Jon Watts to Direct New Skywalker Trilogy, and That's the Problem

Lucasfilm has hired Jon Watts to direct the first instalment of a new trilogy continuing the Skywalker saga, Deadline reported this week. Simon Kinberg will write it, and Daisy Ridley is reportedly being eyed to return as Rey. The films have not yet been greenlit.

That is the whole story — and, for this franchise, the whole problem.

Who are the Skywalkers?

They are the family that has moulded the entire Star Wars galaxy in their image. Nobody can really imagine the long-running space opera without them. For nearly half a century they have:

• blown up Death Stars and built Death Stars;
• destroyed Jedi orders and rebuilt Jedi orders;
• fallen to the dark side and risen from it;
• died heroically and come back as ghosts.

The saga is an almost endless familial battle between good and evil, featuring absent fathers, secret siblings, murdered mentors, wayward nephews and surprise grandfathers.

Star Wars has occasionally attempted to escape them. It has made films and TV shows about stolen Death Star plans, bounty hunters, smugglers and rebels from entirely different corners of the galaxy. Ryan Gosling will soon appear in a Star Wars movie that, as far as we know, has absolutely nothing to do with them.

But the Skywalkers have never really gone away. Now they are back — possibly, the report suggests, because Disney has run out of ideas for how to take the franchise forward without them.

Why Jon Watts?

Watts does seem an inspired choice, and the reason is pointed. He previously oversaw Spider-Man: No Way Home, a film built around the idea that nobody in a long-running franchise needs to remain dead.

There are precious few other details beyond his hiring. What exists instead is a pattern: a clan that has already saved and destroyed the galaxy several times over, returning to do it again.

Reports of a new trilogy about that family leave you wishing for a newer world. Until the films are greenlit, that wish remains the only certain thing in a galaxy Disney keeps refurbishing from its own attic.