10 Easter Eggs You Might Have Missed In Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is finally here, and it's being met with widespread critical acclaim. That said, there is a certain disquiet rumbling amongst a subset of the fandom due to the movie's bold choices and unexpected turns. In contrast to the familiar, nostalgia-tinged The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi is keen to challenge our presumptions about the saga. All that said, it's still made with a lot of love for what has come before and as such features many a nod to the previous films in the franchise. There are some great obvious ones, for example, such as R2-D2 replaying Leia's hologram message from A New Hope, the attack on Crait calling back to the Battle of Hoth and, last but not least, the poorly-kept secret that was Yoda's cameo. However, Episode VIII also features a lot of callbacks and references that are much easier to miss. Here are 10 easter eggs that we noticed while watching The Last Jedi that most of you may not have caught. If we failed to mention any others, be sure to let us know in the comments section down below. Hidden Title Meanings The titles for both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi have produced a lot of theories over the past few years but, handily, this movie explains away both of them. First of all, Rey admits to Luke that she's afraid of the power she feels growing inside of her. "It's always been there," she tells him, "but now it's awoken." It's obvious what Rey is talking about here, confirming that her raw power is what The Force Awakens refers to. Though Rian Johnson did recently confirm that it also links to Kylo Ren as well. Meanwhile, much was made about the many potential meanings for The Last Jedi before its release, but this is cleared up several times throughout the movie when Luke is called "the last Jedi." However, the ultimate message of the film is that there will always be more Force-sensitive people out there, meaning the Jedi will never truly end. Royal Cameos The Force Awakens was famously littered with celebrity cameos that were easy to miss, including Simon Pegg as Unkar Plutt and Daniel Craig as a stormtrooper. While The Last Jedi doesn't have quite so many guest spots, there are a few in there that fans can challenge themselves to spot. The two that are most talked about are the appearances from Princes William and Harry, who got the chance to dress up as stormtroopers for a scene when they came to visit the set. Tom Hardy is also in the film somewhere as a stormtrooper, as is Gary Barlow, lead singer of British band Take That. It's thought that the odd quartet might appear in the same sequence together, but John Boyega confused matters recently when he suggested they all might have been cut. Meanwhile, Joseph Gordon-Levitt revealed on Twitter that he has a cameo in The Last Jedi. It was apparently a mandatory thing for director Rian Johnson to get Levitt in the movie as he features the actor in every one of his projects (most famously, 2011's Looper). Likewise, Noah Segan is also in the film somewhere. Alongside Levitt, the actor has appeared in Johnson's four movies to date. Luke's Training Parallels The Last Jedi makes some distinct connections between Luke's training with Yoda on Dagobah and Rey's training with Luke on Ahch-To. Though, to be fair to Johnson, the methodology of the training is very different, he can't help but sneak in a few nods to The Empire Strikes Back. A few we picked up on include the darkness beneath the island calling back to the cave that Luke entered on Dagobah. Just as Rey was shown her inner demons by the mirrored wall in the island's caverns, a young Luke was shown his greatest fear - that he has something of Vader in him. Also, while it's only on-screen for the briefest scene, at one point Rey notices a crashed X-Wing in shallow water just off Luke's island. This tells us how he came to arrive on Ahch-To but it also acts as a nod to the X-Wing stuck in Yoda's swamp in The Empire Strikes Back. Although, the movie stops short of having Luke use the Force to pull it from the water. Finally, there's a running joke about Luke berating Rey for thinking that using the Force is all about lifting rocks. This was, of course, a key part of Luke's own training by Yoda. Later on, that skill also proves to be of use to Rey as she has to lift a load of boulders to free her friends on Crait. Blowing Stuff Up With An X-Wing Leia sets out to teach the gung-ho Poe Dameron an important lesson throughout The Last Jedi: as she puts it, "not everything can be solved by blowing it up with an X-Wing." Eventually, Poe gets the message and we assume this will make him a better Resistance leader in the next movie. To be fair to Poe, though, the history of the Star Wars franchise has taught us that blowing things up with an X-Wing can be pretty damn effective. Three of the saga's movies so far have wrapped up with the hero using one of the ships to destroy the bad guy's big weapon. Namely, Luke used an X-Wing to destroy the Death Star in A New Hope; Wedge Antilles and his X-Wing aided Han's Millennium Falcon in bringing down the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi and, lastly, Poe himself destroyed Starkiller Base with one in The Force Awakens. R.I.P. Admiral Ackbar You might remember that one of the several Star Wars legends who sadly passed away last year was actor Erik Bauersfeld, who had voiced the iconic Rebel leader Admiral Ackbar in the original trilogy and The Force Awakens, where he was now part of Leia's Resistance. The character returns for a minor role in the first half of The Last Jedi, with Tom Kane (who has played the part in video games before) lending Ackbar his voice. Perhaps out of respect for Bauersfeld, Ackbar is shockingly killed off part way through the movie, however. You might have missed it, but it's mentioned that he's tragically one of the Resistance leaders who's wiped out in the First Order's attack on the Resistance star cruiser. R.I.P. Admiral Ackbar, we'll always remember that it was a trap. Darth Sidious And The Failure of The Jedi The Force Awakens deliberately sidestepped the controversial prequel movies in order to focus on the nostalgia of the original trilogy. The Last Jedi, meanwhile, isn't afraid to reference George Lucas' oft-hated films as it calls back to the tragic events of Revenge of the Sith. When he's trying to explain to Rey that the Jedi's legacy is nothing but failure, Luke references the fact that, even when the Jedi were in their prime, they were foolish enough to let "Darth Sidious" rise to power and corrupt the Galactic Senate into the Empire. This, of course, is the main thrust of the prequels, with Chancellor Palpatine finally revealing himself to be a Sith Lord in the third installment. Luke also refers to the Emperor by his Sith name for the first time in the series, as it was introduced in the prequels. Balance To The Force The references to the prequels don't stop with the namecheck of Darth Sidious though, as there's also a lot of discussion in The Last Jedi about how there needs to be balance to the Force. For instance, it's Snoke's theory that an avatar for the light side of the Force would rise up to combat Kylo Ren's darkness. He initially believed this to be Luke, but it turns out to be Rey. Likewise, Luke says the Force was in balance until Ben Solo turned to the dark side. The idea of bringing balance to the Force was previously a major theme of the prequel movies. Anakin Skywalker was the prophecised Chosen One who was promised to be that balance. What the Jedi didn't know is that he would be the darkness that balanced out their light. Nowadays, the two sides are simply embodied by Rey and Ren. Though things might be swinging back in the light's favour, as the film's final moments saw a young boy on Canto Bight exhibiting Force powers. Luke's Green Lightsaber Luke's original blue lightsaber, owned by his father Anakin Skywalker before him, is a hugely significant item in these movies, and its destruction at the end of The Last Jedi comes as a big blow to Rey. You might have missed it, though, but Luke's second lightsaber also makes a brief appearance in the film. First of all, you'll remember how Luke lost his original saber when Vader chopped off his hand in The Empire Strikes Back. By Return of the Jedi, he had replaced it with a green model. In The Last Jedi, this lightsaber appears in the flashback sequence to the night Ben Solo burned down Luke's Jedi school. In a memorable moment, Luke almost uses it to murder his nephew in his bed when he senses the evil within him. As for why the green lightsaber is nowhere to be seen in the present day scenes, no explanation is given. Though seeing how Luke throws his blue lightsaber away when Rey first gives it to him, it's not too much of a stretch to assume he flung it into Ahch-To's sea. Han's Golden Dice During The Last Jedi, Luke sneaks aboard the Millennium Falcon one night and basks in some nostalgia. In particular, he inspects a pair of gold dice that are hanging in the cockpit and looks wistfully at them as if they remind him of the good old days. The gold dice return at the movie's climax, too, when Luke (later revealed to be a Force Projection) seemingly gives them back to Leia, as they share a moment of respect for Han Solo's loss. Later, Kylo Ren finds the dice in the abandoned Resistance base but they disappear in his hand, as they were a Force Projection, too. It's also symbolic of Kylo not being worthy of holding his father's memory. They aren't a particularly iconic part of the Millenium Falcon's interior decor, but if you go back and watch A New Hope, you will find the golden dice hanging above the cockpit. Star Wars: The Force Awakens - The Visual Dictionary reveals that these are the dice that won Han the Falcon from Lando Calrissian, so he hung them up as lucky charms. Ahch-To's Two Suns After exerting so much effort in projecting a Force version of himself to confront Kylo Ren on Crait, Luke peacefully succumbs to death during the weepy end of The Last Jedi. Back on Ahch-To, he sits on a rock and watches the two suns set for the night as he fades away into nothing, as all Jedi masters do upon death. It's a beautiful scene but it gets even more poetic when you realize that Luke's last sight calls back to where his story began many years before. As a boy, Luke grew up looking at two suns every day on Tatooine, as seen in A New Hope. It's a nice touch for director Rian Johnson that brings the character's journey full circle. Meanwhile, there's another callback to Luke's life on Tatooine in Star Wars: The Last Jedi. When Rey is following him while he goes about his daily routine earlier in the movie, Luke milks a cow-like animal native to the planet. The animal's milk happens to be tinted green, a homage to the blue Bantha milk that was so popular on his first adoptive homeworld.