What Colin Trevorrow's 'Episode IX' Could Have Looked Like
Like most of Disney’s Star Wars movies, the production of Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker went through a lot of drama. At D23 in August of 2015, Disney presented Colin Trevorrow (who back in 2012 had been rumored to head the production of Episode VII) as the director for the then untitled Episode IX. He had this role for a little over two years until September of 2017, when he got fired. As usual, there was no official reason given for this move, but there were whispers of Trevorrow’s ego getting way too big after the success of Jurassic World and that he was not an easy man to work with.
Later, J.J. Abrams and Chris Terrio were brought onboard. Abrams not only returned to the director’s chair but also co-wrote the screenplay for the final movie of the Skywalker saga. When it came out in December of 2019. The Rise of Skywalker was neither the critical nor the commercial success that Disney and Lucasfilm had hoped for. While the acting and the special effects were top notch, many fans criticized the rather convoluted plot, the surprise return of Palpatine as the main villain, and the reveal of Rey’s lineage.
So questions arose about what Episode IX might have been if Trevorrow had not fallen from grace of the mouse house. An answer to that question presented itself in January of 2020 when an early draft of a script for Episode IX called Duel of the Fates (most probably only a working title) suddenly appeared on Reddit, written by Trevorrow and Derek Conolly. The script was written before Carrie Fisher’s passing, so even if Trevorrow had stayed on the project, there would have been a lot of changes until the final film.
Only a few days later, quite a number of pre-production concept art leaked out there as well. The script and concept art complemented each other perfectly, and Trevorrow later more or less confirmed that the script was actually his and that of Conolly.
Although both Abrams and Terrio had said that they started writing Episode IX more or less from scratch when they took over, there are quite a few elements for Trevorrow’s script that made it into the final film, which is probably the reason why both Trevorrow and Conolly got writing credits for The Rise of Skywalker: the Knights of Ren have a relatively big part in Duel of The Fates, Rey is also using a sailboat, an alien that helps the Resistance is decapitated, Rey uses Force lighting, Lando (who is first reluctant to help the rebels) swashes in at the end with a big armada, Ben Skywalker sees a vision of his dead father and instead of a wayfinder he discovers a Sith holocron on Mustafar at the beginning, to name only a few similarities between the script and the final movie.
But of course, there are also major differences between TROS and DOTF: for example, there is no Palpatine in Trevorrow’s script, no Exegol (but another very mystic “planet” instead), no Last Order, and no ruins of the second Death Star.
Like with its predecessors Marvel had planned to release a comic adaptation of The Rise of Skywalker, but in May of 2020, when they resumed their production (after a forced COVID-related break) no new release date for the Episode IX adaptation was given, and it now seems doubtful that the 5-issue miniseries will ever come out. But there is a graphic novel of TROS from IDW that was released in March 2021.
But another thing we did get is an unofficial comic adaptation of Duel of The Fates, thanks to Andrew Winegarner, an artist and teacher from California who took on the task of creating a comic based on the leaked script and the concept art. By the time of writing this article, the first 6 of the 7 issues are published on Winegarner’s homepage, although not all of the panels are colored yet. Winegarner says that he wasn’t a big fan of TROS and started drawing his favorite scenes from DOTF in March and April of 2020, until he decided to go all in and do a complete adaptation of the full script.
Each of the 6 issues that have been published so far consist of around 25 pages, and Winegarner captures both the essence of the story and the looks of the characters, the aliens, and the ships with great talent. Many things are very Star Wars-y and really flow well. Other things (like the sudden uprising of the people of Coruscant) seem a bit rushed. However, this is not the fault of Winegarner, but rather the source from which he worked.
He dreams of Marvel picking up his work and publishing it as a kind of Infinities version of Episode IX. Even if this never happens, it is still great to see what Star Wars: Episode IX would have looked like if Trevorrow had gotten the chance to complete his mission.
Source(s): Star Wars News Net, Andrew Winegarner’s homepage