Disney’s D23 Expo may have finished up last night, but the Mouse House still had one more surprise up their sleeves. The studio dropped a new trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker this morning, revealing plenty of fresh footage in the process. While the first half of the preview is made up of material from prior installments in the franchise, the second half of the promo is sure to get the fans talking.
As if the new trailer didn’t make it clear enough, The Rise of Skywalker serves as the final entry in the recently-named Age of Resistance trilogy, and the entire Skywalker Saga as a whole. The anticipation for J.J. Abrams’ blockbuster is already starting to build ahead of its December release, and the director needs to deliver big time to end the franchise on a high note.
Of course, there’s a lot of new footage to process in the latest Rise of Skywalker trailer, but we’ve compiled a gallery of some of its best moments below, which teases Rey’s turn to the Dark Side, among other things.
Pretty exciting, eh? Not only does this upcoming film need to put the exclamation point on over 40 years of big screen storytelling, but it also needs to make sure that the fans are firmly back on-side after the incredibly polarizing reactions to Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. There are countless people across the world who have been Star Wars diehards their entire lives, so here’s hoping that the finished product will be able to live up to the weight of the pressure and expectation that surrounds it.
Thankfully, things look promising so far. We already know that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker will feature cast members from both the Original Trilogy and the most recent movies, with Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams and the late Carrie Fisher all set to appear alongside Daisy Ridley, John Boyega and Adam Driver. Not only that, but the movie’s also being marketed as the definitive end of this particular journey, and from the final moments of the new trailer, it definitely looks as if some of the franchise’s key characters will be facing a number of big changes come this December, and we can’t wait to see how it all unfolds.