Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Releases New Teaser for Final Trailer

A brand new trailer for the ninth film in the Skywalker Saga is on its way. As revealed earlier today by Good Morning America, Lucasfilm will release the final full-length trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker during halftime of ESPN’s broadcast of the Monday Night Football game between the New England Patriots and the New York Jets. This has become a tradition for Star Wars movies, with new trailers for both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi debuting during NFL broadcasts on ESPN. To celebrate the announcement, Lucasfilm released a brief teaser for the new trailer. You can take a look at it above.

Over the last four decades, the Star Wars franchise has proven to have a rabid fanbase that is divisive over many aspects of the franchise, so delivering a satisfying conclusion to the long-running movie series seems like an impossible task. But filmmaker J.J. Abrams is not shying away from the responsibility and he knows he’s not just ending a trilogy — but that he’s ending a nine-film saga.

“Endings are the thing that scare me the most,” Abrams told Entertainment Weekly. “This is about bringing this thing to a close in a way that is emotional and meaningful and also satisfying in terms of actually answering [as many] questions as possible,” he explained. “So if years from now, someone’s watching these movies, all nine of them, they’re watching a story that is as cohesive as possible.”

When asked if he has plans for the final shot in the movie, Abrams admitted that it was one of the first things he figured out.

“If I had not decided on that, I’d be in real trouble,” Abrams joked. “But, it was a very early on thing, and it’s less the last shot of the movie than the last sequence, but it’s something that I… hope you like.”

There are a lot of questions surrounding Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, especially when it comes to the return of Emperor Palpatine. But Abrams is convinced it’s the right way to wrap up the series.

“Some people feel like we shouldn’t revisit the idea of Palatine, and I completely understand that,” Abrams says in an interview with Empire Magazine. “But if you’re looking at the nine films as one story, I don’t know many books where the last few chapters have nothing to do with those that have come before. If you look at the first eight films, all the set-ups of what we’re in IX are there in plain view.”

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker premieres in theaters on December 20th.