The Development of Star Wars
The Foundations of Star Wars:
The journey to get to the Star Wars movie was long and arduous, and nowhere is this more true than the development of the very first movie. George Lucas is well-known for changing his plans and retconning what he’s said in prior interviews to make it seem like he’d planned everything out from the start, and this makes it extremely hard to track the franchise’s trajectory. However, I can confidently say I’ve charted broad strokes of the development of this entire franchise, beginning with the first movie in 1977 and going all the way to Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker 42 years later in 2019.
In the build-up to the first Star Wars movie, George Lucas went through a number of different ideas: an adaptation of his favorite serial, a premise he pitched to an agent, a samurai-inspired treatment, and five different scripts.
As a child, George Lucas was a huge fan of cinema and science-fiction serials, including the highly-influential Flash Gordon serials, based on Alex Raymond’s comic book character. You can read about this more in Michael Kaminski’s amazing book The Secret History of Star Wars, but to summarize a story many have heard before, the seeds of Star Wars emerged when Lucas tried to make an adaptation of Flash Gordon but failed to attain the rights. (Source and source.) Undeterred and still fascinated by the notion of a science-fantasy adventure story in space, Lucas went about creating his own story., which he worked on in-between other movies.
His first attempt was a vague summary for a film called Journal of the Whills, a completely incomprehensible mess of a premise, focusing on CJ Thorpe, a Jedi Padawan to the great Mace Windy. Mace Windy’s name was reused for Mace Windu, obviously, and the Whills were later retooled into single-celled organisms, which became the Midichlorians of the Prequels.
After Journal of the Whills, Lucas wrote a treatment for a story that was so Kurosawa-inspired, it was basically The Hidden Fortress in space, with no Jedi or Sith to speak of. However, this did lay the groundwork for the final film: there is an elderly character named General Luke Skywalker (Lucas’ take on General Makabe from The Hidden Fortress) leading a princess to safety, which obviously morphed into Obi-Wan and Leia.
The Drafts of Star Wars:
Eventually, Lucas started widening his influences and moving farther away from the Kurosawa-inspired treatment. He looked to Shakespeare, The Odyssey, King Arthur, Dune, Spaghetti Western films and Starlog, which led to a rough draft and four actual scripts:
A rough draft from 1974 focusing on Annikin Starkiller, his brother Deak Starkiller who is killed in the opening scene, his dying Jedi father Kane Starkiller, and Kane’s friend Luke Skywalker, the only other Jedi left. Annikin and Luke work together to overthrow the Empire (consisting of General Darth Vader, Prince Valorum and Governor Crispin Hoedaak) and reinstate Princess Leia on the throne. Helping along the way are Leia’s two brothers, a smuggler, and the droids C3PO and R2D2. This was a much better, more cohesive final product that returned back to the terminology and ideas established in Journal of the Whills, but it notably did not have the Force.
You'll often hear Lucas saying that he wrote a script that was so big he had to split it into three movies (The OT), and he’s likely referring to this one. But that statement is confusing at best and downright untrue at worst. There are some shared ideas with future sequels, such as a battle on a forest planet he clearly reused for Endor, but nothing to indicate this is essentially a three-in-one behemoth script.
The first draft kept the exact same story, but changed Annikin Starkiller to Akira Valor, Deak Starkiller to Bink Valor, Kane Starkiller to Justin Valor and Prince Valorum to General Dodona. Also changed the names of the Jedi and Sith.
The second draft had the following changes:
It introduced the Force, gave the Jedi their current powers (telepathy, telekinesis, agility, etc.), and made the Jedi and the Sith less like samurai and more like superheroes. Again, Lucas was moving farther away from his Eastern influences and more to the comics he grew up with as a child.
Lucas introduced the idea of a “Kiber Crystal” that enhanced either side of the Force. (This later appeared in the non-canon novel Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.)
Annikin Starkiller was renamed “Luke Starkiller,” and instead of having a single brother named Deak who’s killed, he has several, all living on a farm with their Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru and cousin Leia. Cliegg, the eldest, is killed in the beginning. Deak, the second-oldest, is captured and tortured. Luke is the middle child, and he instructs the two youngest (twins named Biggs and Windy) about their heritage.
Their unnamed father is much more of a legendary figure, simply called “The Starkiller.” Though he only has a cameo appearance in the end, really.
This story plays out more like the final product in that it’s essentially one big, long rescue mission, albeit with Deak as the object of rescue, not Leia.
Ralph McQuarrie’s artwork is based on this script. There’s a bit of a “chicken-or-the-egg situation” here, as Lucas often claims that Vader’s armor was always intended to be a life support system. However, nowhere in the scripts for Star Wars is this the case. In fact, Ralph McQuarrie’s artwork seems to have inspired this facet of Vader’s character, rather than the other way around. (This is a common pattern with Lucas. He was extremely open about his ever-changing development process back in the day, but nowadays he tends to claim he’d planned everything out from the start, which can lead to some bizarre contradictions.)
In-between the second and third drafts, Lucas brainstormed a couple of ideas, such as making Luke Starkiller a girl. He felt the need to rebalance the male-female ratio after the second draft made Deak the damsel-in-distress, but he abandoned the idea of a female Luke once he decided to reintroduce Leia. (Though, the notion of a female Luke does seem to have inspired ideas for a female Jedi Padawan in the Sequel Trilogy, which I’ll discuss later,)
The third draft simplified this story, and it was extremely close to the final product. It had the following changes from the second script:
Princess Leia was reintroduced, once again as the damsel-in-distress instead of Deak.
Luke’s dad is officially confirmed as dead, and Luke is an only child.
Luke has been renamed “Luke Skywalker,” and there is more time spent developing his relationship with his aunt and uncle in lieu of Luke being an only child. Namely, his uncle is cruel and abusive, even stealing Luke’s money at one point in the script.
There is more camaraderie between Han and Luke. A note on Lucas’ second script mentions combining one of Luke’s brothers (likely the abandoned Deak Starkiller) with Han, which might indicate why Han and Luke are so much closer in this script, and why they became such good friends in the final product.
Ben Kenobi is a proper character, and he has the Kiber Crystal in his possession. While he does harken back to some of the old Kurosawa samurai, he’s really more of his own character, and officially confirmed to be the teacher of Darth Vader.
Luke had to plant a bomb by hand on the Death Star, where he is stopped by Vader. The two duel and Luke wins.
Darth Vader has a much larger role, being more-or-less the main villain of the story instead of the lackey he was in previous scripts.
The fourth and final draft is what we actually got: the Kiber Crystal is taken out, though it would be later added into canon and renamed “Kyber” as the power source of lightsabers. Darth Vader is established as the murderer of Luke’s father, and while they have a dogfight in space, they never fight in-person.
The Duel:
It was during the production of the first movie, using that fourth and final script, that Lucas divulged a backstory he’d created where Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader fought on a lava planet. Kenobi knocked Vader into a pit of lava, scarring him, which is why he wore a mask and armor. (Very reminiscent of Doctor Doom.) It was only in post-production that Vader’s mechanical breathing was added, which led to the idea that Vader wasn’t just scarred, but had breathing problems, and his “armor” was actually life-support. Again, this was an idea Lucas first had while looking at Ralph McQuarrie’s artwork, but he didn’t decide to actually make it canon until late in the production of the 1977 film.
Original Plans for Empire:
After the finishing touches on the original film, Lucas was burnt out. He’d poured years of his life into draft after draft of a movie that he wasn’t satisfied with, and he received little support from his wife or friends. Nonetheless, he felt the need to continue this story in some way; while he removed many of his original ideas from the final script (such as the Kiber Crystal) for the sake of narrative coherence, he still saw the potential for them to reappear in sequels.
After hiring the science fiction author Alan Dean Foster to write a novelization for Star Wars, Lucas was beginning to warm up to the notion of having Star Wars be a multi-part story, like the serials that inspired him. I’ll discuss this more in the next section, but for now, Lucas was still convinced the movie would flop, so instead of writing scripts for more big-budget blockbuster movies, he commissioned Alan Dean Foster to write Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, thinking he’d adapt it into a low-budget indie film if Star Wars flopped.
Splinter of the Mind’s Eye is more-or-less what Empire Strikes Back could have been, which is why I’m discussing it here. The novel is much lower in stakes, set entirely on a single planet. Han and Ben Kenobi don’t appear in the film, as Harrison Ford and Alec Guiness famously hated the production of Star Wars and didn’t think it would succeed; as a result, the novel shifts the focus to a budding romance between Luke and Leia, with the two competing with Vader to retrieve the Kiber Crystal.
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Of course, as we all know, Star Wars was a huge hit and everyone was on-board to make the next film even bigger and even better. Empire went through several drafts, and while the changes between them aren’t as drastic as the drafts for the original film, I still want to go over them.
The first draft was written by famous space opera author Leigh Brackett, using ideas that Lucas outlined for her, similar to what happened with Foster. This draft laid the groundwork for this film (and Return of the Jedi) in a few key ways. The Battle of Hoth, the chase through the asteroid belt, the duel between Luke and Vader, and Lando all appear in this draft. Han’s feelings for Leia are made more apparent, but it leads to a love triangle between them and Luke. Luke is visited not just by the ghost of Obi-Wan, but also his own father, firmly establishing Anakin and Vader as separate characters; furthermore, Luke has a sister, but she’s very obviously a separate character from Leia. To reiterate what I said earlier, it’s clear in retrospect that Lucas did not have the Skywalker family tree mapped out from the get-go; he was very much making it up as he went along.
After Brackett’s death, the second draft was written by Lucas. Having clearly honed his skills from the first movie, Lucas made a cohesive narrative that was extremely close to what we ended up with. Lucas was still working on the idea of Luke having a sister (which was possibly inspired by his brief consideration of making Luke a woman in the first movie), and she would’ve had her own storyline going on at the same time as Luke, Han and Leia’s. This second draft also established the Emperor as the series’ overarching villain; taking a page from his initial drafts of the first movie, Vader was actually afraid of the Emperor, a far cry from the loyal, unflinching servant he became.
After this, the third, fourth and fifth drafts were made in collaboration between Lucas, commissioned screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, and director Irvin Kershner. They expanded dialogue, played around with Yoda’s design, introduced more romance between Han and Leia (gradually weaning off the love triangle Brackett introduced), and slowly downplayed Luke’s sister until she was a single line of dialogue.
The Twelve (and Nine)-Part Saga:
George Lucas was always a brainstormer, a planner and an “ideas man.” Hence why he needed other like (like Foster, Brackett, Kasdan and Kershner) to reel him in. Like I said above, he’d always had too many ideas for just one story, but it was only after the first film succeeded that he felt confident enough to turn them into movies. However, he didn’t actually have a concrete plan for what was going to happen in each movie. As a result, we end up with some very different plans for the franchise when we compare what he’s said at various points.
(Not helping matters is that various friends of Lucas, such as Hamill and Kurtz, have sometimes said he has a 12-movie plan and sometimes said he had a 9-movie plan, and each of them seem to have their own opinion about what that plan would entail.)
When talking with Alan Dean Foster about turning his sequels into novels, Lucas mentioned plans for future books: the sequel would have a romance between Luke and Leia (which we saw in Splinter of the Mind’s Eye) and the third book would focus on the end of the Empire, and it would be “just about the soap opera of the Skywalker family.” And finally, a prequel novel would focus on a young Obi-Wan Kenobi.
As soon as Star Wars became big, Lucas began advertising for the sequel. In the months after Empire was announced, he often referred to it as being the second of 12 movies, which he called The Adventures of Luke Skywalker, indicating every movie was going to focus on his adventures.
But Lucas quickly realized he had more ideas beyond Luke, including his work-in-progress backstory for the Republic, Vader and Kenobi. In 1977, shortly after the release of the first movie, he revealed that Star Wars would consist of three trilogies (Luke’s story, the Prequels and the Sequels) with three anthology movies on the side: one focusing on the Droids that harkened back to some of his ideas for the original film, one focusing on the Wookies, and one that he never gave information about (or never developed in the first place. This would still be 12 films overall.
Lucas changed his plans the following year, having taken out the anthology films entirely. In an interview with Time Magazine in 1978, he revealed his new 12-movie plan for the franchise:
Episode I would be a “prelude,” presumably focused on the origins of the Jedi
Episodes II-IV would be the Prequel Trilogy, focusing on Kenobi and Vader
Episodes V-VII would be the Original Trilogy, focusing on Luke, Han and Leia
Episodes VIII-XI were mysteriously left blank in this outline, likely because Lucas hadn’t fleshed out the sequels enough
And Episode XII would be the conclusion to the franchise
Finally deciding that the anthology films weren’t needed, Lucas decided Star Wars would only consist of the Original Trilogy focused on Luke Skywalker, the Prequel Trilogy focused on Kenobi and Vader, and the Sequel Trilogy. On the set of Empire in 1980 (though some sources say 1979), he told an interviewer that he’d already conceived of the Original Trilogy and Prequels, and that he’d decided to add a third trilogy (the Sequels) on top of that, bringing the total movie count to 9. That final plan seems to be what Gary Kurtz was talking about here in 1999. In this interview, he revealed what the plans were going to be for the Saga while he was still working with Lucas on the original trilogy:
Episode I would focus on the origins of the Jedi Knights. This seems similar to what Lucas had mentioned in 1978, about how he wanted the first movie to be a “prelude” to the rest of the franchise. It’s also probably why the chronological first movie we did end up with, The Phantom Menace, focuses mostly on very young characters.
Episode II would focus on Obi-Wan Kenobi. 22 years later, when Attack of the Clones did come out, that movie did indeed focus on Obi-Wan for the better part of its run-time.
Episode III would focus on Darth Vader, specifically his fall as a Jedi Knight and his rise as a Sith Lord.
Episodes IV and V was obviously the original Star Wars and Empire, respectively
Episode VI would’ve been a bittersweet finale, with Han dying, Luke killing Vader and walking away from the Rebellion. Yoda also did not appear in this version, and I’ll talk more about this later.
Episodes VII - IX were planned out very little, but Lucas knew that since he couldn’t fit Luke’s sister into Empire he wanted her to appear here. He also wanted the Emperor to debut in Episode IX, where he would be Luke’s final enemy. Obviously, everything from Empire onwards didn’t happen, though I’ll touch on some of this later.
In a rather iconic interview, Mark Hamill revealed that in 1976, on the set of the first film, George Lucas was already asking Mark if he could reappear for the final film, Episode IX, where he could pass his lightsaber onto the next generation. This would imply Hamill is referring to the final outline, when Lucas decided Star Wars would only consist of nine movies. However, in the same interview, he also mentions that he’d always been told Star Wars would consist of four trilogies. This is an interesting contradiction: if Episode IX presumably the end of Luke’s story, what does that mean for the Star Wars saga, what would the fourth trilogy be about?
I think the most likely explanation is that this statement was based on an ever-changing framework. Disregarding the 1978 interview I mentioned, Lucas spent years flip-flopping between Star Wars consisting of 9 Saga movies, or 9 Saga Movies and 3 Anthology films. The “fourth trilogy” wasn’t actually a trilogy in the traditional sense, just three loosely-connected films Lucas would make while in-between other, more crucial films. It’s likely that, much like the anthology films we got in real life from Disney, Lucas would have even disregarded the “Episode” label for the anthologies entirely, hence how Episode IX could be the final chapter in a 12-part saga.
Making of Return of the Jedi, Burnout and Changing Ideas:
Work on Return of the Jedi began shortly after Empire’s release, with Lucas once again financing the next part of his planned saga and Lawrence Kasdan once again writing the screenplay with Lucas’ input. Learning about the development of that film was actually the reason I decided to make this video in the first place. I first heard about this with Matthew Patrick’s 2015 Film Theory about why he thought Luke would turn evil in the Sequel Trilogy, and while that didn’t end up happening, his evidence (which was rooted in the original plans for the Saga) raised some interesting points.
Remember how I mentioned that the 1980 saga outline included Han’s death, Luke killing Vader and walking away from the Rebellion, with Yoda not appearing at any point in the film? Well those four massive changes were the result of three separate factors:
Harrison Ford was not contracted to return for a second sequel, unlike Mark Hammil and Carrie Fisher, and Raiders of the Lost Ark made him an even bigger star than he already was. Ford famously wanted Han Solo to die, and Kasdan agreed because he thought it would add suspense for the final act of the film. While Lucas rejected this idea because of the franchise’s strong merchandise sales (and no one thought that Han Solo toys would sell if the character died), Ford did get his wish in the next chronological film: The Force Awakens.
As MatPat noted in the aforementioned video, Return of the Jedi was toying with themes of moral ambiguity set up by Luke and Vader in Empire. Yoda famously tells Luke that if he leaves Dagobah, he will become “an agent of evil.” Throughout Jedi, Luke dresses in the black cloaks traditionally associated with darksiders, and he has a more aggressive, ruthless demeanor. In the film’s iconic opening scene, he resorts to threatening Jabba and offering up the droids as bargaining chips in an attempt to get Han and Leia back. Luke killing Vader seemed to be the culmination of these themes. However, Lucas once again pulled back, having Luke instead redeem Vader. Though, the idea of Luke’s wavering morality once again appeared in the Sequels with the revelation he tried to kill his teenage nephew.
Tying into Lucas’ famous inspirations from Spaghetti Westerns, Kasdan wanted Luke to walk away from the Rebellion exhausted and battered, akin to Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name. Again, merchandising prevented this from happening. Sources tend to be ambiguous about whether this was solely Kasdan’s idea or both Lucas and Kasdan’s idea. For what it’s worth, MatPat in the aforementioned video believed that this ending might have been a direct result (and a reflection) of Lucas’ burnout and exhaustion.
Finally, neither Lucas nor Kasdan initially wanted Yoda to appear, but Lucas ultimately decided to include him anyway just to affirm the truth of Vader’s words. Lucas feared that, otherwise, audiences would think Vader was just lying to Luke, and having a Jedi confirm Luke’s parentage would solidify this.
Making Return of the Jedi was an exhausting experience for George Lucas, and the creative burnout he experienced---as well as the realities of handling one of the biggest media franchises on the planet---heavily influenced his feelings about the series for years to come.
The nature of George Lucas’ big-picture writing means that he constantly needs other people to help reel him in, but those people often have ideas of their own of how the story should go. That’s part of why I decided to make this video: it can be extremely difficult figuring out who had what ideas, hence why Gary Kurtz can claim in 1999 that Han was supposed to die in Episode VI even though it’s obvious that was never Lucas’ plan.
Furthermore, Star Wars was becoming so big that Lucas’ ambitions were often hampered by his success. He never could have predicted that little kids would buy so many toys based on his characters, let alone that these merchandising deals would alter the trajectory of his storytelling.
In 1983, Lucas was too tired to even imagine more movies, and he (futilely) attempted to rebrand Star Wars as just a trilogy, claiming that the saga was over. But when he started work on the Prequels over a decade later, the merchandising deals and the often-frustrating collaboration with other writers inspired Lucas to make the Prequels his way, without any outside interference.
Making the Prequels, Underworld and The Clone Wars:
This is a shorter section, but I do feel like it's important to cover.
It should be obvious from the details I’ve mentioned so far that Lucas’ plans for the Prequels were vastly more detailed than his plans for the Sequels. He’d come up with more-or-less an entire backstory about Darth Vader, Obi-Wan, the Clone Wars and the Galactic Republic before the series even became a success, yet he constantly went back and forth on what the hell Luke, Leia and Han were up to after Endor (as evidenced by the next section of this video).
When Timothy Zahn released the Thrawn Trilogy and Dark Horse Comics began releasing their own comics based on the franchise (with Dark Empire being arguably the most popular) in the 90s, it helped Lucas realize that there was still a demand for his stories. A bit strange that he only had this epiphany now and now years earlier, but hey, better late than never, right? CGI was advancing in ways Lucas never could have predicted, and he decided to go back to some of his original ideas and turn those outlines into films. And, as we all know, he decided to create the Prequel Trilogy.
There honestly isn’t as much to say about the Prequels because they’re some of the only George Lucas films to be made with little-to-no-collaboration from other writers. And holy shit, does it show. Wooden dialogue, needlessly-complex storylines, awkward pacing, exposition dumps and fascinating characters that serve almost no purpose. Yep, it’s all here!
Joking aside, I do love these movies, but I think the late 90s and early 2000s are interesting to examine for the Star Wars franchise because they mark a clear shift in Lucas’ mind away from films. He started realizing that there were ways to expand the franchise that didn’t necessitate any more movies, and though the movies were still products of his mind alone, other stories released during this time are some of the best Star Wars collaborations in history.
The frantic, flashy and oh-so-stylish Clone Wars micro-series by Genndy Tartakovsky is a brilliant collaboration. Tartakovsky’s minimal dialogue pairs well with Lucas’ clunky dialogue; his stylish action sequences bring to life a galactic war Lucas could only dream of; and the parallel subplots perfectly fulfill Lucas’ big-picture storytelling.
The CGI Clone Wars series marks, to this day, one of the only collaborations that Lucas eventually went completely hands-off with. In many ways, it was as much an antithesis to Tartakovsky’s series as it was a successor; whereas 2D Clone Wars was minimalistic with short storylines, 3D Clone Wars was a complex, emotional, lore-heavy character-driven narrative told over the course of 12 years in real life. I’ll detail this more later, but I think Lucas might have had a hand in Maul’s ultimate fate in that show, which connects to his Sequel Trilogy.
One of the saddest cancelled projects from this era has to be Underworld. I won’t spend too much time on this, but essentially, for those that don’t know, this was to be Lucas’ next big project after he finished Revenge of the Sith and went hands-off on The Clone Wars. Underworld was a planned live-action series focusing on the Coruscant criminal underworld 5 years after Episode III, and while it never saw the light of day due to budget constraints, dozens of scripts were written focusing on characters such as Han Solo, Boba Fett and even Emperor Palpatine. Of course, this was a world before Game of Thrones, and studios just didn’t have the money to spend on live-action shows costing millions of dollars per episode. (Though why Lucas couldn’t just finance it himself, I’m not sure.)
Lucas’ Ideas for the Sequel Trilogy:
Now, let’s get into the Sequels. Funnily enough, this entire video was actually going to be about just the Sequel Trilogy, but I had so much context to work through I decided to just make it about the development of the Star Wars franchise overall. Nonetheless, I still think this is the richest, most interesting element of Star Wars’ development, just because it’s such a huge unknown.
First, we had the ideas that Gary Kurtz and George Lucas hashed out while working on Empire in 1980. After Vader’s death in Episode VI, the Emperor would be the final villain in Episodes VII - IX, with Luke’s still-unnamed-sister-who's-definitely-not-Leia being a major character.
Second, we have the ideas conceived after production on Return of the Jedi. Because so much of that movie changed during development (as I detailed previously), it altered the events of these sequel films. Han would still be alive and well, for one, and Leia would be Luke’s sister. Rather than focusing on them fighting against the Emperor, it would be set 20-40 years later and focusing on their children (and a love interest for Luke) as they rebuild the Republic. According to Lucas, this would’ve been a much more complex series: he described it as “ethereal,” with philosophical problems at the center of the narrative.
Author and biographer Dave Pollock was allowed to read the outline for the films, and he described them very warmly, noting that the sequel films were "The three most exciting stories ... They had propulsive action, really interesting new worlds, new characters." Interestingly, he refers to these films as being part of a 12-movie saga, indicating that Lucas reconsidered the three anthology films.
It’s interesting to see how much of this made its way into the Legends continuity. Novels like The Thrawn Trilogy, New Jedi Order, The Dark Nest Trilogy, Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi have a completely different tone than Lucas’ films, but they do focus on Luke, his wife Mara, Han, Leia, and all of their children forming the New Republic, later known as the Galactic Alliance. I love these novels for their morally nuanced characters and interesting takes on the Force, and it’s interesting to see how, intentional or not, many of these ideas were quite similar to what Lucas conceived all the way back in the 80s.
Third, we have the ideas Lucas wrote in the 2010s. Many don’t know this, but when George Lucas sent his outlines for the Sequel Trilogy to Disney after LucasFilm was purchased in 2012, he actually sent two outlines. One was the aforementioned “ethereal” trilogy, focusing on the rebuilding of the Republic, which he wrote in the 80s. The other was one he and a team of writers at Skywalker Ranch wrote in 2012, for the sole purpose of sending off to Disney.
That outline from 2012 was vastly different from both what we ended up with and what he wrote in the 80s. We can attribute this to a few factors: his own growth as a writer, his experience making the Prequels, his willingness to implement ideas from the Expanded Universe, the collaborative nature of the outline, and the knowledge that he would be sending this off for someone else to make. Between 2012 and 2019, Lucas revealed the following plot points in a series of interviews:
The two main characters were to be Taryn and Skyler, a female Jedi Padawan and her blaster-wielding friend. These are the characters who eventually became Rey and Finn.
Taryn notably went through several name changes, at one point being called “Winkie” and at other points being called “Thea.”
Darth Talon, a character from the Legends continuity, was to be the initial villain, fulfilling a similar role in Episode VII as Kylo Ren. Talon chased Taryn and Skyler across the galaxy in Episode VII, and she was responsible for changing Leia and Han’s son to the Dark Side. Skyler is something of a blank slate with very little personality we know of, and at one point, he was Han and Leia’s son. (Meaning that Finn and Kylo Ren from the final movie were both “descended” from the same prototype character.)
Furthermore, Talon was serving a Dark Lord of the Sith codenamed “Uber,” who would’ve been pulling the strings for this trilogy.
Luke was an older and cynical man, in exile after a betrayal from a student of his. Like in canon, he would die in Episode VIII, a far cry from the original 9-movie plan of Mark Hamill “passing the torch” in Episode IX.
Vader’s castle was a major location.
As we all know, the Sequel Trilogy was divisive. I’m not just saying that to sugarcoat a bad situation, I genuinely mean that. The Sequel Trilogy introduced loads of fans to the franchise for the first time, but they also have plenty of critics who noted the inconsistent characterization, the scrapped plotlines, the differences in direction, the lack of planning and the obvious retcons. George Lucas was among the most vocal of these critics; after his lukewarm response to Episode VII and his love for Episode VIII, he walked out of The Rise of Skywalker’s premiere, believing it to be the worst of the bunch. In response to general fan disdain for the film, he revealed more of his plans in 2020 and 2021:
Seeing as Luke is the focus of the OT, and Anakin is the focus of the PT, Leia would have been the focus of the Sequel Trilogy, along with her and Han’s children as well as Luke’s children.
This trilogy would have confirmed that Leia, not Anakin, was in fact the Chosen One of prophecy. Her role as a Senator would have been front and center in rebuilding the galaxy, and she would have had a much more active role throughout all three films.
The first of the Sequel Movies would pick up only a few years after the events of Endor.
Darth Talon was to be the apprentice of Darth Maul, who George Lucas described as a godfather-esque crime lord based on his Clone Wars appearance.
I’m...not 100% sure if these two storylines belong to the same outline. Between 2012 and 2019, it seems like Lucas was discussing a coming-of-age story about the rise of a Jedi named Taryn and the fall of Han and Leia’s son. But in 2020, he was discussing a gritty, crime-infested narrative focusing on Maul, Leia and her much younger children right after the events of Endor.
With that being said, I’m still going to operate under the belief that these are more-or-less the same proposed story. The fact that Darth Talon is explicitly mentioned in both feels like two much of a coincidence for such an obscure character, and Lucas explicitly stated that the “Uber” character she served was a codename...perhaps for Darth Maul?
The final season of The Clone Wars more-or-less fulfills the plans that George Lucas and his protege / partner, Dave Filoni, made for the show all the way back in 2008; I’m inclined to believe that Maul is explicitly left alive at the end of that show so Lucas could have reused him in his sequel movies.
So in summary, we had three different outlines of the sequel trilogy Lucas wrote or co-wrote:
One that picked up from his originally bleak Return of the Jedi, following Luke and his sister as they fought the Emperor
A more complex, action-packed narrative that focused on morality, philosophy, spiritualism and the rebuilding of the Republic
And one that focused on the female Jedi Taryn, Leia, and Leia’s son (who might have been named Skyler) fighting against criminal forces led by Darth Talon and Uber/Maul.
JJ Abrams’ Ideas for the Sequel Trilogy:
Reading about the development of the Sequel Trilogy is interesting, not for what changed, but for what remained from Lucas’ second and third outlines. Yes, we obviously expected some drastic differences (I highly doubt Disney would approve of their main character being named “Winkie,” for instance), but it’s interesting how many of the fundamental character archetypes remained.
In a way, it’s also a bit depressing. Lucas’ hatred for the Sequel Trilogy (and specifically Episode IX) makes more sense when we consider he was the originator for many of its biggest ideas. Considering how heavily Lucas spoke about both the Skywalker family and the female Jedi Taryn, it’s possible she was intended to be Luke or Leia’s daughter. Watching the reveal that she was actually a Palpatine...well, I can imagine how that would’ve been upsetting.
It’s even more depressing when we look at Kathleen Kennedy and JJ Abrams’ statements about the character of Rey. JJ Abrams speaks about her conception as if it were a revolutionary notion, born from his experience writing female characters for Lost and Alias. In reality she was more a product of Lucas’ ideas, not theirs. (And to be honest, most of her depth comes from The Last Jedi, the only movie Abrams didn't write. In Episodes VII and IX, she has very little actual personality to speak of.)
Regardless, I’m getting off-track. JJ Abrams has been even more open about the development of The Force Awakens then Lucas, which gives us quite a bit of information to work with:
The character of Taryn (also known as Winkie and Thea) morphed into a Jedi named Sally, who became a Force-sensitive scavenger named Kira, who eventually became Rey. Meanwhile, the character of Skyler (who, again, we know very little about) was retooled into an ex-Stormtrooper named Harry. Harry eventually became Sam, who eventually became Finn in the final product. Most of the time, when LucasFilm writers discuss the original plans for Rey and Finn, they refer to them as Kira and Sam, indicating they were called this for most of the movie’s early production.
Interestingly, LucasFilm later reused the name “Kira” when writing Q’ira, the girlfriend of Han Solo in the anthology film Solo.
Sam lacks the anxiety and neuroticism that made Finn so relatable. No, Sam was more of a charismatic, Han Solo-esque figure. In the opening of the film, he saves John Doe, a black Rebel officer in his 30s or 40s. Sam and John fly out of a First Order base and crash their ship on Jakku, where John abandons Sam. This scene very obviously became Finn’s rescue of Poe in the final movie.
Kira and Sam are joined by a spherical droid named “Surly,” who obviously became BB-8 in the final product. The three of them are on a quest to find a missing Luke Skywalker, but doing so requires a map on the bottom of the sunken Death Star II. The plotline of our main characters going to visit the underwater remains of the Death Star was a powerful set piece that Abrams reused in Rise of Skywalker.
The character Darth Talon morphed into “The Jedi Killer,” an enigmatic, masked lightsaber-wielder who spends much of the film obsessively hunting down Sam and Kira. Artwork for the Jedi Killer depicts him as a large, dark humanoid cyborg with a breathing mask, gray skin, white sunken eyes and a helmet akin to a hammerhead shark. It seems doubtful that this design was intended to be Han and Leia’s son, but it did eventually become Kylo Ren. The Jedi Killer’s costume was reused for the Fifth Brother in the animated Rebels series.
A character, possibly the Jedi Killer, is seen fighting Kira on an icy planet covered in magma. In much of the film’s early concept art, Kira is seen using Luke and Anakin’s blue lightsaber, but her opponent has a strange double-sided lightsaber with a red blade and a blue blade. It seems that, at one point, the team was experimenting with a fire-and-ice duality motif for the film’s final battle.
At one point, Kira would have participated in the aerial dogfight against Starkiller Base. She would have used Luke’s lightsaber to slice apart canons as she flew by in an X-wing.
While they retained the idea of Luke being in exile, the team intentionally didn’t focus on Leia rebuilding the Republic, as they felt that would be covered in future books like Bloodlines. I can see how that might have ticked off Lucas, considering how pivotal that had been to both his 1980s outline and his 2012 outline. Lucas has always been a fan of nitty-gritty politics, and to be frank, relegating the rebuilding of the galaxy to an EU book feels like a copout considering how much less mainstream the books are.
In one of the movie’s best ideas, Anakin appeared as a Force Ghost alternating between his Anakin Skywalker and Darth Vader personas.
After trying to make the setting work in several other films, Vader’s castle would have appeared as a base for the Resistance. Furthermore, the Resistance had their own planet-destroying superweapon called the War Hammer.
The Sequel Trilogy we got from Disney had a lot of these ideas, and as I emphasized, many of them are holdovers from Lucas’ own outlines. But obviously, we ended up with a very, very different beast.
Duel of the Fates:
Even after Disney decided to go in a new direction with the sequels, there was still a lot of indecision. This isn’t news, considering Last Jedi retcons most of the plot twists established in Force Awakens, and Rise of Skywalker retcons those retcons; but I’m specifically talking about the planned Episode IX that we never got.
When Disney first announced the sequel trilogy, they were following in the footsteps of the original trilogy by having new directors direct each of the films: JJ Abrams was to direct Episode 7, Rian Johnson was to direct Episode 8, and Colin Trevorrow was to direct Episode 9. Now, I think it was pretty short-sighted to have these three directors also write the movies, and that last one obviously didn’t happen, but Trevorrow has been remarkably transparent about what his original plans were before he left the franchise.
Star Wars Episode 9: Duel of the Fates was the working title for Trevorrow’s film. A dark, gritty, lore-heavy film that tied into the Prequel Films and The Clone Wars; Duel of the Fates would have been extremely different from the clean-cut, soulless Episode 9 we ended up with. In fact, based on what Trevorrow has discussed, I’m inclined to believe it would have been the closest to the Prequel Trilogy in terms of aesthetic, locations and tone.
I won’t go into all of it, because quite frankly, there is an abundance of information about this film. But to go over some of the main differences from the theatrical cut:
The entire structure—and really, the entire plot—of the movie is completely different. Rey is having visions of a final duel with Kylo Ren on Mortis (yes, THAT Mortis), so she and Poe go to find the planet, while being hunted by the Knights of Ren (who are actual badasses with personalities, unique powers and motives). At the same time, Finn and Rose attempt to send an intergalactic signal for help from Coruscant, which has turned into a dystopia under the First Order’s control. Both of these storylines split: Rey and Poe (who are romantically involved in this version) separate so Poe can go help the others, while Finn and Rose separate after they send the signal, with Rose being imprisoned. The climax of this film is a four-way scene, with Rey fighting Kylo Ren, Poe fighting the First Order’s forces in space, Finn rallying Coruscant’s citizens on the street level, and Rose breaking out of prison and sabotaging the First Order from the inside.
Palpatine did appear…in a cameo. Kylo Ren finds a Sith Holocron where Palpatine explains where Tor Valum is. Different sources disagree on whether Valum was Palpatine’s master (thus retconning Plagueis), Plagueis in disguise, or Plagueis’ master (thus bringing Duel of the Fates in line with Prequel lore), but regardless, Valum serves as Kylo Ren’s initial mentor figure. Kylo Ren spends much of the film learning how to absorb energy from Valum, but he betrays Valum, absorbs his energy and becomes much stronger as a result.
In general, Kylo was a much, much darker figure. He is revealed to be the one who killed Rey’s parents on Snoke’s orders, and this film really doubles down on his power-hungry nature. His “redemption” is more like what Vader got, not a full character arc but a tacked-on ending that has him severely injure Rey during their battle only to realize the error of his ways and heal her at the cost of his own life. This obviously got adapted into his death scene in The Rise of Skywalker. Consequently, his romance with Rey is entirely cut.
And, of course, Rey was not a Palpatine, much to my joy.
I consider this to be a far stronger final product, with the exception of how Ren was handled. The structure of the movie—which starts off by pairing Rose with Finn and Poe with Rey, then splitting them all off for a four-way story—was a great way to highlight each character’s strengths. Rose, the crafty technician, destroys the First Order from the inside. Poe, the ace pilot, takes them down from the skies. Finn, the ex-Stormtrooper, turns their forces against them. And Rey, the only Force-user of the group, takes on their supreme leader at the birthplace of the Force.
However, the only part of this script I don’t like is Kylo Ren. I’m very much in the camp of people who believe that Ben Solo getting a redemption arc is the natural culmination of his character, firmly establishing him as the antithesis of Anakin Skywalker, someone who begins the story on the side of the dark and gets pulled to the light because of those he loves. Funny enough, this is the only thing I actually did like in The Rise of Skywalker, and seeing Colin Trevorrow go for a much darker take on the character who kills Rey’s parents and blinds her in the final battle was something I didn’t really enjoy.
I get that the Sequel Trilogy was aiming for a much looser overall story (to put it mildly), but while I feel like Trevorrow’s script honors Rian Johnson’s ideas so much, it doesn’t honor the most complex arc of The Last Jedi. And that’s a damn shame, but then again, I am talking about a movie that doesn’t technically exist.
Conclusion:
I had a metric ton of fun writing this analysis. This is easily one of the longest, most comprehensive essays I’ve ever written, but I thought it was really necessary to get this information out there, both for the sake of the fandom but also for my own sake. I’m constantly seeing people talk about who said what about Star Wars films that never got made, and what initially started as a small list to keep track of everything soon spiralled out of control (in the best way possible).
Regardless, I hope you all enjoyed this deep dive into the history of Star Wars’ development. My name is Jonathan, and thank you for reading.
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