The Star Wars sequel trilogy should have started earlier

The problem with the Star Wars sequel trilogy is it starts too late.

The original trilogy ends with a happily ever after. Evil is vanquished! Fireworks! Ewok dance party!

When the sequel trilogy starts, evil has already risen again, complete with armies and spaceships and an established power structure.  Everything earned in the original trilogy was for naught. We didn't even get a moment to savour our happily ever after. This is emotionally unsatisfying and, as I've blogged about before, makes it practically impossible to end the sequel trilogy on an emotionally-satisfying happily every after.

This could have been avoided by starting the sequel trilogy earlier in the arc.

They could have started it the same number of years in the future - years and ages don't matter - but it should have started before evil began rising once again.


Picture this: we start in the happily ever after. The galaxy is a thriving, flourishing society. We see people living happy, prosperous lives, much like the Shire at the beginning of Lord of the Rings.

Our heroes from the original trilogy are living their best lives. Leia is in a position of power and authority. Luke is training young people (who may or may not include Ben Solo, depending on the needs of the plot) in the ways of the Force. Han is doing whatever is most convenient for the plot.

Then Ben Solo finds out something bad. Not "evil empire" bad - no war atrocities or anything - but rather peacetime bad. Corruption, insider trading, tax evasion, something like that. (Maybe Han is the perpetrator if that helps the plot?) This causes him to get disillusioned with the idealism he learned at his mother's knee, and he starts wondering if perhaps there's another way.

He goes looking for another way, gets radicalized, and begins studying the ways of the Sith.

In the process of doing this, he encounters Rey through their Force connection.

Rey is being brought up in the ways of the Sith, and she's beginning to question it.  Through her Force connection with Ben, she gets a glimpse of another life. But everyone around her - and this dude with whom she apparently has a force connection now - are out to destroy it.

Adventures happen! Light sabre battles happen! Special effects make movie audiences gasp in delight! Entertaining subplots involving marketable action figure characters happen! Emotionally satisfying beats involving old favourite characters happen! The couple you're shipping kisses!

And, ultimately, evil doesn't rise. It tries to, but throughout the movies we see how the the foundation built up by the good guys in the original trilogy stops them from getting too far, and provides us with the reassurance that, even if evil tries to rise in the future, things will never again get as bad as they were at the height of the empire.


This would still let us have our Star Wars adventure, but wouldn't render everything the original trilogy earned irrelevant. And, in a universe where the benefits of the original trilogy's happily-ever-after are felt throughout our heroes' attempts to stop evil from rising, we can feel confident that any happily-ever-after that this trilogy delivers will have lasting effects.