An excerpt from a new interview from George Lucas has been making the rounds online (via Reddit) that comes from a new book titled The Star Wars Archives: 1999-2005 has the franchise creator talking-up ideas he had for the sequel trilogy that ultimately weren’t used by Lucasfilm/Disney. Lucas first mentioned that Disney wasn’t interested in his ideas during his infamous interview where he called them “white slavers”.
He alludes that he wanted Luke Skywalker to restart the Jedi with what seems to be 50-100 Jedi that survived the events of Order 66 from Revenge of The Sith, it sounds like a much larger amount than we would have expected.
LUCAS: “It starts out a few years after Return of The Jedi and we establish pretty quickly that there’s this underworld, there are offshoot stormtroopers who started their own planets, and that Luke is trying to restart the Jedi. He puts the word out, so out of 100,000 Jedi, maybe 50 or 100 are left. The Jedi have to grow again from scratch, so Luke has to find two and three-year-olds, and train them. It’ll be 20 years before you have a new generation of Jedi”
“By the end of the trilogy Luke would have rebuilt much of the Jedi, and we would have the renewal of the New Republic, with Leia, Senator Organa, becoming the Supreme Chancellor in charge of everything. So she ended up being the Chosen One.”
I’m slightly curious if this germ of an idea is why Disney wanted to explore a Jedi characters like Cal Kestis in Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and Kanan Jarrus in Rebels both survivors of Order 66. I’m also curious if they try to reuse it in the Disney+ shows.
Ultimately, the version of Luke Skywalker we saw wasn’t this version as Lucas alludes wanting to have a new Jedi Order established, which never happened in the films we got.
Leia’s final journey was more than likely hindered because of her sudden death while Colin Trevorrow was still working on Duel of The Fates and they had to make creative choices to work around that tragedy.
SOURCE: THE STAR WARS ARCHIVES 1999-2005
THE RONIN 