Star Wars Is Avoiding Its Finale Problem: Here's The Only Way To Fix Rise Of Skywalker

It's a dark time for Star Wars. Although "Andor" and some of the other Disney+ shows have kept things going, the failure of "The Rise of Skywalker" has driven the franchise from movie theaters and pursued it across the galaxy. After nearly seven years without a single Star Wars film, "The Mandalorian and Grogu" will attempt a redemption on May 22, 2026, but it's still avoiding the elephant in the room: Disney torched the franchise's future with "The Rise of Skywalker," and they've desperately avoided telling stories set after the film's climax. It's now time they stop hiding, do the work, and fix the finale. 

Numerous film ideas have come and gone — most recently, the canceled "Hunt for Ben Solo" movie, which would've seen Adam Driver return. As frustrating as the long wait has been, it's also understandable. "The Rise of Skywalker" was an unmitigated catastrophe, and I'm not just talking about the magical space knife, nor the seemingly new development of stormtroopers flying. I remember the moment, midway through in the theater, when an assembled audience started nervously laughing at what was onscreen. It was such a disaster, it was comical — a big, anticlimactic trilogy-ender for no one. If you loved "The Last Jedi," you hated this movie. If you hated "The Last Jedi," you hated this movie.

Star Wars has cowered long enough. There is, in fact, a way to repair the damage of "The Rise of Skywalker," and it's a two-pronged approach: (1) movies set later in the timeline that establish a totally new story for fans to get excited about, and (2) a new Disney+ show to fill the big holes. And with time, "The Rise of Skywalker" can finally just be a bump in the road for everyone to laugh at and forget about.

Let's quickly start with what Disney and Lucasfilm should absolutely not do as part of their Star Wars reparative efforts. First and foremost, leave the big beats of the sequels in the ground for now. No more Skywalker Saga movies! 

I'll be the first to say that, like Darth Vader, there is still good inside the sequel trilogy. I have no problem with Rey (Daisy Ridley), or Finn (John Boyega), or even Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) somehow returning. While much of the criticism is fair, there are many bad faith arguments, with actors like Ridley, Boyega, and Kelly Marie Tran all getting an undue share of blame for high-level creative decisions.

I have often defended Disney's Star Wars decision-making, and don't worry, I've always gotten flack. Regardless, it would be a huge mistake to go back to a dried-up well in the hopes of salvaging some real water this time. Part of why people disliked the sequels was that they claimed to be of equal importance to George Lucas' two trilogies, yet "The Rise of Skywalker" made it clear that they aren't. We don't need more Resistance or First Order on the big screen. We could even live without X-wings for a while. The Skywalker Saga, for whatever that branding was worth, is done.

It's past time that Disney build something new, narratively and aesthetically. We can leave the nostalgia bait in the past. The benefit of this seven-year cinematic break for Star Wars is that it's given most fans time to forget the details of "The Rise of Skywalker," and now is the best time to build something new and fun in that empty space. The upcoming "Star Wars: Starfighter" is a step in the right direction.

After more canceled Star Wars projects than I can count (just kidding, I'm a professional, it's like a dozen), we are finally getting a pair of new films in 2026 and 2027, though they are entirely unrelated — as far as we know. "The Mandalorian and Grogu" is the safe choice for a theatrical return given the show's former popularity, but that also makes it the less interesting project. What's more intriguing is the Shawn Levy-directed "Star Wars: Starfighter," starring Ryan Gosling, which is set for release next May.

The film, which takes place five years after "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," entered production in the fall of 2025. Gosling will be joined on screen by the likes of Flynn Gray, Matt Smith, Mia Goth, Aaron Pierre, and Amy Adams. And while the story is set pretty close to the sequels, the introduction of totally new characters hopefully means a fresh, isolated story.

That is precisely what Lucasfilm needs to help repair the damage done by "The Rise of Skywalker." That movie felt so untethered from the living universe of Star Wars — the thing that makes the franchise so special to so many — that many fans then untethered themselves. But this is still the same galaxy, and it still has all the same capacity for fun, space-fantasy adventures. Some will always complain, of course, but if the movie is good, it will remind the fandom that "The Rise of Skywalker" is just one movie, and its impact doesn't need to be so huge.

We need more than just new movies to work away the ick of the third sequel trilogy movie. New movies with standalone stories are for the middle-class of the fanbase, so to speak — people who didn't care for "The Rise of Skywalker," and walked away from the franchise afterward. It's important to bring those fans back in, but it's also important for the integrity of the lore (yes, it sounds dumb, but it matters) that Lucasfilm eventually goes back and fills in the bigger holes carved by the film.

The Battle of Exegol feels anticlimactic because it has no grounding in the established world of the franchise. Palpatine and the Resistance both summon gargantuan fleets with no explanation. We don't know what life in this era looks like for a normal person, or what the galactic political situation is. We don't know anything about the so-called "Final Order."

Those details might not have fixed the film, but in Star Wars, they matter. When the prequels failed to properly establish how the Separatists grew out of the late Republic's galactic order, "The Clone Wars" filled in the gaps. A new show could do the same for "The Rise of Skywalker." The film's attempt to speedrun an "Avengers: Endgame" moment without buildup flopped. But a show set during and after the movie could patch things up.

Star Wars is fascinating because old stories are always being retroactively altered by new ones. That isn't always to their benefit, but a live-action show could help connect "The Rise of Skywalker" to the larger lore, and thereby make it less of a pariah. We just might need some of that "Andor" money and talent to get it done.

The thing about moving forward is that it leaves the past farther behind as you go. But when you stay and make camp on the site of your biggest mistake, it's all anyone following you will ever think about. The response to "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker," was so dramatic, the company froze. It stayed right there, at the end of the trilogy, never moving beyond it. The grotesque, zombie Palpatine we see in the movie has become an apt metaphor for the ghost that continues to haunt Star Wars.

In the immediate aftermath, sure, running headlong into another massively expensive blockbuster may have been a mistake. And then with the Covid-19 pandemic, movies were less of a sure bet overall. But we are well past those less certain times now. The worst thing Disney can do with Star Wars at this point is continue to dawdle. Its lack of confidence in the franchise's creative direction has been clear to anyone watching, and that's only encouraged the worst segments of the fanbase to shout even louder at every single new thing.

John Boyega recently said that he's had conversations with Lucasfilm creative chief Dave Filoni, hinting at a possible return to the screen. As someone who went in closet cosplay to the midnight premiere of "The Force Awakens" with my brothers and my mom, and who has spent half a decade covering Star Wars professionally, I hope that he does come back. I hope that the Rey movie gets made, eventually. But for that to happen the way that it should, the last chapter of their stories has to be accepted. Otherwise, what follows will only further cheapen Disney's claims of stewardship.

"The Rise of Skywalker" doesn't have to be some great sin that leaves a crater in the fabric of Star Wars forever. But in order for us to move beyond it, Disney has to recapture the more casual film-going fandom with new movies, and fill in the lore for the die-hards. It wouldn't be the first time that that exact same strategy has repaired the image of a trilogy in the eyes of Star Wars fans.