Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy wasn’t an out-and-out disaster, but the fan consensus is that they fumbled the ball. After getting off to a decent start with The Force Awakens, they took a left-turn with The Last Jedi, and catastrophically over-corrected with the terrible The Rise of Skywalker. We suppose that’s what you get when you set out to make a trilogy of movies without deciding the story in advance.
The last entry in particular is widely mocked by fans, particularly the cringeworthy scene in which Oscar Isaac’s Poe Dameron tells the Rebels “somehow Palpatine has returned”. Oof.
But, later in the movie, there’s a moment that Isaac makes funny without a single word, as he says goodbye to Zorii Bliss and none-too-subtly wonders if she’d like to hook up:
Fans say this moment working is a testament to Isaac’s skills:
Others agree that this is one of the rare The Rise of Skywalker scenes that actually works:
For some the frustrating thing about the sequel trilogy is that it squanders what could have been excellent characters:
We wish there’d been more focus on Finn and Poe too:
Maybe we’ll see Poe again someday, though Oscar Isaac sounds like he’s ready to leave Star Wars behind:
So there you go, even in an unmitigated disaster like The Rise of Skywalker there are still a couple of gems to be found. Even so, we can’t help but think about how the sequel trilogy could have been if they’d planned it out in advance and had a coherent creative vision behind it. We guess we’ll never know what we missed out on,