No franchise sparks more debate between its fans than Star Wars, especially when said fans are not happy with the overall direction of the story. Even though The Rise of the Skywalker, the last film in the current Skywalker story concluded what was essentially over 40 years worth of storytelling, fans are still not happy with how it turned out and wish it could have ended all differently.
Ultimately, The Rise of Skywalker wasn’t supposed to be the initial conclusion to the whole trilogy. That honour belonged to The Duel of the Fates, the final movie that was supposed to be written and directed by Jurassic World’s Colin Trevorrow. After The Last Jedi was poorly received by certain fans and the studio reversed course on Trevorrow’ s script, they brought back JJ Abrams to finish the off story the way he wanted to see it end. Not a bad idea considering that he started the latest trilogy with The Force Awakens. The only problem was that Abrams changed a lot of things from The Last Jedi to push a new narrative that felt far too rushed, leaving many to wonder that had the Rise of Skywalker followed the character development and story threads from The Last Jedi more closely, perhaps it could have turned out more cohesive.
The debate over the topic only escalated when Trevorrow’s initial script for the movie did actually surface, leaving many to believe that it may have actually offered up a better conclusion to the Star Wars story after all, despite some rather bizarre story ideas. The truth is that having a script down on paper is not the same as having something reproduced on the big screen. However, Star Wars fans a fickle bunch and give them enough time they will do almost anything to try and answer these questions. Something which one animation artist, Ethan Taylor, clearly had as he went and created a brief animated concept of how the Duel of the Fates movie would’ve likely played out:
This is obviously not the entirety of the script and there is no way you can do the full story justice in a few minutes. This animated movie doesn’t do enough to convince me that Duel of the Fates would have made a better ending for the Skywalker saga, but I do still like the direction of Rey and Kylo Ren’s characters more, even if the use of Force ghosts is a little too much.
In the end, we will never know which ending of the trilogy would’ve worked better but at least we can have some fun debating it. Something which Star Wars fans are likely to do for many years to come.
Last Updated: March 30, 2020
