The final battle of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is a stark contrast to The Last Jedi. That film ended with the last remnants of the Resistance holed up on Crait with Leia pleading with the galaxy for help. Nobody answered the call and it was only Luke Skywalker buying them time that allowed them to escape. Clearly, Lando Calrissian is much more of a people-person, as the fleet he raised to attack Exegol is the biggest we’ve ever seen in Star Wars.
According to a new blog on StarWars.com, Lando managed to secure the help of a massive 14,000 ships in a very short amount of time – a literally unbelievable number. There were many cameos among this fleet, as well. Fans spotted the Ghost from Rebels in a teaser trailer, and others include the Crucible (owned by Hondo Ohnaka in The Clone Wars), the Shadow Caster (belonging to bounty hunter Ketsu Onyo), the Eravana (abandoned by Han in The Force Awakens) and the Outrider (from the special edition of A New Hope). And now, we can add a few more to that list that we definitely missed the first time around.
Star Wars Resistance has just wrapped up its second season, ending where The Rise of Skywalker began, and Lucasfilm Story Group member Pablo Hidalgo has revealed which Resistance characters went on to fight on Exegol:
“Well, one thing we do know is that among the 14,000 ships that arrive with Lando Calrissian over Exegol in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker are the Fireball, Jarek Yeager’s racer, and Torra Doza’s ship.”
On top of that, there were also a number of mining guild freighters from Resistance joining the battle. According to the blog, the ILM Team took the cartoony designs from the show and made photo-realistic versions of the vessels to use in the final battle.
This all sounds pretty cool for Resistance fans, but it doesn’t seem that anyone actually noticed they were present in the battle in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. To be fair, there were a lot of ships buzzing about that chaotically shot and edited fight, so maybe we can spot them when the Blu-ray is released. Still, it’s nice that they took the time to give a nod to fans of the show and demonstrate its importance to the canon.
