This generation’s Star Wars trilogy will be coming to a close with Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker later this month, which naturally means that we can expect some grand finales for characters we’ve come to know and love in these new films.
However, beyond just the heavy hitters like Rey, Finn, and Kylo Ren, screenwriter Chris Terrio told Polygon that Rise Of Skywalker will tie-up and finish out the arcs for a whopping 24 different characters. And to make sure it all worked out, Terrio confessed that he and the Star Wars creative team took an interesting approach to the storytelling of a sci-fi fantasy epic.
“I think that, by my last count, there were 24 character arcs in the movie. Twenty-four characters whose stories had sort of beginning, middle, and end,” Terrio said. “So it’s daunting, but also we would tell ourselves that this is just the history of the galaxy. It’s not like we’ve got to make up some confection in order to fit in certain things. We said, ‘No, this is what happened. This is the battle that happened. This was the chance that they took. This was the plan.'”
In order to make sure everyone was getting their due, Terrio explained that they took an approach that felt similar to writing nonfiction. “A lot of my past work was like historical drama and stuff like that. You write it in the way that you would write any world historical event or galaxy historical event, which is to say that there are all these interwoven strands and all these little moving pieces.”
But despite the myriad endings, Rise Of Skywalker doesn’t actually put a wall around the edges of the Star Wars galaxy. In fact, it actually opens the door for more exploration. “I think there are also little parts of the galaxy that will be opened–at least to the imagination, if not to further films,” Terrio said. “We have some new characters in this movie that I would live with happily in my brain and imagination. So I hope that we’re also saying that the galaxy is big and various. We’ve shown you this one saga, but the galaxy contains multitudes.”
Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker hits theaters December 20, 2020.