“For my ally is the Force, and a powerful ally it is”

The trailer for The Last Jedi calls into question a basic assumption many have made about the new Star Wars trilogy: what if it’s not tacked on, and is in fact the saga’s originally intended ending?

That other bolted-on trilogy of ghastly prequels had a connection to the original movies that was never in question (abysmal execution aside): over six films the rise and fall and rise again of Anakin Skywalker mirrored that of the Galactic Republic. Job done, the end.

So when Disney announced the new trilogy following the acquisition of Lucasfilm, I only ever saw it as a ham-fisted continuation. Lucas himself would drop hints over the years that his saga was really meant to span nine films (or was it twelve? Or six? No, nine, final answer), but it never crossed my mind that The Force Awakens et al. were an essential part of the whole.

So what’s in those two minutes that changes things? Well, there are nods to the mysterious ‘Journal of the Whills’, and suggestions of a narrative conclusion to the Jedi order itself.

The Journal in question is supposedly (now) an ancient text on the nature of the Force. Confusingly, Lucas had once envisioned it as a framing device with which to relate the historical events of ‘The Star Wars’, as if written by a later people.

Since 1977 audiences have felt safe in imagining the Jedi as a sort of permanent entity: an order that has always existed, and which would continue long after the Skywalker era. Maybe those beliefs are about to be shattered?

If that is the case, these new films suddenly become much more exciting to me. Rather than merely being deliriously fun adventure movies, maybe we are getting something much more significant; it could be that we are turning the pages on the last chapters of the Jedi story – pages we never even knew existed.