J.J. Abrams Announces New Star Wars Film in Saturday Night Live Cut Sketch

Last night's episode of Saturday Night Live opened up with a reference to Marvel's Black Panther, but its geekiest sketch was cut from the show entirely.

That pre-recorded sketch has now been released online. It takes the form of Star Wars director JJ Abrams introducing the third Star Wars standalone movie following Rogue One and Solo. The Mos Eisley Five follows a group of heroes who are instrumental in the creation of the Rebel Alliance base on the ice planet Hoth.

The heroes are played by Mikey Day, Kate McKinnon, and host Charles Barkley. The scene shows them and their Wookie and Droid allies trying to make a deal with the alien Goba (Keenan Thompson) for the freedom of a captured Rebel pilot (Pete Davidson).

Soon, Goba is going back and forth with Rebel heroes. He speaks and alien language and the heroes respond in English and Barkley's character is just confused, pointing out the Star Wars trope where everyone seems to be able to understand all alien languages, even droid, without a problem. Everyone except Barkley"s character that is. You can watch above.

The first actual standalone Star Wars movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, told the story of the group of Rebels who died acquiring the plans for the Death Star. Those plans found their way to Princess Leia's hand just before the start of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope and proved vital to the destruction of the Death Star by Luke Skywalker.

Solo: A Star Wars Story is a prequel to the original trilogy that focuses on a young Han Solo. The film will follow Han through a series of daring adventures and meetings with members of the criminal underworld. He'll also meet Chewbacca, who will become his lifelong partner and co-pilot, and have his first encounter with Lando Calrissian.

Solo: A Star Wars Story opens in theaters on May 25th. The Skywalker saga will continue in Star Wars: Episode IX, which will be co-written and directed by Abrams. There are also two more independent Star Wars trilogies in development, one from Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer and director Rian Johnson and another from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss.