The Rise of Skywalker - Rewrite Discussion Thread

There seems to be quite a few people who have an urge to rewrite this film, so this might be the place to find that catharsis you’re so desperately looking for!

Wanted to challenge myself slightly and “write” additional scenes for The Rise of Skywalker as we got it, and also make a few slight changes to the overall plot. I’ll probably do a major rewrite eventually, but I just wanted to spit out a few small ideas that I think could have improved the film.

I want to start by addressing the general story arcs for some of the main characters, excluding Rey and Ben, who’ll I’ll touch on later.

Finn:
I think the simplest change would be to add more to Finn and Jannah’s interactions. First of all, if you look at Jannah and her followers, you wouldn’t even know they were former Stormtroopers. I think their costumes could consist of bits and pieces of stormtrooper armor to make that clearer. In Finn and Jannah’s conversation, Jannah could say that her and the other stormtroopers just want to stay and hide, not get involved. But Finn inspires them to join the fight, because it is the right thing to do. Also, when Finn and Poe are on the Star Destroyer, you could give Finn some kind of interaction with one or multiple stormtroopers that sets up something later on in the film.

The film itself brings up a few times that the First Order would begin harvesting more children to man the Sith Fleet, but we never see that have much of an effect on the story, so I would add a subplot of Stormtroopers raiding a village and kidnapping all the children from there as the parents beg for them to not to. Later, we see that the First Order has put Lobot-like implants on them in order to make them totally obedient. The final mission would change from destroying the transmission tower that will allow the Sith Fleet to leave Exegol, to Finn destroying the control tower that controls the children’s implants. So the goal of the final battle goes from “fighting the enemy” to “saving the innocent”. We see various ships rescue the children after the main ship is destroyed. During the final epilogue, we would see Finn and Rose bring all of the children back to their village, and perhaps even stormtroopers. Maybe we could see Jannah and her group interact with a separate group of stormtroopers as they all remove their helmets, realizing that they are finally free.

You could even get that brief sequence with Finn instead, and not have the children subplot, but the harvesting children subplot is mentioned in the film a few times, so I figured I would incorporate it. But since Finn’s journey started with destroying a village, I think it would be nice for his journey to end by helping a village.

Poe:
I definitely felt like Poe’s journey didn’t grow much from the last film, so I wanted to highlight some ideas that I think could help demonstrate Poe becoming a leader. First of all, I would remove the crap about Poe being a former spice-runner. Instead, I think it would be more fitting if Zorri was a former New Republic pilot that Poe flew with that became a criminal after the First Order took over. She could be mad at Poe for leaving the New Republic to join the Resistance, or failing to stop Starkiller from destroying Hosnian Prime. She has lost hope of the Republic ever returning, and has given up basically. But Poe tells her why he still thinks there is hope (maybe even repeats Holdo’s “hope is like the sun” line), and Zorri comments on how Poe has changed from that hothead pilot she knew so long ago. Making Zorri a former Republic pilot also better sets up why we see her flying an Y-Wing at the climax of the film.

After Leia dies and Poe becomes the de-facto general, the Resistance comes to the conclusion that they have to send a message to their allies to join them at Exegol. They comment that without Leia to send that message, it’s unlikely that anyone will have any hope of victory, but Poe says that Leia’s legacy still lives on through them. And with that, we get a new sequence where Poe dons a white cape and records a rallying speech that gets sent out to their allies across the galaxy. Lando says he’ll wait at the rendezvous for anyone who shows up to escort them to Exegol, and then Poe stands on the bridge of the Tantive IV and leads the Resistance to the last battle. So when the big fleet shows up at the last minute, it is because of POE.

In the epilogue, we’d see Poe on Coruscant, meeting with representatives from various worlds and shaking hands with them, signifying the return of democracy in the galaxy.

Chewbacca:
I think Chewie’s character needed a bit more resolution than what we got in the film, so I wanted to add three brief scenes to sort of round out his story in this last chapter of the saga. First, I think it would be nice to get a brief conversation between Maz and Chewie in the first act of the film, where Maz asks Chewie about being relieved of his life debt to Han and how his family must miss him. Chewie growls and Maz replies in a way that implies that he’s staying to help Leia complete her mission, because that is what Han would have wanted.

Later, while Chewie is a prisoner aboard the Star Destroyer, him and Kylo/Ben (along with some of the Knights of Ren) have a brief interaction. Kylo orders him to give up the location of the Resistance, but Chewie remains silent. Kylo tries to search Chewie’s mind, but when he does, Chewie only forces him to relive happy memories from his childhood with him, Han and Leia. This overwhelms Kylo, and when one of the Knights asks if they can kill Chewie, he snaps and says no, then quickly adds that he could still be useful.

After the final battle has been won, we get a brief epilogue sequence of Chewie finally returning home to his family on Kashyyyk.

Rose:
I don’t necessarily think Rose needs some kind of major character arc. I think simply seeing her go from a lowly mechanic in TLJ to an important member of the Resistance in IX would be plenty for her character. But I think there were plenty of ways Rose could’ve gotten plenty of more screen time. First of all, Rose EASILY could have been on the first mission with Finn, Poe and Chewie on the Falcon. Instead of Klaud, who literally has NO HANDS, be the mechanic on the Falcon, this easily could have been Rose.

Another easy fix would have been to get rid of Dominic Monaghan’s character and give some of that extra dialogue to either Rose and/or Billie Lourd’s character. I think there could have been a nice scene between Rose and Rey as they repair the Falcon together. Rose could have had a brief conversation with Finn regarding his desire to save the kidnapped children and/or the other stormtroopers. If Rose stayed back at the base, I think it would be nice for her to communicate back and forth with the gang a bit more often. Or maybe we could cut back to Rose once or twice to see her working on the device Poe will use to broadcast his message to the galaxy.

Honestly, though I think Rose could have easily gone with the gang on their mission. Rose could’ve stayed with the Falcon on Pasana and gotten captured, then later she could be rescued alongside Chewie. On Kef Bir, she could have helped try to repair the Falcon while Rey went ahead to the Death Star ruins. Having Rose tag along wouldn’t have really overcrowded the main plot, or taken away from the “trio” that Abrams and Terrio were desperately trying to focus on.

Hux:
I wasn’t sure what to do about Hux when I started writing this, but the ideas started formulating as I went along. I think the first scene we could get of Hux is him ordering the execution of a would-be Stormtrooper deserter in one of the Star Destroyer hangars. Or perhaps this trooper was the spy that helped the Resistance. Without Phasma to control the troops, Hux’s methods of control have become more desperate. Despite the Stormtroopers all wearing masks, we get the feeling the soldiers seem uncomfortable during this execution. The spy/deserter’s last words could be something like, “FN-218–”

Regarding Hux’s relationship to Pryde, I actually think the roles should be reversed. Pryde should be rather skeptical of trusting this Sith cult, whereas Hux would gladly accept a new armada, and he also revels in the fact the Kylo Ren might have to answer to a new master.

When Finn and Poe are about to be killed aboard the Star Destroyer, instead of Hux being the one to save them, Finn starts trying to talk to the stormtroopers, and it is one of the stormtroopers that has a change of heart then saves them/lets them go. Maybe Finn and this trooper could share a few words before they part ways. After Kylo turns, instead of seeing Pryde kill Hux, Hux kills Pryde and begins taking control of the First Order. We see Hux contact the Emperor and pledges allegiance to him in return to become the new Supreme Leader of his forces.

Hux is on the bridge of the main Star Destroyer during the final battle, and during this battle we see the stormtrooper that Finn spoke to watch from view screens as Finn, Jannah, and the other rogue stormtroopers fight and die to stop the First Order. Seeing that they are losing, the stormtrooper decides to rally the other stormtroopers and storm the bridge of the Star Destroyer. Just as Finn and Jannah as are about to die, the rebelling stormtroopers finally board the bridge and kill Hux, then deactivate the transmitter. Since the stormtroopers are Hux’s army, I think it is appropriate that it is his army that is his downfall. And this might be another nice way to tie up Finn’s arc as well.

Okay, that’s all I got for now. I’ll touch on Rey, Kylo/Ben, Luke, Leia and the Emperor in another post.

It’s strange how despite RoS doing the two must-have things for me for Episode IX (Palpatine and Reylo, ready your pitchforks) and DotF doing neither, I still hold them equally in terms of quality, if not preferring DotF.

RogueLeader said:

Wanted to challenge myself slightly and “write” additional scenes for The Rise of Skywalker as we got it, and also make a few slight changes to the overall plot. I’ll probably do a major rewrite eventually, but I just wanted to spit out a few small ideas that I think could have improved the film.

I want to start by addressing the general story arcs for some of the main characters, excluding Rey and Ben, who’ll I’ll touch on later.

Finn:
I think the simplest change would be to add more to Finn and Jannah’s interactions. First of all, if you look at Jannah and her followers, you wouldn’t even know they were former Stormtroopers. I think their costumes could consist of bits and pieces of stormtrooper armor to make that clearer. In Finn and Jannah’s conversation, Jannah could say that her and the other stormtroopers just want to stay and hide, not get involved. But Finn inspires them to join the fight, because it is the right thing to do. Also, when Finn and Poe are on the Star Destroyer, you could give Finn some kind of interaction with one or multiple stormtroopers that sets up something later on in the film.

The film itself brings up a few times that the First Order would begin harvesting more children to man the Sith Fleet, but we never see that have much of an effect on the story, so I would add a subplot of Stormtroopers raiding a village and kidnapping all the children from there as the parents beg for them to not to. Later, we see that the First Order has put Lobot-like implants on them in order to make them totally obedient. The final mission would change from destroying the transmission tower that will allow the Sith Fleet to leave Exegol, to Finn destroying the control tower that controls the children’s implants. So the goal of the final battle goes from “fighting the enemy” to “saving the innocent”. We see various ships rescue the children after the main ship is destroyed. During the final epilogue, we would see Finn and Rose bring all of the children back to their village, and perhaps even stormtroopers. Maybe we could see Jannah and her group interact with a separate group of stormtroopers as they all remove their helmets, realizing that they are finally free.

You could even get that brief sequence with Finn instead, and not have the children subplot, but the harvesting children subplot is mentioned in the film a few times, so I figured I would incorporate it. But since Finn’s journey started with destroying a village, I think it would be nice for his journey to end by helping a village.

Poe:
I definitely felt like Poe’s journey didn’t grow much from the last film, so I wanted to highlight some ideas that I think could help demonstrate Poe becoming a leader. First of all, I would remove the crap about Poe being a former spice-runner. Instead, I think it would be more fitting if Zorri was a former New Republic pilot that Poe flew with that became a criminal after the First Order took over. She could be mad at Poe for leaving the New Republic to join the Resistance, or failing to stop Starkiller from destroying Hosnian Prime. She has lost hope of the Republic ever returning, and has given up basically. But Poe tells her why he still thinks there is hope (maybe even repeats Holdo’s “hope is like the sun” line), and Zorri comments on how Poe has changed from that hothead pilot she knew so long ago. Making Zorri a former Republic pilot also better sets up why we see her flying an Y-Wing at the climax of the film.

After Leia dies and Poe becomes the de-facto general, the Resistance comes to the conclusion that they have to send a message to their allies to join them at Exegol. They comment that without Leia to send that message, it’s unlikely that anyone will have any hope of victory, but Poe says that Leia’s legacy still lives on through them. And with that, we get a new sequence where Poe dons a white cape and records a rallying speech that gets sent out to their allies across the galaxy. Lando says he’ll wait at the rendezvous for anyone who shows up to escort them to Exegol, and then Poe stands on the bridge of the Tantive IV and leads the Resistance to the last battle. So when the big fleet shows up at the last minute, it is because of POE.

In the epilogue, we’d see Poe on Coruscant, meeting with representatives from various worlds and shaking hands with them, signifying the return of democracy in the galaxy.

Chewbacca:
I think Chewie’s character needed a bit more resolution than what we got in the film, so I wanted to add three brief scenes to sort of round out his story in this last chapter of the saga. First, I think it would be nice to get a brief conversation between Maz and Chewie in the first act of the film, where Maz asks Chewie about being relieved of his life debt to Han and how his family must miss him. Chewie growls and Maz replies in a way that implies that he’s staying to help Leia complete her mission, because that is what Han would have wanted.

Later, while Chewie is a prisoner aboard the Star Destroyer, him and Kylo/Ben (along with some of the Knights of Ren) have a brief interaction. Kylo orders him to give up the location of the Resistance, but Chewie remains silent. Kylo tries to search Chewie’s mind, but when he does, Chewie only forces him to relive happy memories from his childhood with him, Han and Leia. This overwhelms Kylo, and when one of the Knights asks if they can kill Chewie, he snaps and says no, then quickly adds that he could still be useful.

After the final battle has been won, we get a brief epilogue sequence of Chewie finally returning home to his family on Kashyyyk.

Rose:
I don’t necessarily think Rose needs some kind of major character arc. I think simply seeing her go from a lowly mechanic in TLJ to an important member of the Resistance in IX would be plenty for her character. But I think there were plenty of ways Rose could’ve gotten plenty of more screen time. First of all, Rose EASILY could have been on the first mission with Finn, Poe and Chewie on the Falcon. Instead of Klaud, who literally has NO HANDS, be the mechanic on the Falcon, this easily could have been Rose.

Another easy fix would have been to get rid of Dominic Monaghan’s character and give some of that extra dialogue to either Rose and/or Billie Lourd’s character. I think there could have been a nice scene between Rose and Rey as they repair the Falcon together. Rose could have had a brief conversation with Finn regarding his desire to save the kidnapped children and/or the other stormtroopers. If Rose stayed back at the base, I think it would be nice for her to communicate back and forth with the gang a bit more often. Or maybe we could cut back to Rose once or twice to see her working on the device Poe will use to broadcast his message to the galaxy.

Honestly, though I think Rose could have easily gone with the gang on their mission. Rose could’ve stayed with the Falcon on Pasana and gotten captured, then later she could be rescued alongside Chewie. On Kef Bir, she could have helped try to repair the Falcon while Rey went ahead to the Death Star ruins. Having Rose tag along wouldn’t have really overcrowded the main plot, or taken away from the “trio” that Abrams and Terrio were desperately trying to focus on.

Hux:
I wasn’t sure what to do about Hux when I started writing this, but the ideas started formulating as I went along. I think the first scene we could get of Hux is him ordering the execution of a would-be Stormtrooper deserter in one of the Star Destroyer hangars. Or perhaps this trooper was the spy that helped the Resistance. Without Phasma to control the troops, Hux’s methods of control have become more desperate. Despite the Stormtroopers all wearing masks, we get the feeling the soldiers seem uncomfortable during this execution. The spy/deserter’s last words could be something like, “FN-218–”

Regarding Hux’s relationship to Pryde, I actually think the roles should be reversed. Pryde should be rather skeptical of trusting this Sith cult, whereas Hux would gladly accept a new armada, and he also revels in the fact the Kylo Ren might have to answer to a new master.

When Finn and Poe are about to be killed aboard the Star Destroyer, instead of Hux being the one to save them, Finn starts trying to talk to the stormtroopers, and it is one of the stormtroopers that has a change of heart then saves them/lets them go. Maybe Finn and this trooper could share a few words before they part ways. After Kylo turns, instead of seeing Pryde kill Hux, Hux kills Pryde and begins taking control of the First Order. We see Hux contact the Emperor and pledges allegiance to him in return to become the new Supreme Leader of his forces.

Hux is on the bridge of the main Star Destroyer during the final battle, and during this battle we see the stormtrooper that Finn spoke to watch from view screens as Finn, Jannah, and the other rogue stormtroopers fight and die to stop the First Order. Seeing that they are losing, the stormtrooper decides to rally the other stormtroopers and storm the bridge of the Star Destroyer. Just as Finn and Jannah as are about to die, the rebelling stormtroopers finally board the bridge and kill Hux, then deactivate the transmitter. Since the stormtroopers are Hux’s army, I think it is appropriate that it is his army that is his downfall. And this might be another nice way to tie up Finn’s arc as well.

Okay, that’s all I got for now. I’ll touch on Rey, Kylo/Ben, Luke, Leia and the Emperor in another post.

Incredible, everything you’ve just said is AMAZING!

I agree with it all. When I saw Poe get shot in the arm, my first thought was that he could not pilot a xwing, but he could still lead the fleet.

Finn deserved to save the stormtrooper and spark their rebellion. I know JB and many other wanted Finn to be a jedi or force user or whatever, but this obsession with jedi been the “main” character is, for lack of a better word, silly. For me it doesn’t matter if Finn was jedi or a Jawa, but for him to face the first order and free his brothers and sisters, would make him the most incredible SW hero ever IMO.

What said about Chewie it’s just perfect. So is what you said about Hux, Rose, Pryde and even Billy lord.

And of course, Ben should survive, Rey should remain a nobody, But if it was essential for her to be the bastard granddaughter of the emperor, then she should have “redeemed” him somehow.

Okay, here’s a first attempt. This isn’t final by any stretch as there still isn’t anything for Poe and Rose to do, and little for Finn to do. We’ll stick with Rise of Skywalker as the title ‘cause it matches Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith quite nicely.

The movie opens with Kylo with his repaired helmet leading an attack on Resistance controlled Coruscant, the Knights of Ren by his side, all wielding crackly red lightsabers. They emerge victorious, but during the battle, Kylo has a crisis of conscience.

Meanwhile, Rey is now a fully trained Jedi, wielding the repaired Skywalker Saber, its blade now crackly like Kylo’s. She is leading the Resistance in the fight for Coruscant. The planet is divided fairly equally between the First Order and the Resistance, the cityscape in ruins. She successfully leads her troops in a battle on the other end of the planet from Kylo. Maybe they have a Force connection during the battle.

After the battle, each side receives a hooded messenger accompanied by Sith troopers. They claim to be from Exegol, and declare an ultimatum; join the Sith Eternal or die. The messenger sent to the Resistance is a male with two tall, straight horns protruding through the top of his hood. The one sent to the First Order is a female with seemingly no unusual traits. Neither of their faces are visible. Give them masks, I guess.

The First Order leadership don’t take this threat seriously while Kylo does. Kylo goes rogue, vacating the First Order throne, and Pryde takes over as Supreme Leader. He sets out for Mustafar in order to find the map to the hidden Sith world of Exegol in the ruins of Vader’s Castle. His knights accompany him. With Kylo gone, Hux snoops around his quarters, discovering Vader’s lightsaber, damaged, but functional. He holds onto it.

Rey goes in search of Exegol, a hidden Sith planet she read about in the Sacred Jedi Texts. Darth Sidious supposedly kept a map to the planet in his throne room, so off to Endor we go!

After a bit of action and scenery, the Knights of Ren locate the map within the castle. There’s only one problem; half of it is missing.

On Endor, Rey has a fun encounter with the Ewoks, but it takes a turn for the worse when mangey grey Ewoks attack them. Being primitive, they don’t pose a significant threat to her, but it’s unsettling nonetheless.

With the guidance of a friendly Ewok, Rey makes it to the ruins of the second Death Star. Once aboard, she finds the throne room and retrieves the other half of the map, only to come face to face with Kylo. The duel plays out like in the real movie (albeit to the tune of Battle of the Heroes), except Kylo’s redemption with Han happens before Rey leaves. He rushes over and offers to help her, as they have the same goal. She agrees. The other Knights are reluctant, but agree. They take off together in the Knights’ ship. The Knights introduce themselves by name, removing their helmets, never putting them back on for the remainder of the film. They are of a variety of species.

Upon assembling the map, they find that it leads them back to Coruscant where they started. Exegol is Coruscant. They follow it to the coordinates of the supposed Sith capitol…only to find the ruins of the once prosperous Jedi Temple. Ben says he needs a new saber. The Knights like the idea so they head to a lightsaber storage room. There Ben finds Qui-Gon’s lightsaber and takes it as his own. The Knights take various other lightsabers.

They venture deep within the Temple. The upper levels are empty, but the map tells them to go deeper. Eventually, they start discovering…things. Most unsettling things. Natural rock formations, strange lagoons filled with stranger creatures, sleeping behemoths, and…more mangey Ewoks?

Eventually, they reach an ominous temple. This is it. They enter it, and while they find many Sith troopers, none of them attack them. Soon enough, they make it to the heart of the temple: a large room with a throne hovering above an endless abyss. And who sits upon that throne. Why none other than Sheev Palpatine. Decayed, blinded, and covered in horrific cybernetic implants. He’s been expecting them. By his side are Mas Amedda and Sly Moore, the two hooded figures from the start.

A staggeringly massive battle rages on at the surface above what’s left of the Senate Building. First Order Dreadnoughts leveling districts, only to be obliterated by Resistance warhammers. Resistance troopers climbing up the bodies of 5 m tall mecha stormtroopers and tossing grenades in the cockpits. Wookiees tearing off limbs. Superlaser siege cannons destroying the foundations of buildings so that they topple onto enemy platoons and capital ships. R2-D2 single handedly taking out a squad of stormtroopers like he was Jackie Chan. Poe being the ace pilot we know him as. It’s total chaos. Bodies flying left and right. And among it all is Finn, fighting on the ground.

Him and Rose are surrounded by stormtroopers, ready to shoot them down. Rose lovingly holds him tight, having lost all hope. That’s when Finn breaks out the big speech. Yeah, you know what time it is. It’s stormtrooper rebellion time. Soon enough, the entire platoon is on his side (and those who aren’t are shot).

Meanwhile, Palpatine is taunting Rey and the Knights. He Force grabs all their lightsabers simultaneously without even moving a muscle and begins playing with them like a toddler with keys. Shortly thereafter, he tells them of how he survived the Battle of Endor, crashed onto the planetoid, and was nursed back to health by a tribe of Ewoks he corrupted. He was then found by his loyal follower Snoke, who he then took as a Sith apprentice. However, after learning all he sought to know, he betrayed Sidious and left him for dead, as he had been when he was found. Having recounted his story, he drains their dyad energy to rejuvenate to his Prequel form, but paler and with Sith eyes. The Knights manage to regain their lightsabers, but Palpatine summons the corpses of Plagueis, Maul, Dooku, Ventress, Grievous, and Vader to fight them. He then turns to a hologram of General Hux and tells him the time has come.

Hux, who is aboard a mega class dreadnought, utters a code phrase, and he and a few officers promptly turn on their colleagues and shoot them down without hesitation. They start turning their ship around. Pryde, seeing this from his own mega class dreadnought is incredibly confused. But it’s too late, as the bridge of his ship is shot down by Hux’s, killing him instantly.

On the ground, the battle is going in the Resistance’s favor, as their ranks are now boosted by rebellious stormtroopers whose helmets bear colorful handprints reminiscent of the bloody one Finn had in the first film. That’s when Palpatine unleashes his secret weapon: the battle droids. Yes, the same ones who debuted in The Phantom Menace (albeit with their playful, silly modern voice), alongside other familiar Seperatist droid troops. So now the Resistance and half of the First Order are fighting battle droids and the other half of the First Order.

Back in the Sith Temple, the scene plays out the same as in the movie we got, with the whole “I am all the Sith and I am all the Jedi” routine, with the difference that Kylo lives.

By the end, the battle is going in the good guys’ favor. Hux utters the words “We’ve lost the Star Wars” onscreen before committing Sith Seppuku with Vader’s saber. The movie ends with a celebration montage and either cuts straight from that to normal credit, or from a quieter scene of Rey and Ben starting a new order to quieter credits.

Anakin Starkiller said:

Okay, here’s a first attempt. This isn’t final by any stretch as there still isn’t anything for Poe and Rose to do, and little for Finn to do. We’ll stick with Rise of Skywalker as the title ‘cause it matches Return of the Jedi and Revenge of the Sith quite nicely.

The movie opens with Kylo with his repaired helmet leading an attack on Resistance controlled Coruscant, the Knights of Ren by his side, all wielding crackly red lightsabers. They emerge victorious, but during the battle, Kylo has a crisis of conscience.

Meanwhile, Rey is now a fully trained Jedi, wielding the repaired Skywalker Saber, its blade now crackly like Kylo’s. She is leading the Resistance in the fight for Coruscant. The planet is divided fairly equally between the First Order and the Resistance, the cityscape in ruins. She successfully leads her troops in a battle on the other end of the planet from Kylo. Maybe they have a Force connection during the battle.

After the battle, each side receives a hooded messenger accompanied by Sith troopers. They claim to be from Exegol, and declare an ultimatum; join the Sith Eternal or die. The messenger sent to the Resistance is a male with two tall, straight horns protruding through the top of his hood. The one sent to the First Order is a female with seemingly no unusual traits. Neither of their faces are visible. Give them masks, I guess.

The First Order leadership don’t take this threat seriously while Kylo does. Kylo goes rogue, vacating the First Order throne, and Pryde takes over as Supreme Leader. He sets out for Mustafar in order to find the map to the hidden Sith world of Exegol in the ruins of Vader’s Castle. His knights accompany him. With Kylo gone, Hux snoops around his quarters, discovering Vader’s lightsaber, damaged, but functional. He holds onto it.

Rey goes in search of Exegol, a hidden Sith planet she read about in the Sacred Jedi Texts. Darth Sidious supposedly kept a map to the planet in his throne room, so off to Endor we go!

After a bit of action and scenery, the Knights of Ren locate the map within the castle. There’s only one problem; half of it is missing.

On Endor, Rey has a fun encounter with the Ewoks, but it takes a turn for the worse when mangey grey Ewoks attack them. Being primitive, they don’t pose a significant threat to her, but it’s unsettling nonetheless.

With the guidance of a friendly Ewok, Rey makes it to the ruins of the second Death Star. Once aboard, she finds the throne room and retrieves the other half of the map, only to come face to face with Kylo. The duel plays out like in the real movie (albeit to the tune of Battle of the Heroes), except Kylo’s redemption with Han happens before Rey leaves. He rushes over and offers to help her, as they have the same goal. She agrees. The other Knights are reluctant, but agree. They take off together in the Knights’ ship. The Knights introduce themselves by name, removing their helmets, never putting them back on for the remainder of the film. They are of a variety of species.

Upon assembling the map, they find that it leads them back to Coruscant where they started. Exegol is Coruscant. They follow it to the coordinates of the supposed Sith capitol…only to find the ruins of the once prosperous Jedi Temple. Ben says he needs a new saber. The Knights like the idea so they head to a lightsaber storage room. There Ben finds Qui-Gon’s lightsaber and takes it as his own. The Knights take various other lightsabers.

They venture deep within the Temple. The upper levels are empty, but the map tells them to go deeper. Eventually, they start discovering…things. Most unsettling things. Natural rock formations, strange lagoons filled with stranger creatures, sleeping behemoths, and…more mangey Ewoks?

Eventually, they reach an ominous temple. This is it. They enter it, and while they find many Sith troopers, none of them attack them. Soon enough, they make it to the heart of the temple: a large room with a throne hovering above an endless abyss. And who sits upon that throne. Why none other than Sheev Palpatine. Decayed, blinded, and covered in horrific cybernetic implants. He’s been expecting them. By his side are Mas Amedda and Sly Moore, the two hooded figures from the start.

A staggeringly massive battle rages on at the surface above what’s left of the Senate Building. First Order Dreadnoughts leveling districts, only to be obliterated by Resistance warhammers. Resistance troopers climbing up the bodies of 5 m tall mecha stormtroopers and tossing grenades in the cockpits. Wookiees tearing off limbs. Superlaser siege cannons destroying the foundations of buildings so that they topple onto enemy platoons and capital ships. R2-D2 single handedly taking out a squad of stormtroopers like he was Jackie Chan. Poe being the ace pilot we know him as. It’s total chaos. Bodies flying left and right. And among it all is Finn, fighting on the ground.

Him and Rose are surrounded by stormtroopers, ready to shoot them down. Rose lovingly holds him tight, having lost all hope. That’s when Finn breaks out the big speech. Yeah, you know what time it is. It’s stormtrooper rebellion time. Soon enough, the entire platoon is on his side (and those who aren’t are shot).

Meanwhile, Palpatine is taunting Rey and the Knights. He Force grabs all their lightsabers simultaneously without even moving a muscle and begins playing with them like a toddler with keys. Shortly thereafter, he tells them of how he survived the Battle of Endor, crashed onto the planetoid, and was nursed back to health by a tribe of Ewoks he corrupted. He was then found by his loyal follower Snoke, who he then took as a Sith apprentice. However, after learning all he sought to know, he betrayed Sidious and left him for dead, as he had been when he was found. Having recounted his story, he drains their dyad energy to rejuvenate to his Prequel form, but paler and with Sith eyes. The Knights manage to regain their lightsabers, but Palpatine summons the corpses of Plagueis, Maul, Dooku, Ventress, Grievous, and Vader to fight them. He then turns to a hologram of General Hux and tells him the time has come.

Hux, who is aboard a mega class dreadnought, utters a code phrase, and he and a few officers promptly turn on their colleagues and shoot them down without hesitation. They start turning their ship around. Pryde, seeing this from his own mega class dreadnought is incredibly confused. But it’s too late, as the bridge of his ship is shot down by Hux’s, killing him instantly.

On the ground, the battle is going in the Resistance’s favor, as their ranks are now boosted by rebellious stormtroopers whose helmets bear colorful handprints reminiscent of the bloody one Finn had in the first film. That’s when Palpatine unleashes his secret weapon: the battle droids. Yes, the same ones who debuted in The Phantom Menace (albeit with their playful, silly modern voice), alongside other familiar Seperatist droid troops. So now the Resistance and half of the First Order are fighting battle droids and the other half of the First Order.

Back in the Sith Temple, the scene plays out the same as in the movie we got, with the whole “I am all the Sith and I am all the Jedi” routine, with the difference that Kylo lives.

By the end, the battle is going in the good guys’ favor. Hux utters the words “We’ve lost the Star Wars” onscreen before committing Sith Seppuku with Vader’s saber. The movie ends with a celebration montage and either cuts straight from that to normal credit, or from a quieter scene of Rey and Ben starting a new order to quieter credits.

Just one thing: remove the “crackling” part from the Knights of Ren’s lightsabers, since the point of Kylo’s saber being “crackling” was to symbolize his confliction, his shifting of sides.

The thing about that is his saber is both crossguarded and crackling and feels wrong to have not one but two traits be exclusive to his saber.

An alternative solution that might be more interesting would be having Rey take Kylo’s hand when he offers it. She turns to the Dark Side and joins the First Order.

I use to think this was a silly fan idea, but now I see how it would really give the story the momentum it so desperately needed. It’s a radical idea that would require lots of setup and a completely different Episode IX from DotF or RoS, one focused squarely on Finn, Poe, and Rose. Having to redeem Rey as well as Kylo might be a bit much.

Yeah, evil Rey honestly still is a silly fan idea now that I think about it.

The First Order and Resistance teaming up against a larger threat has been an idea in my head for a long time. Tbh, I don’t see any sequel to TLJ that doesn’t go with it. Honestly, the way I see it was either Palpatine or the Vong, and Palpatine ties the Saga together much more.

Back when we only had TFA, while it was clear Kylo was being set up for redemption, and I thought it’d be cool to see him go rogue in the second film and join the heroes in the last, Zuko style. If you any of you are throwing out TLJ it’s an idea worth considering.

So Thrawn is basically Pryde?

Just stumbled across this thread. It always amazes me how RogueLeader spots ways to improve these stories, and then saddens me that many of them are just out of the reach of what fanediting can do. “If only RogueLeader had been in that room with JJ and Terrio!” I think to myself…

Anyway, my idea is that the movie should’ve cribbed its ending from Avatar The Last Airbender.

Considering the lengths at which ROTJ goes to not have Luke just kill Palpatine - and how this movie makes a big deal about Rey not wanting to hate him - just having him die in a gruesome explosion feels pretty empty (and yes, I know, he technically blew himself up so it’s not really Rey killing him). It’s a stark contrast to Aang doing everything he can to avoid killing Ozai in ATLA, which made me think of this.

I propose that, as Rey approaches Palpatine through his lightning beam, sabers crossed, she throws her arms apart, deflecting the lightning away with a force shockwave that knocks Palpatine off balance. Throw in the force ghosts in the background “helping” Rey with this, a la JonH’s edit. Before he can recover, she drops both of her sabers and in some way firmly grabs him (I would suggest a forehead hold, but that might be a little too blatant). As he’s frozen in place, we see the orange glow fade from his eyes and his corrupted grey skin begin to return to a healthier pink, until he’s just bog-standard Ian McDiarmid (but aged up considerably to suggest he’s already long past his natural lifespan, perhaps taking cues from his look in Utopia or in AOTC). Rey lets go, and he scrambles away pathetically, reminiscent of Revenge of the Sith, but this time he isn’t pretending. She just stands there and watches with pity as he crawls away on his back yelping, with his hood slipping down and his hands making desperate but now utterly impotent gestures. She’s disconnected him from the Force - Darth Sidious, the “One True Emperor”, is now just elderly Sheev Palpatine of Naboo. He gives up and cries, and Rey briefly silently comforts her grandfather as he succumbs to his age. He doesn’t fade away and join the force; he just leaves a cold, flesh and blood corpse.

Wow, thanks for the nice compliments sade!! Honestly there are so many brilliant rewrite ideas around, but it interesting how a lot of them share similar beats. I’m big fan of ATLA as well, so I really enjoy your interpretation of the climax. And I totally agree, I think it would have been interesting to see Rey having to struggle to pick the violent, easy path to solve problems, vs the difficult non-violent one.

And speaking of ATLA, I feel like Zuko and Kylo Ren get compared for obvious reasons, and I wish Kylo’s redemption arc could’ve been as strong as Zuko’s! I think I share a lot of ideas with you too, NFB (interesting to know the origin of that name now!). I also thought about eventually making a separate thread for my own rewrite, but since we’re talking about I could quickly share my ideas for the Rey & Ben stuff.

I also like the idea of Rey’s dark side showing a little bit more than it did in the film. We were teased dark Rey, but no one was surprised when all it was was a vision. But, I think the idea of a dark Rey/light Ben role reversal is intriguing, but I feel like it would be hard to get Rey to that point organically and back in a 2hr film.

Plus, I feel like Rey and Kylo being the last duel in the saga feels right, and is the battle where we would feel the most tension.

So, broad strokes:

I think I would keep Palpatine, but only as a resurrected spirit, rather than having a tangible body. In this film he would be more of a force of nature rather than an individual. Meanwhile, as the legend of the last Jedi spreads, fires of rebellion are sprouting up across the galaxy. Supreme Leader Kylo Ren needs more power to maintain control, and he is desperate for a way to quell the Resistance.

So with the help of the Knights of Ren, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren finds a surprising lead. They learn from a Sith holocron that Snoke was an acolyte of Palpatine, who was on a quest to resurrect his master in exchange for knowledge and power. Kylo, in his hubris, thinks he can do what Snoke couldn’t: control the power and wisdom of this Sith phantom, and bring everlasting peace to the galaxy.

Behind the scenes, Hux has been plotting with the main Knight of Ren to overthrow Kylo Ren, because a) power and b) they don’t like the way he’s running things. So, they stage a coup and try to kill Kylo Ren, but Kylo manages to barely escape.

Kylo and Rey reconnect through the Force, and Rey and friends go on a mission to rescue/capture him. So, during a majority of Act 2, Kylo is working alongside our heroes, albeit with a lot of tension and reluctance, for obvious reasons. Plenty of space for fun character interactions. Kylo Ren has not turned back to the light just yet, but Kylo tells them that the First Order is trying to resurrect Palpatine, so they must join forces to stop this greater threat.

In the meantime, we’ll see that the new leader of the Knights of Ren volunteers to become Palpatine’s new vessel. We get a demonstration of their raw power in the dark side.

So, our heroes go on a mission to figure out how to stop someone that can come back from the dead. During the mission, they learn of the resurrection/possession ritual and its risks (that a vessel with a stronger will could send the host spirit into the void).
With the sequel trilogy being so heavily focused on identity, I like the idea of the film’s antagonistic force having the ability to challenge our characters’ identities in a dramatic way.

After we get several sequences of Kylo fighting, arguing and working with the gang, we would start seeing Kylo and Rey grow close again. But just as things are looking good, Rey confronts Kylo when she realizes that Kylo wants to use Palpatine’s spirit to solidify his rule of the galaxy, rather than destroy it like they want to do. So Kylo and Rey fight in a duel similar to their Death Star duel in TROS. And much like that duel, Rey gets the upper hand and beats Kylo, leaving to confront Palpatine on her own.

We follow as Rey goes to confront the Knights of Ren, and she duels and defeats the Knight who was serving as Palpatine’s vessel. (It’s also possible to make it where Rey gets there as they’re about to begin the ritual, and Rey kills the lead Knight in order to become the vessel instead. But, I think it might be a good idea demonstrate how the possession thing works) Rey believed that she would be strong enough, or sure enough of her own identity, to overcome Palpatine’s spirit and send him to the netherworld. But instead, her fear overwhelms her and she loses the spiritual battle, succumbing the dark side of the Force, and being possessed by Palpatine.

Meanwhile, Kylo has his come to Jesus moment, and after Ben makes amends with Poe and Finn, wanting to try and right the wrongs he has made, goes on a mission that leads him to confronting Dark Rey and dueling her (much like their duel in Act 2, but now with them on opposite sides).

They fight, and Ben manages to get the better of Rey. Even though this is his opportunity to take Palpatine’s power for himself, and rid the galaxy of the last Jedi, Ben drops his weapon and refuses to kill her. The dark side within Rey takes advantage of his compassion, and begins killing Ben (force lightning? draining his life force? force choking him?) Ben keeps trying to snap Rey out of it, and eventually he starts getting through to her. We get a sense that Rey is trying to regain control, but is struggling. (It could almost be like an exorcism)

This is when I think it would be cool to have a sequence that is different from your typical Star Wars film, where we actually go inside Rey’s head, in a sense, and see the spiritual battle between Rey and Palpatine. Instead of their opposing spirits throwing astral blasts at each other, or something dumb like that, it would be interesting if Rey overcame Palpatine’s spirit by overcoming her fear of him (and her fear of her own darkness). Once she accepts her darkness as a part of her identity, and let’s go of her fear, Palpatine loses his grip on Rey, transforming from the Dark Lord Sidious, to a shriveled old man who is afraid to die. (Definitely took this idea from Sade!)

Instead of the Jedi Force ghosts dramatically dragging Palpatine to Force hell, we see them appear and treat Palpatine with compassion, and gently escort him to the netherworld. Maybe Anakin could pick him up and carry him into the light, paralleling him picking him up and throwing him into the reactor shaft in ROTJ (Anakin’s participation could also help maintain Anakin’s role as the Chosen One). After this, Rey is free. Maybe a death & resurrection could play out in this moment, but it doesn’t have to either. I personally would rather both Ben and Rey live, so having one or both of them die, then come back would feel a little unnecessary I think.

Anyway, it’s definitely not Oscar-worthy writing, but I feel like phantom Palpatine is a good way for us to really get Dark Rey, even if it is brief, but not totally contradict her character. And this climax allow both Ben and Rey have their hero moment. In a way, their actions reflect Luke and Vader at the end of ROTJ, for better or worse. Ben lays down his weapon like a true Jedi, and Rey’s reaffirms her identity, and beats Palpatine in a more nuanced way than shooting lightning into his face.