“Taking one last look, sir, at my friends”

I have a love/hate relationship with trailers. There is nothing quite like going into a movie on opening night with the lid firmly on the mystery box. Since the Sequel Trilogy began, and the plot thick Revenge of the Sith trailer all but a distant memory, Lucasfilm has been very good at delivering trailers that have teased rather than revealed.

The final trailer for The Rise of Skywalker emphatically does just that.

It’s 4am and I’m sitting here with tears in my eyes, totally unashamed to admit it. This trailer is everything I wanted it to be – beautiful Star Wars imagery, plenty of familiar faces, superb lines from said familiar faces. But crucially, and more importantly than anything else, it doesn’t reveal a great deal about the film.

Off the top of my head, here are some things that we still don’t know;

• Why Rey and Kylo have travelled to the Death Star wreckage.
• How Imperial Star Destroyers have returned.
• How the Resistance and First Order fleets have so many ships, new and old.
• Why and how Lando is back in the game.

And, of course, the biggest mystery of all remains guarded. Teased in all three, (let’s call it three), trailers but with details still delightfully vague – how the hell has former-Emperor Palpatine managed to navigate his way back onto the field of play.

I speculated last week as to whether this final trailer would reveal what Palpatine looks like in Episode 9 and the answer, is that he was again just teased. What we see and over the shoulder shot of the black robed Sith Lord, starring down on Rey upon what appears to be a mobile chair.

Perhaps an evil mobility scooter. I don’t know, the trailer didn’t show me.

But that tease is enough. It should be enough of a tease to entice casual fans out to the box office, while not really given fully paid up members of the Star Wars fandom a great deal to go on. Mystery box successfully maintained.

Whether it is Rey meeting Palpatine, our heroes occupying the falcon cockpit, a sky full of Resistance ships or Rey – hero’s blade in hand – running through a forest, this trailer gives us a sense of adventure. For the first time in the Sequel Trilogy, all of our leading protagonists are going to come together. The trailer does a brilliant job of reminding us of the friendships and the stakes.

It’s no more apparent than in the scene that made this lifelong Star Wars nut tear up. C-3PO’s being worked on by Babu Frik, Poe asks him what he is doing.

That’s when Threepio says, “taking one last look, sir, at my friends.”

What a trailer. What a time to be a Star Wars fan. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some tickets to buy…