Beginning with the first Star Wars film in 1977 and spanning nine full-length motion
pictures, the Skywalker Saga is over 40 years old.
Between A New Hope and The Rise of Skywalker, there are still plenty of questions left unanswered.
Fair warning: major spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker and The Mandalorian lie ahead.
In the first entry in the most recent trilogy, The Force Awakens, we learn the diminutive
Maz Kanata somehow has Luke's first lightsaber the one Obi-wan Kenobi gives him in A New
Hope and that originally belonged to his father Anakin.
Han asks Maz how she got it, and she answers only:
"A good question.
For another time."
Well, whatever "another time" means, it's outside the Skywalker Saga.
The Rise of Skywalker ends with Luke's first lightsaber alongside Leia's, buried near Luke's
old home on Tatooine.
It's a question not easily answered.
Luke loses his first lightsaber when Darth Vader chops off his hand during their climactic
duel at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, in Cloud City above the planet Bespin.
Luke's hand and his weapon fall down the same long shaft Luke drops down himself.
The planet Maz's tavern is on is Takodana in a completely different system from Bespin.
It isn't unthinkable the saber could find its way to Maz's hands.
Presumably someone found it and eventually sold it to her.
Maybe she found it herself, or maybe she acquired it through less than legal means.
Whatever path it took, we may never know.
We can't really count The Mandalorian as part of the Skywalker Saga, but the emergence of
the Child better known as Baby Yoda is for now linked to the tiny Jedi Master Yoda who
appears both in person and through just his voice in most of the Skywalker Saga films.
Fan theories sprang up almost immediately upon Baby Yoda's appearance at the end of
The Mandalorian's first episode, with many guessing the toddler is either a clone of,
or directly related to, Master Yoda.
On one hand it's kind of silly to assume the child has anything at all to do with Yoda
other than being members of the same species.
After all, if you're introduced to a human character in a Star Wars film you don't immediately
assume, "Oh, that must be Han Solo's nephew."
"Come on, let's keep a little optimism here."
On the other hand, the assumption is understandable since we know so very little about Yoda and
the Child's species.
We don't even know their species' name yet, which George Lucas purposely left out of the
mythology.
If there is a deeper link between the two, we'll likely have to wait until further episodes
of The Mandalorian to learn it, since the hero himself is now searching for the Child's
planet.
The Skywalker Saga offers no answers, for now.
One of the biggest surprises in the Star Wars prequels was the discovery that it was the
young Anakin Skywalker who created C-3PO.
The protocol droid's best friend, R2-D2 appears in all three prequels as well, yet when Obi-wan
is reunited with them in A New Hope he doesn't seem to recognize them, and we never learn
why.
"Hello there."
Of course the real reason is most likely because The Phantom Menace came out over 20 years
after the first Star Wars film and George Lucas had no idea in 1977 the droids would
appear in any prequels.
But there are some possible narrative explanations too.
It could be that Kenobi does remember the droids but is keeping that to himself.
"There aren't the droids you're looking for."
After all, he clearly doesn't want to tell Luke about his father, and explaining his
acquaintance to the droids brings him closer to that difficult truth.
It's also possible he genuinely doesn't remember them.
Kenobi isn't depicted in the earlier films as being particularly attached to droids.
A story in The Clone Wars shows Kenobi is not nearly as concerned as Anakin when R2-D2
is presumed lost.
"Anakin, it's only a droid.
You know attachment is not acceptable for a Jedi."
Anakin only convinces his master to let him rescue the droid by telling him there's sensitive
military data in its memory.
When Finn, Rey, and the other heroes believe they're sinking to their deaths in The Rise
of Skywalker, Finn tries to tell Rey something but he never gets the chance.
Thankfully, the heroes survive and when Rey asks Finn what he was going to tell her, he
says he'll tell her later.
Poe teases Finn about it, but by the end of the film we still haven't learned whatever
it was Finn meant to say.
The most obvious assumption is that he was to going to profess his love for her.
The two obviously care for one another and shortly after they first meet in The Force
Awakens Finn asks her pointedly if she has a boyfriend.
"You got a boyfriend?
Cute boyfriend?"
"None of your business, that's why."
According to a CinemaBlend report quoting Rise of Skywalker director and co-writer J.J.
Abrams, however, Finn's motivations may have been decidedly less romantic.
Rather than making a play for Rey, he was apparently going to confirm something suggested
repeatedly throughout the sequel trilogy, namely that he's Force-sensitive.
There are two big hints in The Rise of Skywalker that Finn might have enough of a connection
with the Force to be trained as a Jedi.
First, there's when Finn assures fellow reformed storm trooper Jannah that it was the Force
that made it possible for his true self to emerge from the First Order's conditioning.
"The Force brought us together."
Later, in the battle against the Final Order fleet, Finn says he knows the Order has transferred
their navigation from the ground tower to the command ship only because he can feel
it.
When we think back to The Force Awakens, there were hints since the very beginning.
Finn makes a memorable impression on Kylo Ren after the village is slaughtered in the
movie's opening.
Later, when he escapes with Poe, Kylo knows which storm trooper he was right away.
"The one from the village.
FN-2187."
Both moments suggest Finn is either causing, or being affected by, ripples in the Force,
which Kylo feels as well.
Meanwhile, General Hux and Captain Phasma seem confused since he had shown:
"No prior signs of nonconformity."
The Rise of Skywalker ends without any firm word either way, but it seems at least possible
the man formerly known as FN-2187 might be due a lightsaber of his own.
The first time we see a Sith using Force Lightning is in Return of the Jedi when Emperor Palpatine
nearly kills Luke Skywalker with it.
Since then, it's been clear that some Sith can use it while others can't.
But it isn't really clear what governs who gets to use it and who doesn't.
We never see Darth Vader using Force Lightning but considering how much of his body is mechanical,
it's a safe assumption that using it would be dangerous to him.
But we also never see Darth Maul use it.
Supreme Leader Snoke never uses it as far as we know, though, admittedly, his death
in The Last Jedi doesn't give us much chance to see what he can or can't do.
Kylo Ren doesn't appear to be able to summon the stuff, and considering his temper and
overall lack of subtlety, we're pretty sure if he could, he would.
One might assume that Sith Masters like Palpatine purposely refrain from teaching their students
how to use Force Lightning to make sure they have an advantage, should the student try
to kill them.
But that wouldn't explain how Count Dooku knows how to use it, nor how Rey, without
even consciously trying, summons Force Lightning in The Rise of Skywalker.
Even if you missed all the promotional lead-ups to The Rise of Skywalker mentioning Emperor
Palpatine's return, his resurrection is made clear in the beginning of the film.
What isn't answered at any point is exactly how the Sith Master survived his supposed
death at the end of Return of the Jedi.
In Revenge of the Sith, Palpatine says he knows how to bring the dead back to life and
uses this claim to seduce Anakin Skywalker, who is plagued by premonitions of Padme's
death, to the dark side.
"You could actually save people from death?"
Still, even if we assume Palpatine is telling Anakin the truth, that doesn't explain how
the Sith Lord can resurrect himself, particularly when you consider the manner of his death.
The dying Vader hurls Palpatine off a catwalk down a long shaft, and the Emperor appears
to explode when he reaches the bottom.
We're not suggesting Palpatine's resurrection is uniquely unlikely in a narrative so full
of making the impossible possible, but The Rise of Skywalker nevertheless fails to explain
exactly how he survives not only his drop down that shaft but the destruction of the
second Death Star.
At the end of The Rise of Skywalker, Rey uses the strength of all the Jedi before her and
reflects Palpatine's power back at him, killing him.
But...is he really dead?
Palpatine's death seems pretty final at the end of The Rise of Skywalker.
We see him blown to pieces.
But arguably his death doesn't seem any more or less final at the end of Return of the
Jedi.
If Palpatine can come back from that, what can't he come back from?
Further complicating things is the fact that we're never told exactly how Palpatine survives
Return of the Jedi.
If we knew that, we might see that somehow the same or similar explanation doesn't apply
this time.
In the end, it may be best to assume that we don't know whether or not this is really
the end for Palpatine…or how many times Palpatine has died, or even which Palpatines
have been the real Palpatine.
In spite of the fact that he personally trains Obi-wan Kenobi, he's the one who finds Anakin
Skywalker, and he's the first Jedi we see communicating from beyond the grave, Qui-Gon
Jinn is never mentioned in the original trilogy or in the more recent films of the Skywalker
Saga.
The only teacher Kenobi mentions is Yoda, and says he took it upon himself to train
Anakin never mentioning that it was Qui-Gon's dying wish.
"Promise me you will train the boy."
The real world reason is probably no more complicated than the fact that George Lucas
hadn't yet conceived of Jinn in the original trilogy, but no narrative reason has been
offered.
One possibility is that, not wanting him to learn the identity of his father, Kenobi and
Yoda chose to give Luke as few details as possible.
It could also be that Jinn's reputation is spotty.
After all, he brings Anakin to the Jedi, and a lot of blood is spilled before Anakin is
redeemed.
The Rise of Skywalker finally answers the question of Rey's parentage.
We learn she's the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine and that her birth parents sold
her into servitude on Jakku to save her from the Emperor, after which her parents were
murdered by a Jedi hunter.
The only missing piece is Rey's grandmother.
Emperor Palpatine isn't exactly a stunning paragon of charisma, so it's natural to wonder
exactly who agreed to make a union with the Sith Lord.
The prequels give us one possibility.
Seen often standing next to Palpatine in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith is a
quiet, pale, and eerie-looking bald woman named Sly Moore.
The official Star Wars website describes her as, quote, "Palpatine's senior administrative
aide during his chancellorship" and says that rumors surrounded the enigmatic woman.
The expanded universe offers a couple of other options, though they're from stories no longer
considered canon.
In the 1995 novel Children of the Jedi by Barbara Hambly, Roganda Ismaren is introduced.
The former Jedi youngling is captured by the Empire and made Palpatine's concubine.
There's also Ysanne Isard, introduced in the Dark Horse comic book series X-Wing: Rogue
Squadron.
At one point Isard is the Director of Imperial Intelligence, and actually takes over leadership
of the Empire after Palpatine's "death" in Return of the Jedi.
Her position suggests she likely at one point had a close relationship with the Emperor,
though anything romantic is left to speculation.
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