Star Wars: Episode IX

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Six months have passed since the death of Supreme Leader Snoke. The First Order has fractured. The fragments war with each other, and have mostly forgotten the Resistance.

In the chaos, General Leia traveled to Coruscant to try to restart the New Republic. She has not been heard from since. Few hope she is still alive.

The Resistance, such as it is, has failed to rebuild . . .

We open on board the Millenium Falcon. Rey is studying the texts she stole from the Jedi Temple. A paper book is open on the center of her desk, with datapads around it showing dictionaries and commentaries. She's frustrated.

Anakin appears and introduces himself.

Rey: [backing away] Darth Vader! Anakin: Yes and no.

She asks about his appearance, and he explains that force ghosts look like they did at time of death. From one point of view, he died as a young man at the hands of Darth Vader, while from another, equally valid point of view, he died as an old man, at the hands of Darth Sideous. When he first began manifesting, which people saw depended on their state of mind, but as he has worked to pull himself together, he's appearing as an average.

Rey: It sounds like points of view are very important to jedi. Anakin: Very important, yes. And very tricky. Easy to get wrong.

He tells her that he has no answers, but he can offer her an important question: What is the dark side of the force?

Rey: It's anger, hatred, fear, and the need to control others. Anakin: That's a common path to the dark side, but it's not the dark side itself. And it's not the only path. I fell through love. Rey: So what is the dark side, then? Anakin: I don't know. I spent half my life under its power, and I don't know what it is. But you need to. Rey: Sounds like more of a question for Kylo Ren. Anakin: Perhaps you should share it with him. Rey: Why don't you? Anakin: I can't talk to him. He's so obsessed with his concept of me that he can't hear anything I say. Rey: Well I have no way of reaching him. It was Snoke who connected us. Unless you can teach me that power... Anakin: Jedi are allowed to do things the easy way.

Rey calls Kylo on the ship's comm system, threatens her way past the receptionist (he'll kill you if you don't patch me through), and shares Anakin's question.

Kylo: It's passion and will. It's fixing the world. Not accepting its brokenness, but making it do what you want. Rey: And what do you want?

Kylo pauses, but before he can answer, Poe, Finn and Rose burst into the room. Kylo recognizes that this is important, and cuts the connection so she can talk to them without him hearing. Rose explains that she's been monitoring certain markets, and she believes the miniaturization problem on Starkiller Base has been cracked. The First Orders will be blowing up each other's planets from office-building size superweapons from light years away. First Order strategic doctrine will demand that any planet that *might* host a rival planet-killer must be destroyed. There might not be many survivors.

Rey calls Kylo again and confronts him over this. He does see the long-term consequences, and is on his way to destroy Hux's planet-killer now. He's sent forces against Phasma-28's base, but is less confident because he has no one to lead them. Rey volunteers. She promises to use them only for this purpose, and return them when she's done. Kylo communes with the force, then accepts.

While on route to Phasma-28's base, Rey receives another visit from Anakin. He tells her about the prophecy

Anakin: A child of no parents, or possibly no father, proto-tirknas grammar is ambiguous on that point, who will bring balance to the force. Qui-quon thought it was me, and that I would destroy the Sith forever. Sideous thought it was me, and that I did it by reducing the Jedi to two. But I know it wasn't me. I think it might be you. Rey: It can't be me. I had parents. They might not have been important on a galactic scale. They might not have been very good parents. Or good people. But they were themselves. They were somebody. Maybe that's what the Dark Side is. It's looking at people and calling them “nobody”. Anakin: [slow and thoughtful] That's... closer. But it's not quite it. Rey: Then there's something I need to do. Anakin: Then do so [vanishes]

Rey calls the temple caretaker that she nearly dropped a giant rock on and apologizes. The worker forgives her, and seems a bit surprised to be called.

The Falcon rendezvous with Ren's fleet and an officer briefs the rebels. Phasma-28 is only a few components away from completing the weapon. Her fleet is sizeable; her ground-to-space weapons far to powerful for a frontal assault; and her hyperspace interdiction stretches to eight light-seconds.

Rose: Eight? That's ridiculous. Old Republic Standard was a *quarter*, and most planets use a tenth.

Officer: You may recall starkiller base omitted interdiction entirely, trusting in a tight conventional shield, and this led to its downfall

[Nods]

Officer: And the Supremacy used a cutting-edge, not-fully-debugged form of interdiction, which led to *its* downfall.

Rey [quietly]: So *that's* why that worked

Officer: So Phasma-28 has avoided both mistakes by opting for quantity.

Rey: While repeating the mistake of picking her own interdiction strategy instead of following actually-thought-out best practices. [pause] So how will this lead to her downfall?

Poe: If they're receiving shipments, those freighters will be out of the planet's protection when they arrive.

Finn: But we don't know when or where those freighters will arrive.

Officer: We know where. Each time, a Star Destroyer comes up to meet them. Waits just inside the interdiction so we can't jump to surround them.

Poe: Which means if we're faster, we can jump to surround the freighters before help can come up to assist.

Rey: So we watch from a cloaked transport...

The convoy jumps in. Phasma's Destroyer moves to protect it. Rey's Destroyer jumps to intercept. Both destroyers launch fighters, but most of Rey's depart the battle to attack the convoy. This leads to a fighter-on-fighter battle dodging in and out of the Destroyer's towers, in which Rey's fighters are badly outnumbered. Rey's ability to use the Destroyer's own turrets against the enemy fighters helps, but they're not calibrated for such close range. Meanwhile, both Destroyers turn their main guns on each other, but are blocked by shields (which fighters can slip through – this is clearly established but not explained).

Eventually a fighter takes out one of Rey's shield emitters, and Phasma's destroyer pours main battery fire into the gap. The Destroyer sustains major damage before rolling to safety, and many crew are sucked out into space.

Phasma's Destroyer then moves past Rey's and reaches the convoy, which has lost several ships but is still mostly intact. Rey recalls her fighters, and the enemy ships move to the planet together.

Officer: We're a little faster that they are. If we go after them, we might catch up before they reach the planet.

Rey: Those people who got sucked into space, are they still alive?

Sensors Officer [checks control panel]: Seven hundred and thirty two of them still are. The vacuum seals on their armor must have autoengaged. They won't last long though: they've only got about five minutes worth of air.

Rey: Evacuate and open the ventral airlocks

Officer: [confused] Uh... Done

Rey closes her eyes, clenches her fists, then deliberately relaxes them and spreads her arms a little. The spaced officers slowly drift into the open airlocks and form a big pile.

Rey: Close and repressurize the airlocks

Officer: Done. Enemy fleet is now too far away to catch.

Rey: I doubt catching up to them would have achieved much anyway. And I don't leave my own behind.

Rey calls her team together for a planning meeting. Intelligence suggests this was the last shipment, so they're going to need a new strategy. They ultimately select a stealth approach followed by ground assault with very close air support. Getting inside the enemy's reach by stealth will require specific knowledge of the defenses.

Rose: If I knew more about the computer architecture, I could probably break in and get that information.

Rey [to Officer]: They only broke off from you a few months ago. How much could they have changed in that time?

Officer: Probably just the passwords and timings. But we haven't changed much since then either. Any information we give you could be used against us.

Rey: Hand over the complete documentation. That's an order. And Rose? Use it *only* to get into Phasma's systems and delete it when you're done. That's also an order. Understood?

Long action sequence attacking the base. Several times they get stuck and Rey saves the day with force powers. Each time she invokes the force, it's with a little more anger. At the penultimate gateway, she uses force lightning. It's not very powerful, just enough to stagger her target for a few seconds, but she's horrified. She stares at her hands as if they'd betrayed her.

Rey: Go on without me. I'm a liability.

They go on. Finn gets his moment of awesome. Phasma-28 dies and her superweapon is destroyed.

Rey's fleet travels to rendezvous with Kylo Ren.

Rey is studying lightsabers. Yoda manifests, and asks if she's ready to build one. She says no, but she feels a need to understand them anyway. Eventually, she gets around to what she really wants to talk about: the recent battle.

Rey: There's nothing evil about electricity, but I worry about that lightning effect

Yoda: Hmm... Worrying, yes.

Rey: I know I need to avoid the dark side, but did I touch it there? They say it's “seductive”, so I guess I won't know it when I see it. But what is the dark side of the force, anyway?

Yoda: Spoken to Anakin, have you?

Rey: Yes. He asked me that.

Yoda: Important, questions are.

Rey: [sarcastically] Thanks.

[pause]

Rey: He also told me his theory about the prophecy. But it can't be me, can it? My parents may not have been much, but I still had them. They were still somebody.

Yoda: Somebody, yes. But had them you did not.

Rey: So it might be on me to “bring balance to the force”.

Yoda: Perhaps.

Rey: Then I *need* to know what that means. Vagueness is fine for everyone else, but if I'm going to *do* it, then I *need* to understand. Balance in the prophecy! Balance in those mosaics back at the temple! Should I be seeking out the dark side half the time?

Yoda: Read you the parables of Master Li?

Rey: Huh? Some of them. The language was difficult.

Yoda: Fifty-fifth parable, yes, balance concerns

Rey pulls out one of the Jedi temple books, flips open to a bookmark, flips some more, and reads...

Rey: Parable Fifty Five. There was once a man who was so... dedicated to balance that he... killed... every other person he met... thus achieving... perfect balance... between murder and non-murder. In his... pride... he declared himself... the most righteous, for he alone... had the strength to embrace perfect balance. [shoves book away] That's ridiculous. [pause] I mean, I see the point, but it's still unhelpful.

Yoda: Answers I have not. Meditate you must. In the force, answers are.

Unimportant scenes show the passage of time. Resolve any dangling plot threads I forgot about.

Finn and Poe meet to discuss Rey's absence. It's been several days and she hasn't left her quarters. Poe thinks she's eating, albeit not much, but he isn't sure.

We see Rey sitting on a cushion meditating. Slowly, we zoom in on her face, then fade partially to white. The bare outline of her face is floating over a sea of white.

The force theme plays, stronger and richer than we've heard it before.

Images of joy, of love, of beauty, of *life* come and go within the white space.

After a time the images fade, as does the whiteness, and we're looking at Rey's face again. There are tears running down it.

Rey: Wait! Come back! I love you! And I still don't understand.

Yoda: [manifesting] Yes you do

Rey: [wipes tears, opens eyes] Yes, I do

Rey walks into Kylo Ren's thrown room with a hundred or so stormtroopers at her back.

Rey: Phasma-28 is dead. Her superweapon is destroyed. I am here to return your soldiers to you.

Kylo: Excellent. Soldiers? Kill her.

A few stormtroopers start to raise their blasters.

Rey: [calmly] Stand down

The stormtroopers lower their blaster.

Kylo: What? Why? How?

Rey: Because I am the superior Sith.

Kylo: What?

Rey: “Passion and will,” that's what you said, isn't it? And fixing the world. Not accepting its brokenness, but making it do what you want. Well what I want is everything worth wanting. And I want it more than you want whatever it is you want.

Kylo: You claim to be a Sith? To have embraced the dark side?

Rey: No. I am a true Jedi, like in the days of old. Passion yet peace. The Sith are passion unconstrained, and the fallen Jedi are peace grown cancerous. This is the balance. And in service of the light, I am stronger than either in their own specialties. I have renounced the dark altogether and I do not miss it in the slightest.

Kylo: What, then, is the dark side of the force?

Rey: Anything which is not the light.

Kylo: And what is the light?

Rey: Joy. Love. Life. I don't think it can be contained in words. But it can be experienced. And if you'd seen it as I have, you would love it as I do.

Kylo: You can't expect me to believe that.

Rey: Not without proof. And I know what kind of proof you can believe.

Rey extends a hand and Kylo's lightsaber flies into it. She stares at it and we zoom in through the handle, into the electronics, into the main crystal, into it's molecular matrix. There's a change. We cut back to normal-space and Rey ignites the lightsaber. The blade is blue and solid. The crossguard remains red and erratic. She raises it challengingly.

Kylo extends a hand to the side. A double-ended lightsaber flies to him and he activates it.

Kylo: I made this in case I needed to fight two enemies at once. It seems you qualify.

Rey: I'm honored.

They fight. There's a lot of force pushing amidst the lightsaber swinging. Both are full of energy, but Rey is *also* precise and controlled.

At one point, Kylo throws Rey into a group of stormtroopers. Rey force-pushes them to safety and lands on the floor, rolling.

Eventually, Rey chops through Kylo's lightsaber handle, which explodes. It's a small explosion, leaving him mildly singed, and dangerously disarmed.

Rey points her lightsaber at his neck, and stares.

Kylo drops to one knee and lowers his head.

Kylo: I beg you to teach me, master.

Rey turns off the lightsaber and kneels across from him.

Rey: Look at me. [he does] I will teach you what I can. And then we will learn the rest, together.

Rey is sitting at the head of a conference table, with Kylo Ren at her right. The table is filled with politicians, generals and Captains Phasma.

Over the center of the table floats two holographic copies of a text, one mirror inverted. Rey taps on a tablet and the text alters. It's in galactic basic, so the audience is conveniently unable to read it.

Rey: Does that cover everything? [silence] Then I believe we have a way forward. A toast [waves hand, goblets fly to everyone] to the new galactic order!

Everyone: To the new galactic order!

Zoom out to reveal the conference is happening on Coruscant. Then further out to show the entire galaxy. Fade to white.