Star Wars Episodes 10 to 12 pitch: Rey's Jedi Order on trial

What if the next Star Wars trilogy opens with somebody begging Rey for help, and by the end of the movie that same person wishes they'd never met a Jedi? That's my pitch for movies 10, 11 and 12. Rey builds a new Jedi Order and the galaxy looks at it and asks who wanted these people back. I'll lay out all three films. But by the end, I'll admit this isn't the trilogy I want.

Everybody is asking whether Daisy Ridley is coming back as Rey after The Rise of Skywalker (2019). My answer is yes. What I care about more is what happens when she does. I also think that by the third movie, the most important Jedi influence might be Finn. I know that sounds like an eye roll, but hear me out.

Jon Watts is reportedly attached to direct Simon Kinberg's Star Wars trilogy

A September trade report says Jon Watts is attached to direct the first movie in Simon Kinberg's new Star Wars trilogy. Watts directed the Tom Holland Spider-Man trilogy and co-created Skeleton Crew. There's been conflicting reporting about whether this trilogy continues the Skywalker saga or starts a new one. The reporting also conflicts on how Rey fits into those three movies.

Lucasfilm did officially announce a separate film about Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order after The Rise of Skywalker. I'm pretty sure that one's gone. So from here on, this is my theory and the story I'd want from 10, 11 and 12. I'm assuming Rey is involved but isn't the main character. The Skywalker saga will never die, so we might as well have some fun with it.

Movie one opens on a freight ship and a world being robbed

I'd open on a small freight ship coming in over a world that's getting robbed blind. Every time a shipment of food or medicine arrives, somebody with a bigger ship takes their cut. The people there have sent out a message asking for help, and nobody's coming. Then a young mechanic on that freight ship does something with the Force in front of the whole crew.

Maybe she keeps a cargo door from crushing somebody. Maybe she has no idea how she did it. By the time she gets home, word of what she did has already spread, if that's even a thing in the Star Wars galaxy. That's how Rey finds her. I'd let us meet Rey through this girl's eyes. To her, Rey Skywalker is a person who helped beat the people who used to run the galaxy.

So when Rey says, "I can teach you. I'm Rey Skywalker," the girl hears, "I can teach you how to save your home."

Rey's new Jedi Order is six people and a broken building

Rey brings her in, and we find out the new Jedi Order is about six people deep. They're trying to make a busted old building livable. Somebody's cooking. Somebody's arguing about who gets the only working training droid. Rey is teaching a lesson she practiced the night before. She's still figuring out how to explain what the Force feels like, because she got new powers every five minutes in the movies.

Give me 20 minutes with those people and let me like them before you put a lightsaber through a wall.

Why Skeleton Crew points to how Jon Watts could tell this story

I think this is where you connect Jon Watts. Think about Skeleton Crew. Those kids had a very specific problem: they wanted to get home. That gave the whole adventure a reason to keep moving. So maybe Rey's first student gets the same clarity. She wants to learn enough to go back and help the people she left behind.

Then one day she gets a call from home and decides she's done waiting. She steals a ship, takes another student with her, and goes after the people shaking down those supply runs. We would root for her. She gets the medicine through. Her family sees her step off the ship and realizes what she's become. For about 30 seconds, she gets to live in the moment she's been dreaming about.

The rescue becomes an act of war and Rey has to answer for it

Then we find out the ship she destroyed was on loan from a neighboring government. That government shuts down the entire route and calls the attack an act of war. Suddenly ten other worlds are asking whether the Jedi are sending armed people across their borders. Rey has to stand in front of all of them and answer for something she never ordered.

Maybe that's the end of the movie. I don't know. We've had the Empire and we've had the First Order. I don't know what this next enemy is going to be called. The girl asks Rey if she should have stayed at the temple and let those people die. Rey doesn't have the right answer. We sit in that silence, because we watched the rescue and we know exactly why the kid did it.

Movie two gives Rey a coalition deal that looks good at first

In movie two, Rey is the main person. Somebody comes to her with a deal. A coalition of worlds will reopen those trade routes and give the Jedi a safe place to train. In exchange, they want Jedi assigned to their fleets as protectors.

Here's how you sell that to Rey. Put her on one of those ships for the first mission. Let her stop a raid. Let her watch those supplies make it to families who need them. Let her feel good about it and come out thinking, "Okay, this is good." Then a world votes to leave the coalition. The next assignment is to hold its port until the coalition can install a new governor.

The official who offered Rey the deal asks her, very calmly, why the people who paid for those ships should have to ask a Jedi for permission to use them.

The coalition official could be a villain Rey would have liked

Maybe that guy is the villain. Maybe we give him a son who died waiting for help during the First Order years. Let him point at every world he's fed and every pirate he's run off. He can do all that and still be the guy who puts a fleet in orbit over a planet that told him no.

You'd get a great scene out of Rey realizing she would have liked him if she'd met him a year earlier. It would have a Ben Solo vibe to it.

Finn returns helping former First Order troopers

Then you bring in Finn. Imagine he's spent these years helping people get out of former First Order units. I think we can all agree that would be cool. He knows which units were taking his kids. He knows some of them still get called by their old numbers, because those are the only names they ever had.

Rey asks him to come give her students a little pep talk. He gets there and realizes some of these kids think the price of having a bed, a family and a place to belong is going wherever the Order sends them. I want Finn to ask Rey one question: "If one of them wants to leave tomorrow, where do they go?"

Rey would let them leave. Of course she would. It's Rey. But Finn is asking whether they have somewhere to go. That could open up a role for him. I thought about a big reveal where he finally turns on a lightsaber, but I'm not sure that's right. Do we want him to be Force sensitive, or to open up as a Jedi in this movie or this trilogy? We could let him be the guy who goes and finds that somewhere: getting people jobs on ships, finding their families, using the Force without putting on robes. I don't know.

Rey's first student turns to the coalition at the end of movie two

By the end of movie two, I'd have that first student side with the coalition. That's the turn to the dark side. She remembers what happened when she tried to save her home with one stolen ship. Now somebody's offering her a whole fleet and saying she can make sure it never happens again.

We give her three other students who go with her, a small team turning into the villains. Let Rey watch them pack up. That would hurt a lot more than finding out one of them secretly had a red lightsaber under the bed. Though we'll probably go with the red lightsaber.

Movie three sends the student home in uniform

The third movie is part satire, part not. You bring us right back to that freight route. The coalition is holding the student's home world in the name of protecting it. She goes home in a uniform, and the crew from the opening scene won't let her board their ship. They know her and they love her. They're also looking at the fleet behind her and wondering if she's about to make them give up their cargo. So now she has to ask Rey for help.

The easy version is that Rey shows up with a bigger fleet and wins. I'd give that win to the old freight crew. They know the route better than anybody. Finn gets defectors aboard, former First Order troopers who know how to get civilians through the blockade. The student has to turn her own command ship long enough to let them pass. Rey takes the fight to the people coming after her so the kid has time to do it.

The ending gives Rey's student a choice

Then you do one quiet scene at the end. The student goes to Rey and asks if she can come back into the Jedi Order. Rey asks whether she wants to. For the first time in three movies, this kid can think about the question. Her home has a way to feed itself. She has people who take care of her. She can go back to working on a ship if she wants. If she wants to pick up a lightsaber, she can do that too. She gets to choose.

That's where I'd leave Rey, too. She gets to build something. She gets to be proud of the people she trained. And some of those people go off and do things she would never have thought to teach them.

Why I don't want this Rey trilogy

We all think we're going to get Rey in a mentor role. I think Finn is probably coming back, and Poe is probably coming back. We're about to trudge forward in the Skywalker saga. They say they won't connect Starfighter, but I think they're going to connect Starfighter. It's all going to connect if this ends up being true.

I like Daisy Ridley, and I like Rey as a character. I think she suffered from bad writing and from people who got scared and flipped a story on its head when they shouldn't have. But franchise fatigue is real. Do I want what I just pitched? No, I do not. I don't want the second order, the new world order, whatever it ends up being called.

If Rey is in these movies, it needs to be in a passive mentor role where she is not the primary focus. We need new characters and new stuff. I know we're going to get villains, Sith and lightsaber fights. It's Star Wars. But if this is the path they've chosen, and it looks like it is, their back is against the wall. The Skywalker saga is a big vacuum, and it pulls you in whether you like it or not.