Oh God, Lucasfilm Might Be Making a New Star Wars Trilogy in the Skywalker Saga

Like the wrinkled corpse of Emperor Palpatine, the Skywalker Saga could be resurrected again. Lucasfilm is reportedly working on a new Star Wars trilogy, rumored to be a continuation of the Skywalker Saga that could comprise Episodes 10-12. The studio has tapped an X-Men veteran with a bumpy filmography to develop the new trilogy.

Per Deadline, Lucasfilm has enlisted X- Men movie veteran Simon Kinberg to develop a new trilogy of Star Wars movies to continue the Skywalker Saga. The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit partially refutes this report, noting that the new trilogy is not a continuation of the Skywalker Saga, but a new trilogy based on new characters.

After writing X-Men: The Last Stand, the worst film in Bryan Singer’s initial trilogy, Kinberg returned to write and produce X-Men: Days of Future Past and X-Men: Apocalypse, the latter of which proved that Singer was capable of making something worse than The Last Stand. Following a number of controversies involving sexual assault and misconduct allegations and unprofessional behavior on set, Singer was dropped from the franchise and Kinberg stepped in to make his directorial debut on Dark Phoenix, which he also wrote. In addition to the X-Men franchise, Kinberg’s writing credits include hits like the 2005 action comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes, as well as forgettable duds like This Means War and The 355, along with 2015’s Fantastic Four reboot – a notorious flop plagued by reports of inappropriate on-set behavior from another director, Josh Trank.

All of which is to say that Kinberg’s output has been hit-and-miss, to say the least.

The Skywalker Saga Doesn’t Need a New Star Wars Trilogy

Just a couple of years ago, Lucasfilm president Kathleen said it was “vital” the studio move on from the Skywalker Saga, though she wasn’t totally averse to returning to Luke Skywalker’s family tree at some point. With various new movies in development, including a Rey standalone movie from director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and The Mandalorian & Grogu from Lucasfilm Chief Creative Officer Dave Filoni, it seemed like Lucasfilm really was moving away from the Skywalker story, which ended with the wildly divisive Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker.

The most recent trilogy in the Star Wars franchise has been exhaustively dissected, celebrated, reviled, and co-opted for one of the dumbest culture wars in modern film history – and the franchise is still being affected by an intense and very vocal corner of the fandom that rejects any new Star Wars media focused on women and people of color. (See also: the review bombing of The Acolyte.) It’s not that Lucasfilm should or shouldn’t cater to one segment of the fanbase over another, but the mere idea of being subjected to three more movies about the Skywalkers sounds exhausting.

The family tree, which begins with Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in the original trilogy, expanded to include Daisy Ridley’s Rey, who takes up the surname at the end of Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, which saw the return of Episode VII director J.J. Abrams to close out the trilogy. It was a controversial move following Episode VIII – The Last Jedi, which was written and directed by Rian Johnson. A key narrative component of that film sees Rey coming to terms with not knowing her family lineage and embracing her anonymity. But in The Rise of Skywalker, Abrams revived classic villain Emperor Palpatine for an insanely divisive reveal: Rey is Palpatine’s grandchild – a development that leads to all sorts of weird questions about how and why, but mostly how? (Don’t think about it too much, trust me.)

Whatever Lucasfilm is planning, we likely won’t see concrete results anytime soon – if ever. The studio has started and scrapped development of numerous trilogies and standalone films in the years since reviving the franchise with The Force Awakens. Rian Johnson was set to helm a new trilogy before moving on to focus on continuing his Knives Out franchise for Netflix, to say nothing of Lucasfilm’s rocky history with filmmakers – including, most memorably, replacing Phil Lord and Chris Miller with Ron Howard on Solo: A Star Wars Story.