Spoilers What I would do in Star Wars Ep IX (with some scenes described in prose - hence fanfic)

[Andy Hong]

There's going to be an awful lot of re-interpreting and ret-conning of Ep VIII.

1. I suggest a time skip of 1 year between VIII and IX.
2. The New Republic navy was not completely destroyed at Hosnian. So I will disregard/reinterpret the "only the Resistance stands between the First Order and total victory" bit from the Ep VIII opening crawl. Like, having a briefing scene where new recruits to the New Republic navy get brought up to speed (Anyone who played Star Wars Rebellion (known as Star Wars Supremacy in the UK) might find it a bit familiar!

"Hello! I am C3PO and this is R2-D2. We have prepared a report on the recent and current state of the galaxy. Following the attack on the Hosnian system, the Republic lost almost all of its political and military leadership, including the Senate, the Fleet Headquarters and the Fleet Mobile Starbase. In addition, almost the entire Home Fleet was destroyed, comprising around 25% of the New Republic Navy. Worse, because the Home Fleet was our largest and most powerful fleet, and was mostly comprised of our best ships and crews, we actually lost some 50% of our military strength.
"If that was not bad enough, immediately after the attack on Hosnian, and with our forces and command in disarray, the First Order launched an all-out assault on many Rim Worlds. Almost all of the Republic's Border and Rim fleets were attacked. A few were destroyed outright and most forced to retreat with heavy casualties. A number of worlds were blockaded. Some were subjected to a ground invasion or were simply occupied.
"Fortunately, ships from other Republic fleets, such as the Coruscant Defence Fleet and Correlian Defence Fleet, were able to provide reinforcements to stabilise the situation. All Republic shipyards are now working at full capacity, and Mon Calamari is converting as many of their liners to warships as fast as they can.
"Over the past year, the situation has ground into a bloody stalemate, with the New Republic's numerical superiority offset by the need to defend more territory".

3: Hyperspace ramming only works when going into Hyperspace from normal space. Making it harder to use because you both have to be in normal space first, but must be still in normal space or transitioning from normal to hyperspace to have a physical impact. If you are in Hyperspace you can't collide with anything in normal space.

4: Why is Snoke so powerful? Because he's a dual-side force user (he can use both the light and dark side). He doesn't fall into the categories of Jedi, Sith, Grey Jedi or Dark Jedi. His acts would generally be considered evil, but he sees himself as at least partially beyond "simple terms of good and evil".

5: Snoke's origin? I would have him being originally Grand Vizier Sate Pestage, the person who actually ran the Empire while Emperor Palpatine was busy focusing on the Force, and one of the few who truly knew the Emperor and was trusted by him. Palpatine would have considered Sate too important to lose, and maybe would have experimented with making a clone. Palpatine being Palpatine, he would have conducted (no doubt horrific) experiments, both to learn how to transfer a life force/spirit from one body to another (think Bevel Lemelisk, who Palpatine kept torturing and killing over and over in this way), and maybe to imbue a body with force powers. SO Snoke is a cloned body containing the transferred spirit of Grand Vizier Sate Pestage, imbued with some Force powers. HOWEVER.....this would be partially unexplained - even Snoke and Palpatine did not expect Snoke to have THIS much Force power. This would explain how Snoke knows how to run an empire - because he literally did that as Grand Vizier.

6: Snoke's aims? Use Starkiller to decapitate the New Republic, and destroy its intelligensia (political and military leadership, but also its other elite thinkers and leaders - those who would literally lead any resistance to Snoke). If Starkiller was not destroyed, also use it to threaten anyone else. With the intelligensia out of the way, Snoke could rebuild the New Republic Navy into the force he needed to destroy the "threat of beyond the Rim" that occupied Snoke and Palpatine's thoughts. As for why he didn't try convincing others of this threat, Snoke seems to have felt or intuited that this was not worth his time or effort or wouldn't work, and that it would be easier to destroy and rebuild rather than convert what was already there.

(To be continued).

 

[Andy Hong]

7: Why is Rey so powerful/overpowered? Because she is also a dual-side force user (this would jive well with how Luke is so shocked that she just dives in to the dark side (hole?) on Ahch-To. ALSO she is being subtly manipulated by Snoke, who has the power to corrupt or turn people's very instincts against themselves, as well as boost Force powers or help their instincts should he choose. So how does Rey become so strong in the Force and with a lightsaber? Some natural talent, but mostly because Snoke is secretly and subtly boosting her powers. Snoke has used this on both Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker (he's that powerful/overpowered). Kylo apparently can't use 2 sides of the Force at once. Rey appears to have just been born with amazing Force powers (there doesn't appear to be any Force power lineage in her ancestry).

8: It's not clear if Snoke can just use both light and dark side powers, or if he corrupted part of the light side.

9: How'd Snoke turn Ben Solo/Kylo Ren? First subtly affecting his instincts, then tell him of the threat from beyond the Rim, and also telling him everything and everyone would be destroyed by that threat, unless he sacrificed everything (including parents) to commit to fighting that threat, and also joining the dark side. Also, by telling him that Luke would try to kill him in his sleep. And making Luke look more terrifying at that moment.

10: Why is Luke's character nothing like the other films? Because Snoke was subtly affecting HIM. First convincing him to go to Ben's tent, then affecting the results of the Force-read/sense Luke did, then pushing Luke to activate the lightsaber and to consider killing Ben. Then, later, when Luke tried to go to Ahch-To to rest, regroup and think and find himself and figure out what went wrong, Snoke kept at it, causing Luke to become more disillusioned and disheartened and eventually Luke cut himself off from the Force.

11: What was supposed to happen in the throne room? What did happen was Snoke gets cut in half (because he was too over-confident, although not perhaps without good reason).
A: Kylo would successfully kill Rey, and Snoke would shrug his shoulders and keep training Kylo.
B: At the last moment, in desperation Rey would access her true powers (light and dark side) and blast Kylo with Force energy, killing him, and leaving her vulnerable to being recruited by Snoke as his new apprentice (this might not happen instantly - might take some days or weeks or months to wear her down).

12: Knights of Ren: maybe either
A: Only Kylo survives, because Snoke can't be bothered to train more than one apprentice, and so after initial training her declared survival of the fittest, last man standing.
B: Half of the original Knights survive, because (as what happened to Kir Kanos when he became a Royal Imperial Guardsman) the final test requires that you fight another trainee to the death.

13: Rey's parents - Kylo is wrong or mistaken or lying. They aren't scrap dealers who sold her for drinking money. Although that is probably the story they told the person who they gave/sold their daughter to, because it was too unsafe to keep her with them (maybe they discovered she had Force powers (maybe they used a Force detector? Maybe it contains midichorians, which I will define ONLY as Force sensitive bacteria which react when near Force sensitives)) and they didn't want her to end up a Jedi or a Sith/hunted by people who hated force users?). I actually don't know who they are, but I would make it so Rey's fate has been intertwined with the Skywalker family for longer than she realises, because one of Rey's grandmother's is Sabé (I always did wonder why the writers didn't use the fact that Daisy looks like Keira as a plot point).

14: Opening scene (effectively a better version of the Ep VIII island scene)
Rey shivered from cold and anxiety as she approached the man. He turned around. Luke Skywalker. He seemed more tired and haggard than she'd been expecting? She held out the lightsaber. Luke took it into his mechanical hand, the fake skin long gone. He stared at it. If anything, it seemed to make him even more old and melancholy. With a sigh, he lets the lightsaber fall from his grasp.

Rey gasps and tries to reach out with the Force to grab the lightsaber. But nothing's happening? She can only watch in horror as the treasured hierloom smashes into the rocky ground and breaks into a thousand pieces. For a few seconds she is too stunned to look up, but when she does she suddenly realises she's no longer on Ahch-to?! The cool breeze and birdsong of the wind-swept island has been replaced by the heat and roar of a hellish landscape, full of volcanoes and lava! (note: it's Mustafar). Luke is nowhere to be seen.

Suddenly, a blue lightsaber activates behind her! With a gasp, she whirls round, but trips on a rock and falls on her back! She looks in shocked surprise at the newcomer. It's Obi-Wan Kenobi! He looks down at her, his face stern, almost disapproving. "She knows so much.". Then, a red lightsaber activates off to her other side! Her head snaps in that direction! It's Anakin Skywalker (in his Revenge of the Sith darker clothed clothing)! He also looks down at her, face stern, but voice more negative, almost sneering "She knows nothing!". Obi-Wan and Anakin start alternating speaking.

"Jedi"
"Sith"

Rey keeps snapping her head from side to side, looking at each of them.

"Grey Jedi"
"Dark Jedi"

Suddenly, Luke appears from nowhere in-between the two of them. He activates his green lightsaber, and says "It is time for the Jedi to end". Rey can only look in horrified shocked surprise.....

With a gasp, Rey's eyes flick open! Slowly, she sits up. Eventually, she gets her bearings and calms down, her breathing returning to normal. It was just a nightmare. Hopefully. She's in her quarters on a ship, and it's the middle of the night. She has a few more hours until she has to wake up. And prepare to attend General Leia's funeral.

15: Leia: She dies prior to the events of this film. Maybe we can do something like my other post https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/my-version-of-the-leia-scene-in-tlj-potential-spoiler.292318/ except she does not survive at the end of it.

 

[Andy Hong]

16: What happened when Snoke got bisected? SPOILERS He quickly shoved his Force spirit (not Force ghost) into Kylo Ren, so it would not become one with the Force. Eventually, between VIII and IX Snoke figures out how to force Kylo to (if necessary unwillingly, such as through plenty of Force lightning) do what Snoke wants to. Snoke is also busy growing a clone body for himself to use. Or he already had one but was too far away from it to use it/chose not to use it.

17: Finn: he becomes a ground force commander. He gets another solo confrontation with Phasma.

18: Captain Phasma: She survives the plunge into the fire. However, her helmet was cracked, so she does suffer a scar line down her face (don't reveal that until later). Not sure if she has a mechanical eye replacement or not (if she managed to close her eyes in time, then the eye is fine but the skin above and around it is scarred). To show her as a bad-ass, she should have a scene where her force and position gets attacked and overrun by a mass Republic attack. She orders the rest of her forces to withdraw, and at the end of it, with her completely surrounded and about to be captured, she orders an artillery strike or orbital bombardment on her own position. She survives, the Republic troops all die.

19: Finn/Phasma confrontation (not sure what location this should take place in?)/Both are wearing some sort of armour and helmet.

Both are safely behind cover. Phasma rages at Finn "TRAITOR! You forced me to betray the First Order! To help you destroy Starkiller Base!". To which Finn responds "So?!" or "And?!" (since he doesn't see any problem with destroying Starkiller).

(After some shooting and fighting, during which they lose their guns but grab Z6 riot control batons, and their helmets get damaged).

Both Finn and Phasma take off their badly damaged helmets, revealing a nasty line of a scar on Phasma. They glare at each other in hatred. She snarls "You ungrateful boy! We fed you, clothed you, trained you, from nothing, and this is how you repay us?!" (She's maybe got half a point?). Finn angrily retorts back, yelling "You took me from my family! Trained me and forced me to kill! YOU STOLE MY CHILDHOOD!!". They then both yell at the other "I HATE YOU!!" and, raging in anger, run towards each other and smash their riot batons against the other's, sparks flying.

(After some brutal melee combat, they end up rolling down somewhere, losing their batons. They manage to each snatch a blaster rifle from the ground, but before they can aim their weapon at the other, both grab the other's weapon by the barrel! They are now locked in a deadly standing stalement)

Phasma and Finn are both straining hard, arms trying to bring their gun to bear whilst also trying to keep the other's away from them. Phasma, teeth gritted, looks into Finn's eyes. "At this range, with that weapon, your armour won't save you....". Slowly, equally gritted and defiant, Finn replies "Neither will yours....". She cries out in effort, straining with every sinew. So does Finn. Months of fighting and training and hatred have all come down to this. It's all or nothing. Finn realises to his mounting horror than his left arm is weaker than Phasma's right. Phasma allows herself a small smile - a few more seconds and she will have her kill shot. Finn lets out a final desperate "GRRAHH!" of effort!

A BLASTER SHOT RINGS OUT.

A moment passes as both Phasma and Finn have a shocked expression on their faces. Then Finn's face creases up in pain as he cries out "AAAHHHH!". Dropping his rifle, he drops to his knees and clutches his left side with both hands, smoke wisping from his wound near his ribs, where the blaster bolt punched through his armour. Phasma, still standing and holding her rifle, lets her arms drop to her sides and she smiles a small cruel and triumphant smile, victorious....

.....and then her face falls. Something is wrong! Her mind quickly flashes back and replays what just happened. She shot Finn, yes, when he lost strength and stopped pushing against her rifle.... Then she realises to her horror that Finn did that deliberately. Far too late, she realises what happened. Finn pulled her rifle to his ribs....and used that move and the rifle as leverage to get his rifle into a kill shot position, trading a serious injury for a fatal one. IT WAS ACTUALLY 2 BLASTER SHOTS SIMULTANEOUSLY. She looks down and realises there is a blaster bolt mark punched through near the middle of her chest armour. The physical pain and the pain of defeat (and maybe a little twisted bit of pride?) cause a tear to falls from each of her eyes. Quietly, she says "We....trained you too well...." And with that, Phasma falls.

With a triumphant look, Finn yells "Yeah!" before crying out in pain from his ribs. For a few seconds, he looks elated. But quickly, this fades and is replaced by emptiness and sadness. Partially because, in a twisted way, she was the mother who raised him, and for a time was the only family he ever knew. And partially because, with the object of his hate and vengeance gone, what was he supposed to do now? The first aid team were surprised to find Finn tightly cradling Phasma, missing her terribly and weeping bitterly.