Notes Toward an 'Episode X'
The next chapter of the Skywalker saga is beginning to take shape—but where else can it go beyond the safe pair of hands it's been entrusted to?
After months of speculation, this weekend trade reporting confirmed that Lucasfilm has made its most significant step forward in deciding the future of the Star Wars franchise: tapping Jon Watts to direct the first film in a new trilogy overseen by Simon Kinberg, widely assumed to be the next three episodes of the mainline "Skywalker Saga" films.
It's a big step for a studio that has, for the most part, spent the past 7 years since The Rise of Skywalker taking little steps (cinematically speaking, of course—Star Wars has undergone a much bolder vision of itself in fits and starts on Disney+, although given its sibling in Marvel is beginning to retreat from the efforts there, how much longer the galaxy far, far away will keep experimenting with streaming TV remains to be seen).
After years of false starts and spinning up projects that never went beyond early development, we're starting to see some fruits of labor emerge, between the release of The Mandalorian and Grogu this year—perhaps an expectedly disappointing endcap to the diminishing returns of that corner of the Star Wars galaxy—and next year's release of Starfighter, the first Star Wars project in earnest to pick up on the status quo of the galaxy after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. A new trilogy of films that builds upon what is established there could finally see Star Wars look forward, instead of spending so much time looking back.
But with that potential boldness already comes a few hints of familiarity. We've known that Kinberg is working on a trilogy of Star Wars films since 2024, but it's hardly his first Star Wars project, having penned multiple episodes of Rebels. In Watts, Lucasfilm has a director that both it—thanks to his work on Skeleton Crew—and Disney at large—thanks to his trilogy of MCU Spider-Man films—can trust to deliver a reliable movie.
That's not stopped the general audience from doubting the duo, of course. Watts' Spider-Man films have their detractors (myself included), and Kinberg is perhaps also as infamously known for managing to butcher not one, but two cinematic adaptations of the Dark Phoenix Saga in Fox's X-Men movieverse. But I'd argue that, even with that wariness, Star Wars is now in a position to match these relatively safe choices in writing and directing with an opportunity to go much, much further than it did with the sequel trilogy.