If there’s one thing I really dislike about the Star Wars franchise right now, it’s how much information they intentionally leave out of the movies. Why? So you’re forced to go out and buy novelizations, comics, video games, whatever, that fills in the blanks. The Rise of Skywalker is lousy with such things, with two major events that bookend the film left ambiguous for no good reason. And sure enough, a companion book has info about Kylo Ren and Lando Calrissian that damn well should’ve been put into the movie.
According to EW, the Rise of Skywalker Visual Dictionary fills in the blanks on Kylo Ren’s whereabouts in the beginning of the film, and later a strange conversation between Lando and new character, Jannah, who is played by Naomie Ackie.
Obviously, there be spoilers coming up. It’s right in the headline, folks.
So the movie begins with Kylo Ren on a desolate planet slicing his way through a bunch of hooded figures. As part of this video game-esque plot, Ren is there to find the mysterious Sith wayfinder, an item that will lead to the Sith homeworld of Exegol. But we’re never told what planet Ren is on in the first place. Well, it turns out he’s on Mustafar, the same volcano planet where Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi had their fateful battle in Revenge of the Sith. Considering what happened there, it’s no wonder that place has special significance to the sith. Furthermore, the wayfinder was actually located within Fortress Vader, glimpsed in Rogue One when Orson Crennic met Vader there.
Later on, there’s a very strange conversation that takes place between Lando Calrissian and Jannah, a resistance fighter who played a crucial role in the final battle. It pops up at such a random moment at the end of the movie, and is played in such a way that I’m guessing everybody on the planet just assumed Jannah was Lando’s daughter. Hey, everybody seems to be related to somebody important in Star Wars, right? That’s it’s thing. Well, those people are probably right. Jannah tells Lando that she doesn’t know where she’s from, and that she was kidnapped at a young age to serve in the First Order. Here are the details added by the book:
“When peace reigned, [Lando] attempted to start a family, but tragedy struck and his infant daughter vanished. It was only later that it became clear who the culprits behind the abduction were: the First Order, building their fighting forces but also specifically striking out at the old Alliance leadership.
So yeah, she’s totally Lando’s kid. You can’t be a smooth-talker like him and not have a few littlun’s running around the galaxy. But come on, these details couldn’t have been in the movie? I want to call it laziness but it’s coordinated to be this way, and that’s frustrating.
