Star Wars Is Dead. Long Live Star Wars (Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love What I Love, Even When Others May Not)

“Hey Kid.”

When I settled into my seat to watch Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker for the first time at my local AMC theater in Connecticut on December 19, 2019 at 6:00 PM, I was ready for the film to run me through a wild and beautiful spectrum of emotions over the course of the next 2 hours and 22 minutes. And so it did. I loved it, let’s be up front with that. I laughed. I teared up multiple times - over the course of five viewings to date, at least 15 separate moments in the film have made get choked up, misty-eyed, or outright weep. No other Star Wars movie, much as I dearly love them all, has provided me with more than four of those moments to date. But mostly, I had a huge grin on my face as I drank in every last moment of the final chapter in the Skywalker Saga. I found it to be a fitting and emotional conclusion to this epic series of films that I’ve cherished for essentially my entire life. I found it respectful of all that had come before, both in terms of references and thematic parallels, while also being strange and bold and new and yet heartwarmingly familiar.

But the one moment that I wasn’t ready for, that truly surprised me in the best possible way, was when the spectre of Han Solo appeared to Kylo Ren (once, and soon to be again, Ben Solo) to bring home what Leia and Rey had started and help his conflicted son find the strength to return to the light. Of course, Han isn’t really there on the wreckage of the Death Star he once helped to destroy. He’s a memory. Ben’s memory. Our memory.

Because Han Solo is, of course, dead. The iconic smuggler, pilot, and Rebel Alliance General holds the dubious yet strangely honorable distinction of being the only major Star Wars character who ever died from falling into a pit and stayed that way. True, he met the wrong end of a lightsaber first, but Darth Maul didn’t let that stop him. And famously, Harrison Ford wanted Han Solo to die, unsuccessfully at first in Return of the Jedi, then successfully in The Force Awakens, at the end of the very same lightsaber that Ben, in just a few moments, will cast forever into the sea. It’s a beautiful and tragic reflection of what could have been if he had chosen the light that day on Starkiller Base instead of the dark. But gorgeously heartrending and phenomenally acted as the scene was (Adam Driver sealed it with this film – to me, he’s the best actor ever to deliver a performance in any Star Wars movie), it didn’t change what happened on that bridge. Han Solo lives on in our hearts, but in the literal text of this story unfolding a long time ago in the Galaxy Far, Far Away at least, he remains quite definitively dead.

And so is Star Wars. Or at least, the movies are, if some in our Galaxy are to be believed. And Han Solo’s reappearance, for the online chattering class that in the wake of The Last Jedi had their Knives Out (great movie, by the way. Go see it) for Star Wars for one reason or another, seemed to provide that crowd with the perfect metaphor for the message that they wanted to send (unless the decaying husk of the no-longer-late Emperor Palpatine served their purposes better). Star Wars is dead. It’s a ghost, or a Force-reanimated zombie. And those who love this trilogy, and this movie in particular, are in love something that should not be. Why can’t Star Wars go somewhere new and exciting, away from the Skywalkers and the Palpatines and their deep-seeded destructive conflicts? Why can’t Star Wars let go of the past? Killing it didn’t work (it never works, by the way. That was one of the many incisive points made by The Last Jedi), so they brought it back as THIS, and the unenlightened among us are eating it up like sheep. Ugh. Sigh. (Like and Retweet. Upvote and subscribe).

Well, perhaps that was a bit harsh. Perhaps, like Westley in The Princess Bride, Star Wars is only mostly dead. It’s alive and well on streaming television! The Mandalorian, in its brand-new, shiny, freshly-forged beskar armor … now there’s a Star War for you all! (Unless your country doesn’t have Disney+ yet, but I digress). As Marvin Schwarz of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood fame would say, “What a picture!” And it is. Din Djarin and his friends are pretty damn great, if I do say so myself. I have not one shred of desire to pick up my own Darksaber and slice that show to shreds, because I love it too. It’s Star Wars, and it’s exploring a side of the Galaxy that the recent movies have not (the exception would be Solo: A Star Wars Story, which not enough people have seen. You should give it a chance, if you haven’t. Damn good movie).

That is, The Mandalorian lives firmly in the Galactic underworld, the hives of scum and villainy, the bounty hunters and the smugglers and the disreputable types who will shoot first and apologize later (if at all), but will also do it with a wink and a smile and a smirk. In other words, the elements of the story best exemplified by Han Solo in the Original Trilogy. The Prequels and the Sequels have admittedly been short on those elements, so when people say that The Mandalorian is the best Star Wars that they’ve seen since 1983 … I get it. I do. I think the reason that I’m not as head over-heels enamored with the show as some are is because I gravitate first and foremost to what I would call, for the sake of simplicity, the Luke Skywalker story - the Jedi and the Sith, the light and the dark, the questions of destiny and choice and classical myth. Then, in a strong second place, I love the war and politics, the Rebellion against the Empire, and the questions about when to fight versus when to negotiate and how governments rise and fall (to round out the trio, let’s call that the Leia Organa story). Cool as Han Solo will always be, the underworld aspect of Star Wars was always the storytelling milieu that interested me least of those three. As such, while the Prequels and the Sequels have to chosen to emphasize the other two, I’ve been mostly at peace with that tradeoff. Your mileage will, of course, vary.

But regardless, The Mandalorian is great. Baby Yoda is wonderful. He’s unimpeachable. In fact, he’s so unimpeachable that let’s scoop him up, wrap him in a nice warm blanket, give him his ball and some nice frogs to snack on with no judgment, and place him up on a pedestal where he belongs (with strong safety railings of course. Not enough of those in Star Wars). We’ll leave him out of this entirely.

But you know, as much as we all love Baby Yoda, his elder namesake is pretty great as well. I say is, not was, because Yoda is still around. No one’s ever really gone, after all. And Yoda the Elder just had something pretty important to teach Luke Skywalker only two years ago, in a little independent film called Star Wars: The Last Jedi. You may have heard of it. Controversial picture. A lot of people absolutely loved it (so did I). A lot of people didn’t (that’s OK). That movie had a lot of ideas and lessons it wanted to impart to us, and not everyone wanted to hear them. A divide unquestionably opened in the fandom. Star Wars felt wounded, to be sure.

But that was two years ago. And Star Wars is now worse than wounded. It is, of course, dead. At 42 years old. So old and yet so young. As The Rise of Skywalker enters its third weekend in release, as it races towards well over $1 billion worldwide, as parents all across the world take their children dressed as Rey and Kylo Ren and Luke and Darth Vader into the theater and leave with big smiles on their faces, I learned that Star Wars has died, because the Internet has told me so. And of course, the Internet is never, ever wrong.

I don’t know how it happened. Did it, with peace and purpose, become one with the Force and gracefully fade away? Did it fall screaming down a reactor shaft and explode in a blast of dark side energy, only to reemerge decades later as an unnatural monstrosity? Was it wiped away instantly as millions of voices cried out in terror before being suddenly silenced, or did it burn in agony on the shores of a river of fire as those who once loved it watched in horror? Or did it simply, like so many stormtroopers, take one too many blaster bolts to the chest and topple over, unceremoniously and perhaps a bit comically, before being relegated to dusty obscurity as our heroes race down the hall, past its lifeless corpse, towards their next big adventure?

Regardless of how it happened, this is big news. Big, if true, that is. It’s also news to me, because although I’m a massive Star Wars fan and subscribe to all of the newsletters, I somehow didn’t get this particular message. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi, this hologram failed to send. Please contact Galactic IT, and hold the line for the next available representative, where all of your burning questions (84 questions that The Rise of Skywalker FAILED to answer!!!) will be answered.

But maybe we don’t need those answers, at least not as much as those clickbait websites want you to think. Because, to borrow a line from another space-faring franchise, “All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again”. And not just with Star Wars. With fandom as a whole, and the sickness that has taken hold of it in recent years. Or maybe it was always there, in the shadows, from the very beginning. That seems more likely. And like a sickness, it may not even be inherently evil, it simply is. You cut it out before it kills you, or at least you try. And that’s what I’m trying to do. Trying, not doing, at least not yet. Yoda would not be pleased.

George Lucas (you’ve heard of him, perhaps) once offered up an adage that was widely mocked, and yet has turned out to be far more incisive than he has ever or likely will ever receive credit for. “It’s like poetry,” he said. “It rhymes.” He was talking about Star Wars, of course, his own creation, where the intentionality of those rhyming couplets was obvious and deliberate (well, mostly. Luke and Leia, about that kiss you shared in The Empire Strikes Back … ). But he could have been talking about any number of things, be it our own real-world history or the relationship of his franchise to other pop culture titans of the era. And since the former is far too dark and complicated for me to tackle right now, let’s focus on the latter.

The two stories that I have invested the most time and emotional capital in over the past several years are Star Wars and Game of Thrones. You remember Game of Thrones. It was, like Finn in The Force Awakens, kind of a Big Deal. When I look at what happened with that show, which I still love with my whole heart to this day, I can’t help but feel sad. But not because it “ended badly”, as the loudest representatives of the Great Internet Consensus (when has that ever been a thing? Just now, apparently) seems to have decreed. On the contrary, I still cherish that story and unlike many people – I don’t know precisely how many there are, but they’re, um, vocal – I loved the final season. But unfortunately, my experience of watching that final season, the feeling of community that I cherished almost as much as the show itself, was tainted by all of the toxicity. I would watch every episode. I would (mostly) love it. I would go online hoping to share some of that love. I would see a garbage fire. I would get angry. I would log off. I would brood. I would get depressed. I would go outside and get some fresh air. Then, I would take a deep breath, reset, watch the show again … and I would love it again. Then I would log on … and the cycle would repeat. It was, to put it delicately, exhausting.

Where once I had few greater joys than to converse with other fans about the story we were sharing, I soon came to loathe everything about what I scathingly referred to as ‘The Discourse’. The reeking hellhole that is Reddit, the vacuous echo chamber that is Twitter, the hate-driven CinemaSins/RLM inspired economy that is YouTube, the self-important, bitterly hollow take machine that is the critical blogosphere. These milieus did not reflect my real-world experience of watching the show at all, where people were mostly either content or pleasantly indifferent. The same had been true for Star Wars in the wake of The Last Jedi, so I employed a similar survival strategy. Online, I mostly retreated to the small pockets of sanity, compassion and reason I found in places like Watchers on the Wall (for Game of Thrones) or ForceCenter (for Star Wars), and the people I knew there, many of whom I’m happy to call friends, even when we pleasantly disagree. I was at peace with the story itself, but I wanted to live in a world where I could love this thing that I loved without having to feel bad about it for reasons that had very little to do with what was actually happening on screen.

I did my best, but it was hard, because I had already lost the battle by agreeing to fight on their terms. It was, as much as it killed me to admit it, too late. And worst of all, I felt that it was my fault, because while I cannot control what anyone else thinks about this story I love, I can control what I feel about it. And, during what I felt was a moment of weakness, I had let the darkness in. It was part of my experience now.

I was crushed, angry at The Discourse but mostly angry at myself. I recently rewatched the final season and while I genuinely love it just as much now as I did then, I can never fully turn down the volume on the dark cacophony of angry voices infecting my thoughts. It will not change my opinion, but it may also never truly be the same. I hope it will be one day, but I can make no promises. To quote another movie that I love, are the lambs still screaming? Yes, unfortunately they are.

And then came Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker. I love Game of Thrones dearly, but Star Wars is on another level. Star Wars in in my blood, my heart, my mind, my soul. It is THE franchise for me. I have loved it with everything I have since I was 7 years old and I first saw Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter in a Toys-R-Us in Iowa City, Iowa and thought it was just the coolest damn thing I’d ever seen. I’ve loved it through the best of times and the most turbulent of times, from the Original Trilogy through the Prequel Trilogy and now the Sequel Trilogy, through the ritous explosion of the Old Expanded Universe to the emergence of the New Canon, through the celebration and the crucifixion and the resurrection of George Lucas (I jest, but not really). That love has never wavered no matter how dark the world got, either inside the Galaxy Far, Far Away or it at home in ours. Because for me, as Han Solo once said, it was true, all of it, and Star Wars was the Light. It had survived the backlash to the Prequels, which I adore, and, for me, emerged stronger than ever. It had survived the backlash to The Last Jedi, which I adore, and those battle scars, at least for me, were healing. The spark of hope that becomes the fires of love with each new installment of this story was still burning. And with the conclusion to the Skywalker Saga here at last, 42 years in the making, that spark was something that I was determined to see survive.

But the darkness, the proverbial phantom (or Fandom) menace, was still there. As with Game of Thrones, there were leaks, which were being raged about on the dark corners of the Internet by people who were unhappy with either one specific part of the story or the direction of the franchise as a whole. And when the leaks started to become confirmed, all of that hatred blew into the open. And when the first wave of reviews rolled in, The Takes started.

Even before I saw the movie (which again, I adored, more on that later) I started to recognize the same patterns. The grotesque levels of entitlement. The writers being viciously condemned and burned in public effigy. The seizing upon every last word of every interview and every behind-the-scenes story and twisting it until it fits the shape of someone’s own ghoulish narrative or headcanon. The asinine, pathetically shallow attempts to pit the people involved in creating this story against one another. The official Twitter accounts being spammed with the same vitriolic anger by stan accounts in monotonous, almost bot-like fashion (even if some of them, I suppose, sadly were real). The fucking petitions. And while some of the darkness was coming from the same people I had already written off (most of them for reasons of rank racism or misogyny) some of it was coming from people who had previously been championing what I thought was the side of the light, but were presently engaging in behaviors that I felt bordered on rank hypocrisy because now, they were the ones who weren’t getting what they wanted. “To hell with Rian Johnson and how dare he?! No! Rian is a saint. To hell with J.J. Abrams! How dare HE?!”

And of course, there were no shortage of people who were happy to throw dirt on both, and toss some in Kathleen Kennedy’s direction for good measure. Star Wars is dead, after all. Everyone grab a shovel and the bitterest booze you can stomach and let’s all go spit on its freshly dug grave!

For the briefest moment, I thought I was going to fall into despair. All of this has happened before, and will happen again. Who knew what they would come for next? But then, the Force must have intervened, because at that time when the darkness seemed most impenetrable, I had what I won’t describe as an epiphany or a revelation, but a simply a moment of calm, solemn, and absolute clarity. It wasn’t a happy feeling, but more of a cold certainty, a candle that was enough to hold back the darkness but not yet enough to warm the cave and banish the shadows entirely. A Spark.

It wasn’t much, but it was there, it was alive, and at the heart of its flame was a single idea … No. Not this. Not Star Wars.

And You. Not referring to any one person but the collective You, the online chattering class, who look at everything as IP, who never met a moment of emotional sincerity that You couldn’t turn into a snarky joke or a ridiculous meme. You, who always, always lose sight of the beautiful forest for the sake of the occasionally ugly trees, who nitpick and dissect every last detail like starving vultures until you kill the magic and then write a cleverly barbed thinkpiece with an SEO-appropriate headline which all your online friends retweet and fawn over in one big cynical circlejerk … You are not going to ruin this for me. Not this. Not Star Wars. It means too much to me. It has brought me too much joy. And I will not strike it down in anger. I will not allow my heart to be turned.

Now, I will admit that I’m not coming at this from an entirely Jedi perspective. There was a clear dark side to my point of view, especially then, that base instinct that arises when I see someone attacking something I love, justified or not, and I feel the urge to strike them down. Oh, you have a problem with this story? The story is not the problem. You are the problem. And if You are making me feel this way, then why do I need You? You are nothing to me. You have no place in this story.

But again, that’s the dark side point of view, and I don’t want to live there. Indelibly cool as Darth Vader might be, I don’t want to seal myself in his armor and feed off my own hatred, striking down all who defy me when they cross my path. That way lies only pain and suffering. As Dave Filoni, creator of The Clone Wars and Rebels (great shows, both of them), said at a recent panel, “Stop thinking of the dark side as some pathway to power. That’s the Emperor lying to you. It’s destructive. Darth Vader is miserable. He lost everything. He has no one in his life, absolutely nothing until his son comes back and says, ‘I love you.’ Other than that, his life is a wreck ... That’s not the way to live your life. I see a lot of adoration. I get that the bad guys are cool. But they are evil. You really don’t want to be them.”

And he’s right. I don’t want to be them. But I am willing to fight, particularly when I see such virulent hatred rising up like Palpatine’s spirit from cracks in the surface of Exegol (How did he return? Unnatural abilities. Dark science. Cloning. Secrets only the Sith knew. That’s good enough for me. Maybe a book will provide more a precise explanation one day. Or not. Hard as this may be to believe, I honestly don’t care about the gory details right now). What I do care about is the Spark, and when it becomes necessary to fight to keep it burning.

As Jyn Erso says in Rogue One during a particularly dark moment for the Rebellion “You give way to an enemy this evil with this much power and you condemn the galaxy to an eternity of submission. The time to fight is now!” She was right, and ultimately, the Rebellion followed her to Scarif, where they won their first major battle, and eventually the war. And the time was right, then as it is now. Like Obi-Wan Kenobi, the quintessential Jedi in my eyes, I have no desire to hurt anyone, but if You persist on being willfully belligerent I will (metaphorically) cut Your arm off if I have to … after a stern warning, of course. I have absolutely no problem with cutting toxic people out of my life. But if there’s a chance to fight for the light, I’ll take that chance, and the next, until I “win” or the chances are spent.

What’s winning in this scenario? The Spark. Keeping it burning. That’s all. Unlike Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, I’m no hero. But like her, I am interested in protecting the Light by any means I can. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Raddus (or Admiral Raddus) at my disposal, but that move was one in a million anyway and unlike Laura Dern, I can't make purple hair look good. So, I’ll find another way.

As Maz Kanata says, this is the fight. “The ony fight. Against the Dark Side. Through the ages, I have seen evil take many forms. The Sith. The Empire. Today, it is the First Order. Their shadow is spreading across the Galaxy. We must face them, fight them. All of us.”

Now, I don’t know where The Discourse ranks on that list. Probably pretty low. The name isn’t all that intimidating, for starters, and unlike the Sith, the Empire, and the First Order, only the smallest fraction of those participating in The Discourse are actual fascists (but not zero, unfortunately. Perhaps we should do something about that sometime).

Still, that’s the challenge that all of the greatest heroes in Star Wars face in protecting the Spark. Luke faced darkness in the form of his father Darth Vader and sensed there was conflict within him, a desire to return to the light. So he offered grace and mercy, and because his father ultimately wanted to make that choice, atonement was achieved. Rey did the same with Ben Solo, offering him hope that if he were able to find the strength to come home, she would be there, ready and willing to take his hand. But when Rey faces ultimate evil in the form of her grandfather Darth Sidious and sees nothing redeeming – no remorse, no potential to be better, only a boundless desire to burn in the eternal fires of hatred - she rejects him. She destroys him. And she erases his name and entire legacy from existence while setting off on her own path. Sometimes you have to do that. Sometimes that’s the only choice.

But whenever I do have a choice, I’m going to embrace the light side, and for me that takes the form of, as Anakin Skywalker said, “compassion, which I would define as unconditional love” (yes, I’m quoting Attack of the Clones. Go with it, or if you’re not on board, take the exit ramp now). I’m going to celebrate this thing openly, and let everything else slide away. I want to be like Rey Skywalker, the scavenger born of ultimate darkness who became The Hero and whose journey I found so, so incredibly powerful and meaningful throughout the Sequel Trilogy but never more so than in THIS movie, The Rise of Skywalker. I want to choose the light even if everyone expects me to choose the darkness, and help others find it as well, if I can, if they want to. To be kind to everyone and adjust whatever squeaky wheels I come across, simply because I can and it’s right to do so. I want to be better. Both she and this story make me feel that way. Star Wars is in my blood, and unfortunately, part of its legacy is darkness. But as Luke Skywalker says, “Some things are stronger than blood” and you can always choose to be better, if like Rey, you have the spirit, the heart, the desire, the belief. If you close your eyes, feel the Force, and choose to let it in.

It isn’t easy, of course. For me, with Star Wars, it’s easier than perhaps it might otherwise be because I’m more experienced with it. After all, I’ve both loved The Phantom Menace and been a member of this fandom for over 20 years. I can hold two seemingly contradictory truths in my mind that the same time and make sense of them, at least when it comes to this particular franchise, because I have seen it all before. All of this has happened before, and will, most unfortunately, likely happen again one day. Maybe as soon as 2022, when the next movie is released. Maybe sooner. Maybe even with The Mandalorian, which many – some I feel cynically, but more I believe genuinely - are holding up as the holy saving grace of this franchise at the moment. Yet sooner or later, even that show will slip up and make a creative choice that will piss people off. When that happens, they will feel betrayed, and it will be Jon Favreau’s time to take his turn in the rage barrel and face the online firing squad like George Lucas, J.J. Abrams, Chris Terrio, Rian Johnson, Kathleen Kennedy, David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, George R.R. Martin, Damon Lindelof, and countless others before him. This is, unfortunately, The Way. But it doesn’t have to be, and I don’t want it to be. (Unless Favreau kills off Baby Yoda. That may be considered irredeemable).

One of the most indelible lessons in Star Wars, one that many people often struggle with, is “From a Certain Point of View”. And while everyone has their own and that’s absolutely valid, I think it’s important that I clarify mine, so that people understand how I approach this particular story. Which is that It’s True, All Of It. I consider this story as if it’s actual history. I look at the decisions made by the characters as the characters’ decisions, not decisions made by the writers, directors, or boardroom executives, and I appreciate them in that way. So when characters make decisions that I may find questionable, my first instinct is to ask “Why did the character make that choice?” not “Why did the writers make them do that?” It’s not always possible to separate the two and not everyone can or should look at the story that way, but I do. It is my first instinct whenever I engage with any story, not only the ones I love as much as this one, and while your mileage may vary, I personally feel that it has served me well.

The reason that it has served me well is simply this: at the end of the day, I am interested in the story itself, not the story behind the story. Behind-the-scenes drama does not interest me. Garbage narratives pitting creative people with differing visions (that are actually not that different if you think about it for two seconds) against one another do not interest me. Above all, “This is what I would have done” does not interest me. With all due respect, (which, depending on your feelings about this movie and me in particular, you may not feel is much at this point) I am not interested in Your version of this particular story, especially if it’s going to be built on the spine of something that someone else created with just a few tweaks to “fix it”. That’s not a blanket condemnation of fan fiction, by the way. I’ve written fan fiction, specifically Star Wars fan fiction, with that same “What if … ?” premise. I loved doing it. I had a blast. But I never, ever viewed it as either a replacement for or superior to the actual story as canonically established, because ultimately I was just responding to what I loved and going “Yes, and … “ instead of “No, but … “

And yes, from a strictly technical perspective, anyone who writes a Star Wars story whose name is not George Lucas is writing “fan fiction” on some level. But it’s not all created equal, because this is The Actual Story. This is officially licensed, and for some people that may not matter. To me, it does. I still love the Old EU, or as it’s now called, Legends, and those stories live on. If you want to view those stories as an alternate continuity, much like comics have been playing with for decades, by all means. As Ahsoka Tano says, there’s always a bit of truth in legends, sometimes more than we think.

But this story that was delivered to us in theaters this past December was true, all of it. And personally, I have no desire to rewrite it to suit my own tastes. I understand that is difficult for many people, and unfortunately not all of them are honest and fair in their assessment of the ownership that they feel over the story. Most non-professional people recognize that they can’t necessarily direct, that they can’t make costumes or build new worlds as well as the professionals in those fields, either practically or digitally. But everyone – especially everyone who writes for a living or for pleasure - believes they can write. And everyone can. Some of them – fewer than they think – probably can turn out a half-decent screenplay given the opportunity (sidebar: I fully acknowledge that the question of opportunity, especially for those who are disadvantaged, IS a real one, and an important one, but given how complicated that issue is and how long I’ve already rambled, perhaps it’s you’ll permit me to explore that at another time).

Anyone can write a story. But not everyone gets to write THIS story. It belongs to all of us, but we do not own it. We cannot possess it, even out of love. We cannot always control it, despite how much we may want to. The people who wrote THIS particular story love it as well, and it’s important not to lose sight of that. They wrote about the elements of Star Wars that spoke most to them, and because of the responsibility they were given (fairly bestowed or not, in your eyes), it became the next chapter. It became Star Wars. They were the keepers of the flame, and they kept it burning for everyone, even if some feel like they were burned themselves. They are not necessarily wrong to feel that way, but like it or not, this is the story that we have.

And speaking only for myself, which is all that I can do, I can say without absolutely any shred of regret that I personally love THIS story unabashedly, unequivocally, and wholeheartedly, honestly more than I thought was possible. I’ve talked about why I love it at length in other mediums, and I am happy to continue to do so. I love it when Star Wars goes big, gets weird and joyfully embraces both its pulp roots and the archetypes of classical myth. I love it when Star Wars makes me think, and challenges my own assumptions about what is possible not only in the Galaxy Far, Far Away, but in ours as well. But above all, I love when Star Wars unabashedly leads with its heart. The Rise of Skywalker did all that and more.

I love absolutely everything about Rey and her journey – she was already one of my absolute favorite Star Wars characters ever, but after this movie I’m just in awe of her. Daisy Ridley is so, SO good in this role - casting her might be J.J. Abrams’s greatest triumph - and The Rise of Skywalker belongs to Rey in the way that A New Hope belonged to Luke and Revenge of the Sith belonged to Anakin. She owns every frame she’s in, and I consider the story that they told with her, from darkness and despair to peace, purpose, and belonging, to be an absolute triumph. The scene in which she calls out to the spirits of the Jedi who came before – “Be with me. Be with me. Be with me,” – is my new favorite scene in Star Wars history, and trust me, there was no shortage of competition for that title. Rey, who always felt so alone, is now less alone than she has ever been, less alone than any Jedi who ever lived. A thousand generations live in her. And so she rises …

Oh, and that final scene. I loved absolutely everything about it. Tatooine. The Lars Homestead. Luke and Leia. “Rey Skywalker”. The twin suns. My eyes had been swimming for most of the last act of the movie, but this is where I truly broke down and wept. For me, if the Skywalker Saga was truly going to end, I couldn’t imagine a better way.

But Rey wasn’t alone. The other characters shone brightly as well. I love Ben Solo’s return and how his choices and sacrifices reflect and enhance the tragedy of Anakin Skywalker. He finishes what his grandfather started but ultimately could not do. He saves Rey, the woman he loves ... who just happens to be the granddaughter of Darth Sidious, the man who seduced Anakin to the dark side on the mere promise of power to save Padmé, power that we see in this film is truly monstrous and unnatural. In pursuit of that power, Anakin became a monster himself, and Kylo Ren idolized that monster, but as Ben Solo, he ultimately he followed his grandfather’s path in reverse. Through an act of pure selflessness and light that Sidious could never have imagined, he gave up his own life willingly, simply so that Rey - who had helped to save him and then saved the entire Galaxy - could live. His sacrifice, in my eyes, tied all three trilogies and the entire Saga together with an elegance that I never expected.

I could go on and on. I love Poe coming into his own as a leader. I love Finn’s connection to the Force and his choice about what to fight for. I thought all of the legacy characters – Luke, Leia, Lando, Chewie, Threepio, and Artoo – got beautiful and perfectly fitting sendoffs. I thought all of the new characters fit the story well, especially Jannah and D-O. Not everyone got their full due – I will admit to being disappointed that Rose didn’t have a hero moment (perhaps my single biggest substantive criticism of the movie). But Kelly Marie Tran was wonderful as ever, and there was so much else I treasured about the journey that the few tiny bumps I encountered along the way didn’t even come close to derailing the experience.

But while I could wax rhapsodic about all of the specific things that I loved about the movie for hours on end (and I have), that’s ultimately not the point of this particular essay. So the most concise summation that I can come up with for why I adore The Rise of Skywalker so very much is that I went into this final chapter with an open heart and mind. I went in operating from a place of love that, while perhaps not entirely unconditional, is the kind of love you feel for someone that you know in your heart you can always go home to, even if at times, like Ben and his mother Leia, you feel trapped by the darkness and think that you can’t. And in its turn, The Rise Of Skywalker gave absolutely everything back to me, tying up this epic nine-film (or eleven-film, counting the anthologies) Saga in a way beyond what I personally could have imagined. I am so, so, SO grateful that it exists. And I am going to celebrate it and think about it and poke light-hearted fun at it and then come home to it and hold it close to my heart for years and years to come.

I recognize that I am exceptionally fortunate that I feel that way, especially when so many don’t. There are few greater feelings in the world than discovering something that you know that you will love forever, and for me, this film qualifies. I have a new Star Wars movie that I will love for the rest of my life, and some of you do not. For that, I am truly sorry. For that, I wish I could reach out to you (non-capitalization deliberate) in whatever small way I possibly can, and maybe either help you find a bit of the light that you feel you’ve lost or at least help you make your peace.

But what I will not do is help You (capitalization deliberate) light a fire just so that we can watch this world burn, or perpetuate Your own willful delusion so that You can continue to live in denial about the story You wish you’d gotten instead of the one that we have, or gleefully drag the creators or other fans into the depths of whatever hell You think they deserve. I love this movie, and You may not. Both can be true, but I can only ever fully know my truth. And my truth, harsh though it may be, is that I wouldn’t trade my position for Yours for all of the credits in the damn Galaxy.

So, ultimately, it comes down to this. You may say Star Wars is wounded. You may say Star Wars is broken. You may even say Star Wars is dead. And for you, maybe it is. If you feel that way, I’m sorry. I truly am. For You, maybe it is. For You.

But not for me, kid. Not for me.

For me, that flame is still burning as bright and hot and strong as it was in a Toys-R-Us in Iowa City in December 1996 when I first saw Darth Vader’s TIE Fighter and I just … fell, head over heels, taking my first steps into a larger world. In fact, it’s even stronger, because since that time I have a lifetime of love and memories that I’ve accumulated, friends I’ve discovered, and family with whom I’ve shared some of that joy. So I am happy to carry the flame onward, cherishing what came before and embracing what comes next. And if I’m alone, if I have to carry that flame myself - or perhaps more fittingly, pick up that lightsaber myself - I will. But I’m willing to bet I’m not. I’m willing to bet I won’t have to carry that light alone. In fact, I know I won’t. Why? Because it was true, all of it. And, for me and hopefully for some of you out there, it always will be.

That’s the choice we all have to make. Luke’s choice. Han’s choice. Leia’s choice. Lando’s choice. Chewbacca’s choice. Artoo’s choice. Threepio’s choice. Anakin’s choice. Obi-Wan’s choice. Padmé’s choice. Yoda’s choice. Ahsoka’s choice. Finn’s choice. Poe’s choice. BB-8's choice. Rose’s choice. Ben’s choice. Rey’s choice. The Hero’s choice. The only choice.

In the face of an eternal phantom of darkness and despair – one that can only ever be held at bay but never quite eradicated - one that sews seeds of hate and division and seeks to make you feel alone, because that’s how they win, do we surrender to it? Do we submit to it, or worse, allow ourselves to be consumed by it? Or do we choose to pick up the saber and ignite the flame anew, to save what we love instead of fighting what we hate, to find peace, purpose, and belonging behind us as well as ahead? Can we reach out to the ones who came before, to hear them and know that they live in you, and then with their strength as well as our own, rise and carry forward their legacy?

I hope I can. I know we can. There is, after all, no try. Only do, or do not. Will we?

It was true, all of it. It is true. And it always will be, as long as like Rey Palpatine, you can learn that you may come from a place of darkness, but it need not define you. Like Rey, the Scavenger from Nowhere, you can take all of your experiences, pain and joy alike, and use them to build something new as you set out on your own hero’s journey. And like Rey Skywalker, you can hear the whispers of an old myth and not only believe it, but know that one day you will be a part of it, and it will be a part of you.

In the closing passage of Matthew Stover’s absolutely stunning Revenge of the Sith novelization (which I can’t recommend highly enough), he writes from the perspective of Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, a son of light who fell into darkness and became the dragon he always feared. Yet Anakin, the Fallen Hero, would one day be reawakened by the love of his own son Luke, the Old Hero and the original one for so many of us, and find a way to save the Spark, fulfill his destiny, and bring balance. For a time, anyway. Balance is not an eternal proposition, and Anakin and Luke did what they could until Rey and the next generation were ready to pick up their old lightsaber – that proverbial Hero’s Blade - and make the fight their own, as they always must. Reflecting on the Fallen Hero, Stover writes:

The dark is generous and it is patient and it always wins – but in the heart of its strength lies its weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars.

As The Old Hero says to the New Hero, having faced the Fallen Hero and overcome his own great trial, “Confronting fear is the destiny of a Jedi. Your destiny.”

I will.

As The New Hero says to the Fallen Hero and the Old Hero, reaching out to them and all those who came before, knowing her place in the story but hoping, in her darkest hour, that she will not have to stand there alone: “Be with me. Be with me. Be with me.”

I will.

And as Maz Kanata, who lived through it all, offers the lightsaber that once belonged to the Old Hero and the Fallen Hero before him to the New Hero in the hopes that she too will pick it up and answer the call in The Only Fight That Matters, she says this – a simple piece of advice that remains perhaps my single favorite line in the entire history of this unspeakably rich and heartrendingly beautiful story: “Close your eyes. Feel it. The light. It’s always been there. It will guide you.”

I will.

And as long as I do that, the Force will be with me, as I hope it will be with you. Always.

See you around, kid.