This post contains SPOILERS for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is here, and it makes Rian Johnson's new Star Wars film trilogy less likely to happen. About a month before Johnson's The Last Jedi premiered in 2017, Lucasfilm officially announced the director was going to oversee a new Star Wars series, one that took place outside the established Skywalker saga. Johnson's pitch was green lit without so much as a story in place, but the general idea was that it would feature new characters and locations, demonstrating the expansiveness of the galaxy far, far away. With The Rise of Skywalker ending the old saga, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to explore fresh horizons.
In the two years since, The Last Jedi became one of the most polarizing movies of the decade and there have been precious few updates on Johnson's trilogy. While the project hasn't been officially cancelled (like David Benioff & D.B. Weiss' planned trilogy), Johnson still isn't sure when it'll formally get off the ground. Lucasfilm reportedly has a director picked out for the 2022 Star Wars movie, but it's not Johnson. That implies audiences are going to have to wait longer than expected for the filmmaker's trilogy, though an argument can be made it's in danger of not happening at all.
By now, it's no secret The Rise of Skywalker features a number of Last Jedi retcons, which (seemingly) were included to smooth over whatever issues the TLJ Disowners had with Johnson's film. Whereas The Last Jedi doesn't contradict The Force Awakens, Rise of Skywalker has elements that fundamentally change aspects of its predecessor, with Rey Palpatine and the recontextualizing of Last Jedi's Luke Skywalker among the more egregious examples. If Lucasfilm was willing to allow Abrams to undo some of Johnson's more notable creative choices, it would appear as if the studio has no real intention of welcoming Johnson back to add to Star Wars canon.
That will be good news to some, but there are also plenty of viewers who loved (or at the very least, appreciated) The Last Jedi and what it was going for. It was a franchise film that was unafraid to challenge its audience and its characters, pushing the property into exciting territory that suggested it was possible for something like Star Wars to evolve. There's obviously no guarantee Johnson's trilogy would produce three great films, but odds are they would have been interesting and tried new things. Following The Last Jedi, a lot of people were curious to see what a unique filmmaker like Johnson could do without being tied down by the Skywalker saga. He had taken a truly deconstructive approach, showcasing an innate knowledge of the entire franchise and finding a deeper meaning underneath it all. That viewers are still debating over The Last Jedi two years later speaks to the impact that film made on popular culture, and it would have been fun to see what else Johnson would come up with.
It is worth reiterating that as of this writing, Johnson's new Star Wars trilogy remains on the table, but this is beginning to have the feeling of Ben Affleck's solo Batman movie. The last two years have been full of non-update updates, while Lucasfilm's recruited Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige to develop his own Star Wars film. If all systems were really a go on Johnson's trilogy, there'd probably be something more concrete by now (even with Johnson completing Knives Out in the interim) and viewers would have an idea of when they could expect to see Johnson's trilogy begin. Instead, Lucasfilm pulling the plug on yet another project and cutting ties with another creative could be inevitable.