Ian McDiarmid Breaks Silence on Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker

The final trailer for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker has finally premiered, giving fans their best look yet at the end of Lucasfilm‘s Skywalker Saga. And while we didn’t get a clear look at the franchise’s primary antagonist in Emperor Palpatine, the Sith Lord still looms large in the clip. Now the actor Ian McDiarmid, who hasn’t appeared on screen since 2005’s Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, has broken his silence since the new trailer dropped.

Check out his new comment about the Star Wars trailer in the Tweet below:

Expectations are riding high on the new Star Wars movie, especially as it attempts to wrap up a storyline that’s spanned over nine films throughout the last four decades. But filmmaker J.J. Abrams understands the pressure he’s facing as he attempts to craft a fitting conclusion to the beloved franchise.

“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.”

Writer Chris Terrio teased to Empire that there are two major questions that are pushing the narrative toward its conclusion.

“One of them is a simple one: ‘Who is Rey?’,” Terrio explained. “Which is a question that people not only wonder about quite literally, but wonder about in the spiritual sense. How can Rey become the spiritual heir to the Jedi? We kept coming back to ‘Who is Rey?’, and how can we give the most satisfying answer to that not only factually – because obviously people are interested in whether there’s more to be learned of Rey’s story – but more importantly who is she as a character? How will she find the courage and will and inner strength and power to carry on what she’s inherited?”

He added, “The second one is, ‘How strong is the Force?’ It sounds a little simple, but actually when you get down to it, that is a sort of Zen Koan that we would really meditate on – not literally in yoga poses or anything, but like we would discuss, ‘What is the Force and how strong is the Force?’ Those two things were really important.”

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