49 Fun Facts About Star Wars: the Rise of Skywalker

Which Star Wars series debuted weeks before Episode IX?

The Mandalorian arrived with Disney+ on November 12, 2019, five weeks before the film, and its hero later got a cinema film of his own, The Mandalorian and Grogu, in 2026.

Which Oscar-winning writer co-wrote The Rise of Skywalker with J. J. Abrams?

Chris Terrio, who won his Academy Award for Argo, also slipped into the cast: he voices Aftab Ackbar, a son invented for the late Admiral Ackbar.

Which Lost actor plays Resistance trooper Beaumont Kin in The Rise of Skywalker?

Dominic Monaghan won the part on a bet: Abrams, his old Lost boss, promised him a role if England beat Colombia at the 2018 World Cup, and England did.

What was the title of Colin Trevorrow's abandoned script for Star Wars Episode IX?

Duel of the Fates took its name from the Phantom Menace lightsaber theme; the script leaked online in 2020, and Trevorrow confirmed it was real.

Palpatine's broadcast, mentioned in The Rise of Skywalker's opening crawl, was heard only inside which video game?

Fortnite players heard it at a live in-game event on December 14, 2019, six days before the film opened; the film itself never plays the message.

On which hidden planet does Palpatine reveal himself to Kylo Ren?

Exegol appears on no star chart, which let Palpatine's cultists build a fleet of Star Destroyers there unseen; only a Sith wayfinder shows the way in.

On which desert planet do Rey and her friends find a dagger inscribed with Sith text?

Pasaana is where Lando Calrissian turns up to help: years earlier he had tracked a Sith assassin there and found only the killer's abandoned ship.

Which tiny droidsmith extracts the wayfinder coordinates from C-3PO's memory?

Babu Frik's bypass wipes C-3PO's memory as the price of the translation, and R2-D2 later restores it from a backup.

Zorii Bliss is an old acquaintance of Poe's from which planet?

Kijimi, the thieves' haven where Poe once ran spice with Zorii's crew, is later blown apart by one of Palpatine's new Star Destroyers.

Which actress plays the helmeted smuggler Zorii Bliss?

Keri Russell's Zorii gives Poe the First Order pass she had saved up for her own escape from the planet, which gets the heroes aboard Kylo Ren's Star Destroyer.

Who is revealed as the First Order spy in The Rise of Skywalker?

General Hux admits he doesn't care whether the Resistance wins: he only needs Kylo Ren to lose.

Who shoots the First Order's spy in The Rise of Skywalker?

Allegiant General Pryde isn't fooled by the staged leg wound the spy shows him as proof of a struggle, and shoots him dead on the spot.

Which actor plays the Imperial veteran who commands Palpatine's fleet in The Rise of Skywalker?

Richard E. Grant's general pledges himself to the returned Emperor, saying he will serve him now as he served him in the old wars.

Who plays Jannah, the former stormtrooper living on Kef Bir?

Naomi Ackie's Jannah says deserting with her whole company felt less like a choice than an instinct, and Finn tells her that instinct was the Force.

Which actor returns as Emperor Palpatine in The Rise of Skywalker?

Ian McDiarmid had not played Palpatine on screen since 2005, and his return stayed secret through the whole shoot until the first teaser trailer revealed it in April 2019.

In the wreckage of what does Rey locate the Sith wayfinder?

The second Death Star's wreck juts from the sea of an Endor moon; Rey finds the wayfinder in a chamber off the Emperor's old throne room, and Kylo Ren crushes it minutes later.

Whose Force spirit catches the lightsaber Rey throws into a fire on Ahch-To?

Luke catches it and tells her a Jedi's weapon deserves more respect, though he had tossed the same lightsaber aside himself in The Last Jedi.

On which desert planet does The Rise of Skywalker end, at the old Lars homestead?

Tatooine closes the nine-film saga where it began in 1977: at the moisture farm from the original film, Rey takes the Skywalker name as her own.

A memory of whom persuades Kylo Ren to throw away his lightsaber?

Han Solo, played once more by Harrison Ford, is a memory rather than a ghost, and after their talk his son gives up the name Kylo Ren and becomes Ben Solo again.

What term does Palpatine use for Rey and Ben's shared Force connection?

A dyad in the Force, he calls it, a bond unseen for generations, and he drains the pair's shared life force to rebuild his own decaying body.

What does Rey bury in the sand at the Lars homestead?

Luke and Leia's lightsabers are buried at the farm where the saga began, and Rey walks away carrying a new one she has built for herself.

Which Killing Eve star briefly appears as Rey's mother?

Jodie Comer's character and her husband chose to live as nobodies so that Palpatine could never find his granddaughter, and died rather than give her up.

In The Rise of Skywalker, who is finally handed a medal, 42 years after missing out in the original film?

Chewbacca gets his medal from Maz Kanata during the victory celebration; at the 1977 film's ceremony only his two human shipmates were given one.

On which planet did Rey's parents hide her from Palpatine?

Jakku is where her parents left her with a junk dealer, and Palpatine's assassin killed them when they would not say where she was.

Which Harry Potter actress voices the droidsmith who probes C-3PO's memory?

Shirley Henderson, the films' Moaning Myrtle, learned to work the puppet's mouth herself and made up the droidsmith's babbling language as she performed.

Director J. J. Abrams provides the voice of which Star Wars droid?

D-O had Abrams's voice only as a placeholder until his co-writer argued that no actor could match its anxious politeness, so it stayed in the film.

Which composer cameos as the bartender Oma Tres?

The name is an anagram of Maestro, a nod to his final Star Wars score.

Which Marvel film composer cameos as a Sith Trooper in The Rise of Skywalker?

Michael Giacchino, Abrams's regular composer, was repeating a trick: he had already hidden under a stormtrooper helmet as FN-3181 in the director's first Star Wars film.

Which actor returned to play Lando Calrissian on screen for the first time since 1983?

Billy Dee Williams came back to the part after 36 years, and it is his Lando who brings a fleet of volunteers from across the galaxy to turn the final battle.

Denis Lawson briefly reprises which Rebel veteran?

Wedge Antilles turns up as a gunner aboard the Millennium Falcon in the last battle; Lawson, who is Ewan McGregor's uncle, had passed on a return earlier in the trilogy.

Which Hamilton star cameos in The Rise of Skywalker?

Lin-Manuel Miranda already had a hand in the trilogy: in 2015 he and Abrams wrote the cantina music for its first film, between his performances of Hamilton.

Carrie Fisher's General Leia scenes in The Rise of Skywalker reuse footage shot for which film, rather than The Last Jedi?

The Force Awakens left unused Leia footage that the new story was built around, because Abrams refused either to recast the part or to use a digital Carrie Fisher.

At which English studio was The Rise of Skywalker mainly filmed?

Pinewood Studios hosted a production so pressed for time that the editor set up in tents beside the set and cut scenes as they were filmed.

Which desert was a filming location for The Rise of Skywalker?

Wadi Rum in Jordan was remote enough that the crew built miles of road into it and set up a small town for cast and crew, with help from the Jordanian army.

Whose copy of The Rise of Skywalker script was listed on eBay after being left under a bed?

John Boyega left it under his bed while moving out; a cleaner found it and listed it for about £65 before a Disney staffer spotted the sale and bought it back.

Which Return of the Jedi Ewok does Warwick Davis play again in The Rise of Skywalker?

Wicket appears for a few seconds at the end with a young Ewok, his son Pommet, who is played by Davis's own teenage son, Harrison.

The Rise of Skywalker swapped its original May 2019 release date with which Disney film?

Aladdin took the May 24 slot when the change of director pushed Episode IX back seven months, giving J. J. Abrams until December to finish it.

Which box-office mark did The Rise of Skywalker pass in January 2020?

$1 billion fell on January 14, making it the seventh Disney release of 2019 to get there, a record for any studio, yet it still earned the least of its own trilogy.

What colour is the blade of the lightsaber Rey has built for herself by the end of The Rise of Skywalker?

Yellow: she ignites it in the closing scene, and its hilt is built from parts of the quarterstaff she carried as a scavenger.

Which war film knocked The Rise of Skywalker off the top of the US box office in its fourth weekend?

1917 had played in only a few cinemas since Christmas Day; when it went nationwide in January it took about $36 million and ended the Star Wars film's three weeks on top.

Rotten Tomatoes' consensus says The Rise of Skywalker suffers a frustrating lack of what?

Imagination, though the same sentence concedes that the film ends the saga 'with fan-focused devotion'; the site counts only about half of its reviews as positive.

The novelization says Palpatine survived Endor inside what?

A clone body: Rae Carson's novelization says his spirit fled into one when he died, which is why the figure Kylo Ren meets is a decaying shell hung from a machine.

Which awards named The Rise of Skywalker Best Science Fiction Film?

The Saturn Awards gave it five prizes in October 2021, more than any other film that night, after its three Oscar nominations had brought no win.

Ben Solo cuts down which band of masked warriors to reach Rey in The Rise of Skywalker's final battle?

The Knights of Ren had been his own followers until he turned back to the light; a Marvel prequel comic, The Rise of Kylo Ren, tells how he came to lead them.

Which director was announced in 2023 to make a new film following Rey?

Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, who won two Oscars for documentaries, was announced at Star Wars Celebration in London, along with Daisy Ridley's return as a Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order.

Which director held talks about taking over Star Wars Episode IX but declined?

David Fincher spoke with Lucasfilm and passed, saying a director would 'have to really clear your head' and be sure it was what they wanted to do.

Which British playwright was hired in 2017 to rewrite Star Wars Episode IX?

Jack Thorne, who wrote the play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, was brought in that August; five weeks later the film's director had left the project.

Who plays Resistance pilot Poe Dameron?

Oscar Isaac nearly had a much shorter stay in the saga: Poe was written to die early in the trilogy's first film, until Abrams changed the script to keep him.

Who plays the former space pirate Maz Kanata?

Lupita Nyong'o had played Maz through motion capture, but for this film the crew built an animatronic puppet of the character, worked by several puppeteers.