Star Wars: The Last Jedi Recap and Predictions for Episode IX

December 15th, 2017
If you’ve seen The Last Jedi, read on. If not, go see it. It goes without saying, but there are mad spoilers ahead.

2. The Force Ghosts, Especially Luke, Play A Big Role

​Okay, so in The Last Jedi, we basically found out that force ghosts can do way more than just hanging around looking awkward. Before this, the most we really saw was Obi-Wan communicating with Luke as a voice in his head. They were good for giving paradoxical advice from beyond the grave and that was about it... until now.

We see motherf*cking ghost Yoda rival Thor himself as an almighty god of thunder. Lazy hermit Luke literally creates an illusion of himself rather than leave his island home. He just channels his energy and manages to project himself to a distant planet for an extended period of time, further ruffling the perpetually ruffled Kylo Ren. It's an understatement when I say that those force ghosts have some insane power. Imagine if Obi-Wan and Anakin teamed up with Yoda and Luke to give the Resistance even a slight edge. With his heroic feat at the end of The Last Jedi, Luke has established himself as one of the strongest force users to ever roam the universe. No one else has ever come close to doing what he did. If anyone can help Rey and the Resistance from beyond the grave, it is Luke and his team of force ghosts. I'm not saying it's going to happen, but I have a hunch that we haven't seen the last of Luke.

1. Bear with me... Rey and Kylo Ren join forces

The whole Jedi-Sith balance to the force thing seems like something that Star Wars is trying to slowly wean off of since getting acquired by Disney. With Finn in The Force Awakens, we see a conflicted First Order trooper switch sides. The notion that everyone have to be pure evil or pure good seems to slowly be going away. Luke, the epitome of everything good in the galaxy had a lapse in morality and accelerated his student's descent into the Dark Side. It didn't take Rey and her curiosity long to fall into the temptations of the Dark Side. Kylo Ren kills his father, fails to kill his mother, and then kills his evil master. Something The Last Jedi did so well was showing characters as human, tormented by inner conflict. Like Benicio del Toro's two-timing character said, it’s not always as black-and-white as good guys and bad guys.

With few threats left and no master to control him, Kylo Ren really doesn’t have any motivation to continue killing and conquering. With little resistance left in the galaxy to stop him, perhaps we see Kylo going down a path that has him as a less tyrannical ruler than the iron-fisted dark lords past. A tandem of Rey and Kylo Ren could be the right formula to bring long-lasting peace to the galaxy. We've seen that this new trilogy is eager to take big risks and to take a lot of them. I'm not saying that Kylo and Rey are just suddenly going to become best friends and rule the galaxy together, but we haven't seen equally conflicted characters on opposite sides like this before. We've seen that Rey and Kylo Ren share some level of understanding and trust between them, and both believe that they can convince the other to join their side. But like recent Star Wars films have shown, there are no real "sides" when it comes to war. Rey is the trademark hero, but she undeniably has anti-hero traits in her. The same goes for Kylo Ren who reaches unheard of levels of emo teen in The Last Jedi. What if for once, the balance in the force isn't the Jedi and the Sith, but two equally powerful people ruling at a happy medium?

...or we just get your traditional good guy fights bad guy ending.