By now, if you are a human nerd, you have already seen the teaser trailer for Star Wars: Episode IX. If not, watch it below. We’ll wait.
I KNOW, RIGHT?
Ahem. Anyways, clearly at the end of the trailer for the oddly tensed Rise of Skywalker, we hear Luke Skywalker saying, “No one is ever really gone” as the sad-sweet music swells and we were just presented a bunch of lovely bonding moments with characters new and old – but what’s this? The music abruptly ends and we hear a distinctive laugh that I really would have never figured was one of Star Wars‘s many highly-identifiable audio signatures.
It is, of course, the laugh of none other than Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine, aka Darth Sidious, aka DJ Snoke_1.0.
So cool! Maybe! I thought we were done with throwbacks to the original trilogy!? But then why even bother with a franchise with such a rich history?!
And anyways, what if this is just an empty promise of something that ends up “not mattering” anyway?
Well, we’ll save the (hopefully civil) debate on just how rich the mixture of originality and nostalgia should be in a proper Star Wars movie – and stick to the subtle thing many might have missed about the reveal.
This teaser came at the end of the Star Wars Celebration Chicago 2019 Live Stream, after Stephen Colbert had cast members old and new, as well as a few droids and J.J Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy on stage to ask questions that they mostly jokingly refused to answer. At the end of the Q&A, Colbert asked Abrams if there was anything else, and he threw to the teaser trailer as the cast left the stage.
After the laugh came up to close that first look at the teaser trailer, the house lights came up and Ian McDiarmid himself appeared onstage to thunderous applause. McDiarmid has portrayed Palpatine in all five of his appearances in the series (counting his cut-into the original Empire Strike Back), and is of course a fan favorite. After the applause died down, McDiarmid, in character, says, “Roll it Again”
More cheering. More love. More hottakes like this on the internet.
What does this mean?
After The Last Jedi, it’s reasonable to question just what teasers like this mean for the final story. Will the Emperor play an actual part, or is this just a head-nod for a flashback that might appear in the film? I think having Ian McDiarmid on stage is a good indicator that the Emperor will in some way have a more proactive role in the story than a mere flashback, and rightly so. This is a character that has been there since nearly the beginning, and while I agree that the current trilogy shouldn’t be a replay of what has already passed, it’s strange to think that love of Star Wars isn’t at least somewhat grounded in what we’ve grown up with.
What did you think? Are you excited about Star Wars, or has the luster gone?
In fact, screw that. Only say something if you are excited. If not, that’s fine, but like go check out something else cool on our site, okay?
