Seeing how the official title of Star Wars: The Last Jedi was unveiled on January 23rd on the year of its release, many of us assumed that the upcoming Star Wars: Episode IX would have its name by now, but alas, it seems that Lucasfilm has other plans in mind.
In fact, going by recent statements from creative executive Pablo Hidalgo, it sounds like even the Lucasfilm Story Group hasn’t been filled in on the info. The story group was set up in 2012 in order to oversea the current Star Wars canon and monitor the continuity of the franchise’s many projects. In other words, it’s basically their job to know everything that’s going on in the Star Wars galaxy, and yet, when a fan asked Hidalgo on Twitter whether he knew the title of Episode IX, he replied, “If it has a title, I don’t know it.”
To some extent, this probably shouldn’t be all that surprising. For one thing, Disney is notorious these days for keeping the details of their major franchise projects under wraps, even from their own employees. The title of Avengers: Endgame, for instance, was reportedly kept from the main cast until it was revealed last December, so perhaps it only follows that Episode IX would get a similar treatment. On top of that, though Hidalgo and his peers are required to know the in-universe events and logic of the Star Wars franchise, you can imagine that a real-world detail like the name of J.J. Abrams’ next film would be pretty irrelevant to their job on a practical level.
In any case, though it seemed for a brief moment like this really could be the week where the title arrives, it’s starting to look like we still have some waiting to do, but regardless of when the title drops, Lucasfilm will no doubt be saving their biggest reveals for when Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters on December 20th, 2019.
