Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Director J.J. Abrams Reveals the First Word Spoken In the Film

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is as shrouded in secrecy as the Star Wars movies that preceded it. Director JJ Abrams is known for letting as little information about his films out to the public as possible prior to opening night. But in an appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Abrams offered a tiny nugget of information. The first words spoken in the new film (not the first words to appear in the opening crawl) is “at.” Abrams doesn’t provide any context, but Colbert speculates that this is a new character describing events that have already transpired, setting up the scene that’s about to take place. Colbert takes Abrams’s neutral reaction to this theory as confirmation that the theory is correct.

As the interview (seen above) continued, Abrams compared ending the Skywalker saga in The Rise of Skywalker to bringing Star Wars back to theaters in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “We always look at it as a continuation of what came before,” Abrams says. “So in our minds, it wasn’t really a reboot… It was like Chapter 7, 8, and 9 of one book. Ending is much harder. Much, much, much harder. It’s so hard to end. It’s a huge responsibility. It has to work on its own; beginning, middle, and end for the movie. It’s the end of the trilogy, but it’s the end of three trilogies. So to end nine movies, especially when people care — for some people it’s like a religion — so to do something to do service to that story, to end it well, to tell a story that is epic and also funny and also intimate, it’s just there were so many issues and things and characters… I think every day there was a moment of, ‘Oh, god,’ but the truth is as challenging as it was, this has by far been the most rewarding and exciting experience that I’ve ever had, professionally.”

Are you excited to see how the Skywalker saga ends in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker? Let us know in the comments section. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker opens in theaters on December 20th.

Star Wars is also headed to the Disney+ streaming service. The Mandalorian is now streaming on DIsney+. A show following Obi-Wan Kenobi is in the works, with Ewan MacGregor returning to the role. A series about Rogue One‘s Cassian Andor is also in development.