Mark Hamill Reveals George Lucas’ Original ‘Star Wars: Episode 9’ Ending

George Lucas‘ involvement with the Star Wars franchise is (mostly) a thing of the past. But at one point, Lucas had plans for the on-going Skywalker saga. Plans that were all but abandoned when Disney took over. Now, Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, has revealed Lucas’ original Episode 9 ending idea. There’s absolutely no chance of this happening now, so we wouldn’t classify this as a spoiler. But let’s just go ahead and issue a spoiler warning just to be safe.

We have no idea how J.J. Abrams will close-out the current Star Wars trilogy with Episode 9. Thanks to Mark Hamill, however, we have an idea of how George Lucas would’ve handled things. Speaking with IGN, Hamill revealed that the original plan was for Luke to train his sister Leia (Carrie Fisher) in the ways of the force. After that, he’d die:

“I happen to know that George didn’t kill Luke until the end of [Episode] 9, after he trained Leia. Which is another thread that was never played upon [in The Last Jedi].”

Of course, we all know now that none of this is no longer possible. Luke died at the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and while that film ended with Leia still alive, Carrie Fisher died before the film’s release, ensuring that her character won’t return in the next film.

George Lucas had been developing ideas for a new trilogy right before he sold the Star Wars rights to Disney. After the sale, Disney promptly abandoned most of Lucas’ ideas. Lucas confirmed as much back in 2015:

“The ones that I sold to Disney, they came up to the decision that they didn’t really want to do those. So they made up their own. So it’s not the ones that I originally wrote [on screen in Star Wars: The Force Awakens].”

Some of Lucas’ ideas did make it into the series as we know it now. It was Lucas’ idea to have Luke be in hiding, and for a young Jedi disciple (the character that eventually became Rey) to find him and draw him back into the on-going story. Luke would then train the disciple in the ways of the Force. This idea is sort of the storyline of The Last Jedi, but Rian Johnson’s approach ended up being much, much different than what Lucas originally had in mind.

Hamill offered some general comments on Lucas’ original plans for a new trilogy:

“George had an overall arc – if he didn’t have all the details, he had sort of an overall feel for where the [sequel trilogy was] going – but this one’s more like a relay race. You run and hand the torch off to the next guy, he picks it up and goes.”

I’m happy with where the Star Wars franchise is now, but the idea of Luke training Leia is pretty darn appealing. Sadly, even if Disney had stuck with Lucas’ idea, it would be be unworkable now in the wake of Carrie Fisher’s death. We’ll have to just chalk this one up to something that could’ve been, but never was.

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