers.
After Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) death in The Last Jedi, General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) took on the role of Rey's Master - although it seems like she technically never became a Jedi herself. Luke was acknowledged as the last Jedi before Rey completed her training but The Rise of Skywalker established that Luke did teach Leia until, on the last night of her training, she had a vision that her son would die at the end of her Jedi path. Given the youthful looks of Luke and Leia in the flashback scene, this training happened not very long after Return of the Jedi but it's not clear if Leia was pregnant with Ben Solo yet.
Regardless, the vision of her son's death seems to be the impetus for Leia deciding not to become a full-fledged Jedi and instead, she reverted back to the role she was best known for: General and leader of the Resistance. However, the notion of Leia's Jedi training was introduced so fleetingly in The Rise of Skywalker and it needed to be fleshed out a lot more because many questions surround General Organa's choice to abandon becoming a Jedi.
On Ahch-To, Force ghost Luke Skywalker told Rey that he knew she was a Palpatine and that Leia "knew it, too" - but how and when? Did Leia know before she met Rey in The Force Awakens (and did Han Solo know of her as well)? And when did Luke find out? In The Last Jedi, Master Skywalker seemed shocked at Rey's propensity towards the dark side - did he actually know who she was then or did he find out after he died and became one with the Force?
The Knights of Ren finally appeared in The Rise of Skywalker (after being introduced in a flashback in The Force Awakens) but it's understandable if fans were left underwhelmed. The Rise of Skywalker utilized Kylo Ren's squad as faceless and voiceless henchmen who tracked Rey and her friends from Pasaana to Kijimi. The next time they appeared, they were serving the Emperor on Exegol and they battled their old master Ben Solo for the last time. But after fans waited for three movies to see them, The Rise of Skywalker didn't give any of the Knights of Ren personalities or even names; they were merely six interchangeable black-clad bad guys Ben Solo took out without much effort. Fans interested in actually learning who the Knights of Ren are were completely left in the dark by The Rise of Skywalker.
Finn spent the entirety of The Rise of Skywalker wanting to tell Rey something important but he never did - even as the film was ending. What did Finn want to disclose to Rey? This is a question director J.J. Abrams answered after the fact: Finn wanted to reveal to his Jedi friend that he was Force-sensitive. Finn spoke openly about his "intuition" and he told Jannah (Naomi Ackie) that he believed the Force led him to Rey and his friends. At the Battle of Exegol, with the help of the Force, Finn and Jannah were able to bring down Allegiant General Pryde's (Richard E. Grant) Super Star Destroyer. It's not clear if Finn did finally tell Rey that he can feel the Force too off-camera but fans never got see the payoff or Rey's reaction in the movie itself.
Another big question that has been lingering since The Force Awakens is how Maz Kanata (Lupita Nyong'o) had Luke Skywalker's blue lightsaber in the first place? The Skywalker lightsaber was lost, along with Luke's right hand, on Bespin during The Empire Strikes Back and it has played a prominent role as Rey's Jedi weapon in the sequel trilogy, but how exactly the lightsaber ended up in Maz Kanata's possession on Takodana 30 years later has never been answered. In The Force Awakens, Maz (and J.J. Abrams) deflected answering this mystery with Kanata's line, "A good question for another time". Somehow, The Rise of Skywalker still wasn't the right time to resolve this plot hole.
It's understandable if fans found the circumstances of Leia's death and the return of Han Solo confusing. When Kylo Ren battled Rey on the ruins of the second Death Star, Leia sensed it and she was suddenly weakened. The General was brought to her literal death bed and she died, which Kylo sensed so that he got distracted. This allowed Rey to take Ren's lightsaber and plunge it into his abdomen. But instead of letting Ben Solo die, Rey used her Force healing powers to bring Ben back to health (even healing his facial scar). Essentially, as Han Solo (Harrison Ford) told his son, Kylo Ren died but Ben Solo was brought back by Rey.
However, how was Han Solo there? The explanation offered by Ben was that his father was "just a memory" - presumably one that has haunted him since he murdered Han on Starkiller base. Solo was famously not Force-sensitive (though he became a believer) and Han was in no way a Jedi so this wasn't a Force Ghost of the smuggler. But somehow Solo may still have been mystically connected to the Force by his wife and son. The whole sequence played for maximum emotional impact but the way the events played out was certainly puzzling.
At the start of The Rise of Skywalker, Emperor Palpatine unveiled the massive Final Order fleet of Star Destroyers - but who was manning those enormous ships? Were they automated or was there a Final Order army that somehow formed in the Unknown Regions over the last 30 years? The Final Order ships seemed to have personnel with red helmets so they could have been part of the Final Order but Palpatine still ordered Allegiant General Pryde to bring the First Order fleet to join him on Exegol, indicating the two Orders were different entities.
The Rise of Skywalker wasn't terribly interested in defining or differentiating the First Order and the Final Order and who was who on the Battle of Exegol. Further, when Kylo Ren told his assembled general of the Final Order fleet, Pryde said it would increase the First Order's power "10,000-fold" and another general demanded that recruitment be stepped up to man those ships - even though there was a timetable of 16 hours before Palpatine wanted to launch his attack. Very little of the logic behind the First Order/Final Order - and the hows and whys of the Final Order ships each having a planet-killing weapon - holds up under scrutiny.
The Battle of Exegol saw thousands of ships belonging to people of the galaxy's free planets join the Resistance to take on the Final Order's gigantic fleet. The battle was nearly lost for the good guys when Emperor Palpatine struck the heroes' fleet with Force Lightning, but Rey killing the Emperor turned the tide and the Final Order fleet was brought down. However, apparently there were other battles being fought against the First Order (possibly simultaneously) on other planets like Jakku, Endor, and Bespin. How did those civilian ships beat the First Order millions of light-years away from Rey taking out Emperor Palpatine?
Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams) returned to play a pivotal role in defeating Emperor Palpatine's plans (again) while Jannah was a new character introduced in The Rise of Skywalker; she's an ex-Stormtrooper who rebelled alongside her battalion and escaped the First Order, just as Finn did. During the victory celebration at the end of the movie, Jannah sat down alongside Lando and they asked each other where they came from. When Jannah said she didn't know her answers, Lando said, "Let's find out!" It definitely seemed like The Rise of Skywalker was setting up a connection or possibly even a blood relationship between the two but it's yet another story thread the film has no time to answer. Jannah's story (and if it somehow links to Lando) will likely be told in a novel or comic book in the future.
At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey visits the abandoned Lars homestead on Tatooine to see where Luke Skywalker grew up. She then buried Luke and Leia's lightsabers deep in the desert sands but Rey no longer needs her mentors' weapons because, like a true Jedi, she built her very own yellow lightsaber (the color of the Jedi Sentinel) made from her staff. The question is, where did she get the yellow Kyber crystal?
The video game Jedi: Fallen Order implied that Ilum, the planet that most Jedi got their Kyber crystals from, became Starkiller Base, which is now destroyed. It's possible Rey found another place that had Kyber crystals using the ancient Jedi texts or perhaps she somehow converted the Kyber in Luke or Leia's lightsaber to the new color. As for why a yellow lightsaber, the simple answer is yellow is one of the light-side saber colors that has been seen in the prequels but hasn't been linked to a main Star Wars hero yet so Rey gets to be the primary Jedi character in the movies who wields a yellow lightsaber.
The biggest question of all at the end of The Rise of Skywalker is: What does Rey Skywalker do next? By the end of the film, Rey has inherited the legacy of a thousand generations of the Jedi and she defeated Palpatine, the embodiment of all of the Sith. Rey has adopted the Skywalker surname and she is also a war hero, she seems to be the owner of the Millennium Falcon, and she could possibly even make her home on Tatooine and take over Luke Skywalker's former moisture farm. Or Rey could restart the Jedi Order and begin finding and training Force-sensitive people throughout the galaxy, including Finn. Rey is still very young and she has her whole life ahead of her but it's unclear whether there will be any more movies starring Daisy Ridley as Rey in the future. While Star Wars comics and novels could fill in details of what Rey does next, for now, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is both the end of the Skywalker saga and the beginning of Rey's new journey as a Jedi.