Lesson One

The Last Jedi

I will never forget the first time I watched The Last Jedi. Myself and two friends grabbed some food before dashing across to the theatre for the midnight screening – my first ever launch night cinema experience. Event cinema is a different animal.

Several scenes in the movie caught me off guard – the sudden realisation that I had tensed up with anticipation and/or intrigue. The first one came during the Battle of D’Qar, which I will explore later on in this list. The second, somewhat ironically, was lesson one.

Rey’s first lesson with Luke Skywalker was always going to happen at some point. She’d wear a pessimistic Luke down eventually. However, what wasn’t predicted was her sheer demonstration of raw power, Luke’s fear at that power and the threat it introduced regarding Rey’s future.

When the scavenger turned Jedi in training reaches out, she sees a “dark place beneath the island.” It interrupts the balance and pulls Rey in. The ground cracks, rocks float, Rey can no long see or hear Luke. She returns to reality startled.

Much to Luke’s terror, Rey “went straight to the dark, and didn’t try to stop.”

A chill-inducing moment. I remember sitting in the cinema with a knot in my stomach, thinking; “yikes, is this where we’re going? Is Rey going to switch sides in this movie?”

No, they wouldn’t do that. Would they? Luke had only seen this level of raw strength only once before and it was in Ben Solo. His fate was seemingly sealed. He had taken the dark path and now he feared that Rey was on the same trajectory.

And we had seen in the trailer for the film, Kylo holding out his hand to encourage Rey to join him. Her first lesson did nothing to suggest that this was misdirection.

Of course, in reality Rey would go on to straddle the line between light and dark. She found the dark place mentioned, discovered the cave and yet failed to find the answer she was looking for. And, despite that, she still resisted to join Kylo when the famous trailer moment arrived.

That is part of the beauty of The Last Jedi, and Star Wars storytelling in general. The good guys and the bad guys are almost always complex, particularly in the sequel trilogy. Ben Solo is conflicted, torn between his family and a supposed destiny, while Rey is struggling to find her place in the story and having to deal with a conflicted mentor at the same time.

Instability reigns and that makes for a fascinating story. It’s one of the reasons why we have no real read on what events will be in The Rise of Skywalker.