Awesome / The Rise of Skywalker

"There are more of us, Poe."

WARNING: Per wiki policy, all spoilers are unmarked on Awesome Moments pages.

Say what you want about this film, but there are some events that qualify as Moments of Awesome, which makes it the conclusion of the Skywalker Saga.

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Trailers

• First trailer:
  • Rey staring down a TIE Interceptor on foot, drawing her lightsaber (which she apparently rebuilt herself), then calmly backflipping onto it. Even more awesome when it's implied that the pilot is none other than Kylo Ren.
  • The gang's all back together, setting forth into a strange world where at least part of the Second Death Star has crash-landed.
• Luke's presence is felt through his voice-over, suggesting that a little thing like the passing of his physical body isn't going to stop his spirit from lending aid.
  • The music for the trailer launches into an epic rendition of John Williams's "Princess Leia's Theme".
  • Right at the end, quick enough that you might have missed it... His Royal Wrinkliness is back!
  • Above levity aside, it should be stated that Emperor Palpatine's presence in this film cements one critical truth: After over 40 years of material, in film, television, books, and everything with various stories spanning centuries, there is and always will be one Big Bad of Star Wars. Not Darth Vader, not Kylo Ren, not Supreme Leader Snoke, not Grand Moff Tarkin, not Director Krennic, not Count Dooku or General Grievous, not Darth Maul or Nute Gunray, not Dryden Vos, not Darth Revan, not Vitiate/Valkorion, not Vaylin, not Darth Bane, not Ysanne Isard, not the Yuuzhan Vong, not Abeloth, not Darth Krayt, not the Grand Inquisitor and not even Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the beginning, there was Senator Sheev Palpatine. At the center, there was Darth Sidious. And at the end of everything there is the Emperor. When it comes to Star Wars, As Long as There Is Evil, there is Palpatine.
  • A gigantic fleet of Star Destroyers, complete with a design almost identical to the Imperial-Is that come straight from the time of the Empire.
• From the final trailer:
  • Rey and Kylo destroying a plinth with Darth Vader's helmet on it.
  • Rey fighting Kylo on the ruins of the second Death Star.
    • And later Finn joins the fight. He's on a slippery ruin in the middle of a storm, going up against a man who nearly killed him, but he won't abandon Rey.
  • Rey standing in front of a hooded figure heavily implied to be Palpatine.
  • The action hero shot of Finn, Poe, and Chewie running down the halls of what looks like a Star Destroyer, mowing down Stormtroopers left and right, as the theme swells to a heroic, bombastic crescendo.
  • THE SAGA WILL END, THE STORY LIVES FOREVER.
  • The Millennium Falcon leading a MASSIVE Resistance fleet in a Call-Back to the space battle over Endor in Return of the Jedi filled with a Continuity Cavalcade of ships from all over the franchise (including Rogue One, Rebels, The Clone Wars, the upcoming The Mandalorian and so on).
    • And in the same vein, that fleet is going up against what is possibly the single largest fleet of Star Destroyers seen in the whole franchise. Looks like the First Order has pulled out all of the stops.
    • It's also worth noting that the last time we saw the Resistance, their numbers were so small that they could all fit into the Millennium Falcon without any problem, and it's been confirmed that The Rise of Skywalker is set merely a year after those events. Yet in that span of time, the Resistance has been able to rebuild their numbers to an almost impossible extent. Well done.
  • Cavalry charge on top of a Star Destroyer. That was unexpected and totally badass.
    • Not cavalry as in tanks or starfighters or speeders. Mounted cavalry, on horse-analogues, galloping across the hull of a Star Destroyer.
  • A Star Destroyer rising out of a field of what appears to be ice.
  • Rey tells Finn that she has to go alone. His reaction? "No, we are doing this together". He has stopped running long ago and is willing to follow his friends to the end.

Film

• Character Development in a single shot: Finn drops into the Millennium Falcon's gunwell to shoot off some TIE Fighters. In stark contrast to the first few times we saw him in similar positions, for just an instant, he looks bored.
  • At the same time, Poe becomes the latest Ace Pilot to pull off a Dangerous Forbidden Technique — in this case, "lightspeed skipping", which even includes jumping through solid objects as if they weren't there.
• Lando Calrissian has rejoined the team, piloting the Millennium Falcon alongside Chewie.
• A small moment, but after Hux tells Pryde that the captured Chewie used to fly with Han Solo, Chewie roars ferociously as if to tell Hux, "YOU DON’T GET TO SAY HIS NAME!"
  • For his part, Hux doesn't even flinch, despite Chewie being close enough to ruffle Hux's hair with his breath.
• Even if his motive was petty, you can't deny that Hux turning traitor against the First Order is probably the character's finest moment. Despite being established as a dirty coward he: leaked information about PALPATINE, took out his own soldiers to save Finn, Poe, and Chewbacca, led them back to the Falcon, and took being unexpectedly shot in the leg in stride. In fact, if it wasn't for Hux, the Final Order would have won. Hux wanted so badly to be Supreme Leader after Kylo stole the vacant position from him, and he'd rather see the First Order fall to pieces than anyone else lead it.
• Kylo Ren continues to demonstrate his badassery as a Dark Sider who leads his troops from the front like his grandfather before him, engaging Resistance troopers with a vengeance — and utilizing his saber's crossguard blades along with the main one.
• The movie shows that Rey wasn't actually back-flipping onto Kylo's ship, but back-flipping over it while using her lightsaber to bisect one set of its wings clean off. You decide which one is more awesome.
• A vision of Rey cloaked and hooded in black and having a double red lightsaber that can switch between two side-by-side laser blades and a "lightsaber staff" that would make Darth Maul proud (or envious) just screams awesome.
• While it's also a scary and sad moment, there's something rather awesome about seeing Rey take down a First Order transport with force lightning.
• Poe Dameron was just about to lose all hope as he dishearteningly says there are just too many Star Destroyers and TIE fighters for his small fleet to handle, but then he hears a few uplifting words: "But there are more of us, Poe". Then we are treated to an amazing shot of the whole galaxy answering the Resistance's Gondor Calls for Aid, with just about every possible armed ship showing up at Palpatine's doorstep on Exegol to deal with the planet-annihilating Star Destroyers. The destruction of the Hosnian system didn't cause a massive response against the First Order, and the Resistance's desperate plea for help at the battle of Crait didn't receive any answer, but Palpatine's threat of total annihilation and the obliteration of Kijimi following a year of the story of Luke's last stand at Crait being passed around finally rallied what was left of the good and brave in the galaxy, from military pilots of all kinds to civilians, as a First Order officer is quick to notice ("just people"). And all Poe can say is a dumbstruck "Look at this!". So much awesome.
  • Even better, Lando is shown leading the charge in the Falcon, implying he managed to organize this army in time. And who does he have manning the gun while he pilots? Wedge Antilles, reprised by Denis Lawson!
    "Nice flying, Lando!"
  • Damn near every non-Imperial ship from the series's history is in there somewhere, plus a few ships that were Legends-only up until now. Old Republic cruisers, Trade Federation battleships, Mandalorian fighters, the Ghost, the Outrider, it goes on and on. It’s as if the whole galaxy is proclaiming in a single, united voice that they've had enough of Palpatine's reign of terror. This is the third war that's devastated their galaxy, and they're tired of being afraid and letting it be reduced to nothing.
  • One that you may have missed: One of those CR-90s? It's the Tantive IV. The very first ship that introduced us to the Star Wars saga. And she's through running.
  • The Cavalry strikes with such overwhelming force that the audience is immediately treated to the sight of multiple Star Destroyers going up in flames, including one falling out of the sky with its spine snapped.
  • One Y-Wing can be seen doing a barrel roll while splashing two oncoming TIE Fighters before laying in a strike on a Star Destroyer's planet killer gun, taking out the massive warship in a single pass. As the Y-Wing passes by Poe's X-Wing, we find out that the pilot is Zorii, very much alive after Kijimi's destruction.
    • Making this more awesome is just how much of a derided, supposedly obsolete Butt-Monkey among starships the Y-Wing was in Expanded Universe novels and materials — long after Gold Leader and his subordinates got the Red Shirt treatment against Darth Vader and the first Death Star, one Y-Wing finally gets to solo an entire Star Destroyer on-screen finally giving the Y-wing a chance to show what it is capable of.
  • To top everything off, a triumphant reprise of the franchise's iconic theme blares during this incredible moment.
• Finn leading a damn literal cavalry charge across the hull of a Star Destroyer in order to destroy its signal relay and strand the Final Order armada on Exegol. And when he and Jannah realize that they've only temporarily blocked the signal by destroying the relay, they then hijack one of the ship's cannon batteries and use it to blow up the bridge, causing the ship to crash and finish the job.
  • The cavalry is actually from renegade former Stormtroopers. After they were taken from their families and had hardly anyone stand up for them, they now stand up for themselves against the elite Sith Troopers and take them down.
  • The fact that Finn and Jannah did the impossible, surpassing even the Skywalkers in that regard. They crippled a whole fleet without using a ship.
• Finn's Force Sensitivity. After years of speculation, Finn shows he actually has the Force... and uses it to save the Galaxy. Namely, when Pryde shows how smart he is by changing the navigator, thus the weak point of the fleet, Finn immediately figures out where it is with the Force.
  • He also feels Rey's temporary death through the Force. And he is visibly heartbroken. No matter how she treated him in the film, he still loves her and cares about her.
• Villainous example: After Rey and Kylo (now Ben Solo once again) defeat the Imperial Guard and Knights of Ren, they turn to face the decrepit Emperor together as he dangles from his life support system... and Palpatine/Sidious disarms and immobilizes them both with a single Force push.
  Sidious: Stand together...DIE TOGETHER!!
  • Even better. With this Force push, he senses that Rey and Ben are both parts of a Force Dyad due to him inadvertently drawing from the life force of both of them. Sidious immediately seizes this unexpected opportunity to drain the power of this connection, restoring himself to the form he had just before his first death on Endor, the form we all know with his distinctive yellow eyes, the form we all know and love. The Dark Lord of the Sith is back.
  Sidious: The power of two restores the one, true, EMPEROR!
• The chilling scene where Kylo tells Rey she is a Palpatine cements an interesting theme to the sequel trilogy - the idea that "ignorance is bliss". In the two movies before this, Rey is obsessed with her parentage and hopes that they're still out there and will one day rescue her and give her a warm, comforting home. However, she refuses to accept that her parents don't matter in her life and that she should focus on her future, not her past. In this film, we find out that not only are her cowardly parents dead and therefore not coming back (as Maz Kanata predicted), but the only living person she is connected to is the evilest man in the history of the galaxy. Suddenly, she wishes that she never searched for the answer to who she is because the answer made her feel overwhelming guilt as opposed to the sense of completion she longed for. In other words, be careful what you wish for because you might get it!
• There’s also something to be said for Rey’s adamant refusal to hate like the dark Sith Lord wants her to. Not even Palpatine himself.
  • And now that he's back and Ben rises to face him once more, an annoyed Palpatine Force chokes Ben and gives us the following line... before Force yeeting Ben into an abyss (you can just imagine him thinking, "Take That!, Anakin!"):
    "As once I fell, so falls the last Skywalker!"
  • It all doubles as a massive Call-Back to A New Hope. "Strike me down, and I shall become more powerful than you could ever imagine" didn't just apply to Obi-Wan, but Palpatine as well.
  • Palpatine, deciding he's reached his personal Godzilla Threshold, decides to blast the aforementioned orbiting cavalry starfleet with an immense barrage of Force lightning from his bare hands. Starfighters, frigates, cruisers, and carriers are all seen tumbling aimlessly above Exegol, all either disabled or destroyed by this unprecedented demonstration of Force powers. He's never been this powerful before.^note Not in the new canon, anyway. It was one of his abilities during his resurgence in the Legends continuity, so it's a nice tip of the hat to the old canon.
    "Do not fear their feeble attack, my faithful. NOTHING WILL STOP THE RETURN OF THE SITH!"
• Palpatine is eventually Hoist by His Own Petard when trying to get rid of his incorruptible granddaughter with Force lightning — Rey uses the same technique of deflecting them with a lightsaber ala Mace Windu decades ago. Only this time, there's no one to stop her, and she adds Leia's lightsaber, crossing it with the other saber and allowing her to become an Advancing Wall of Doom before sending Sidious's lightning right back at him, disintegrating the Sith Lord.
  Emperor Palpatine: You are nothing! A scavenger girl is no match for the power in me! I am all the Sith!
  Rey: And I... am all the Jedi.
• The Voices of Jedi Past: Nearly all of the Clone Wars, Rebels AND Original-era Jedi (including Anakin, Qui-Gon Jinn, Mace Windu, Obi-Wan, Yoda, along with Luke and even characters from the animated shows such as Ahsoka Tano, Luminara Unduli, Aayla Secura, Adi Gallia and Kanan Jarrus) coming to Rey's aid through the Force is a sight to behold, especially for fans of the Prequel era.
  • Made all the more awesome in that the filmmakers brought back the original actors and voices: Liam Neeson (Qui-Gon Jinn), Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Hayden Christensen (Anakin Skywalker), Ewan McGregor along with doctored audio of Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi), Frank Oz (Yoda), Freddie Prinze Jr. (Kanan Jarrus), Ashley Eckstein (Ahsoka Tano), Olivia d'Abo (Luminara Unduli), Jennifer Hale (Aayla Secura) and Angelique Perrin (Adi Gallia).
  • While this scene is most obviously awesome for Rey, it's also a low-key epic moment for Palpatine himself. By this point, Darth Sidious has become so powerful and so dangerous that Rey must bring to bear the spirits and 'all the power of every Jedi who ever lived' against him... and even then, the effort is so intense that it kills her.
  • And these grand moments are gloriously capped off by Luke repeating the very same line Obi-Wan said to him way back in A New Hope:
  "The Force will be with you. Always."
• Luke reveals through a flashback that he did indeed train Leia as a Jedi. She even constructed her own lightsaber, which he kept and passed on to Rey to use in the fight against Palpatine. It's also Leia who continues Rey's training.
  • After Rey gets the courage to hunt down the Emperor, she realizes she has no way to get off Ahch-To, as she set Kylo Ren's TIE Fighter on fire upon landing. Luke knows a way. He uses the Force to levitate his X-Wing from the submerged place in the ocean. At one time, he thought that impossible. Now, after becoming one with the Force, he's grinning like a fool, seeing the full potential of his power at last. Also doubles as a massive moment of heartwarming.
    • Red Five flies again. You do realise that when Rey takes off to Exegol in red five that’s the first time fans have seen that X-Wing fly since 1983.
    • Even more awesome is the use of the exact same triumphant John Williams score from The Empire Strikes Back when Yoda did the exact same thing. You know from Luke's grin that he's thinking of that exact moment when he lifts the old starfighter. His grin and chuckle even have a bit of Yoda flavor to it... the apprentice has become the Master, with Rey herself rapidly growing beyond what both Luke and Yoda are.
• Ben and Rey wordlessly coming up with a plan during the final battle - she sends him the Skywalker lightsaber through their Force bond. He then does the same cocky shrug as his father before laying waste to the Knights of Ren, as if to say "Okay... warm-up over. My turn."
  • Ben has been struggling, for three movies, to get his hands on the Skywalker Family Lightsaber, clearly as part of his own feelings of inadequacy. Well, not only does he finally get it... but he finally deserves it.
  • The sheer intelligence with which Ben takes out the Knights of Ren cannot be understated either. Cardo is stated in-universe to be a One-Man Army due to his armaments while Kuruk's rifle is a sniper and shotgun in one, making them easily the most dangerous of the two in a protracted fight, and Ben makes sure he takes them out first with a single slash that kills them both.
• Ben's initial fighting style against the Sith cultists can only be described as a type of Jedi Gun Fu. Which is incredibly appropriate given his linage.
• The redeemed Ben Solo crawling out of a pit, bruised and bloodied, to reach Rey.
• In one of his first appearances, Ben (as Kylo) rants about he wants to "finish what Vader started." At the time, it comes across as him wanting to rule the galaxy. Here, however, by assisting in Palpatine's downfall and saving the woman he loves (Rey) from certain death, he does finish what Vader started. And just like his grandfather, he dies as a redeemed man.
• Finally, after three whole movies of using the Skywalker lightsaber, Rey finally reveals her own at the end. It's gold - and made from parts salvaged from her staff, paying homage to who she started out as: a simple no-name scavenger on Jakku. It sort of looks like a golden ray of sunshine - a subtle play on her name.
• The end of the Sequel Trilogy is the same as the beginning of the Originals and the ending of the Prequels: the hero looking out into the twin desert suns of Tatooine. Except this time, there's a different context: A new dawn for the Jedi. Rey is the only one that remains, and she has demonstrated that she is prepared to devote her entire life to restoring the Jedi Order (as Luke wanted to). This time, there is no Palpatine hiding behind the scenes secretly attempting to resurrect the Empire. It's gone for good, and the pathway to a democratic and peaceful galaxy is finally clear.
• The first time Rey and Kylo crossed blades, the latter was handicapped by wounds he'd sustained prior to the fight. Here, both combatants are in top form and have more experience under their belts when they face off, culminating in their epic showdown among the second Death Star's remains on Kef Bir.
• The final defeat of the First Order, including showing a Star Destroyer falling next to Cloud City and another being destroyed by the Holdo Maneuver over the Forest Moon of Endor.
• As Rey checks out Luke's old home on Tattooine, she's greeted by a stranger who asks her to introduce herself. When asked for her surname, Rey pauses, sees the Force spirits of Luke and Leia behind her (inviting her into the family), and proudly introduces herself as Rey Skywalker. The name beautifully describes her destiny: "Rey" sounds like "ray" as in a ray of the sun, and the sun "walks" (moves across) the sky every day. Thus, Rey is the new "sun" of the Jedi, a traveller that will bring new warmth and light to a galaxy that has suffered in darkness and fear for too long.

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