Now that Rogue One is in theaters and the calendar has officially flipped to 2017, Star Wars fans can safely start their mass consumption of all information on Star Wars: Episode VIII. Writer-director Rian Johnson has just given us more clues about the film’s plot.
Speaking with USA Today, Johnson once again confirmed that VIII will start the moment after The Force Awakens ends, the first Star Wars film to do that. “I don’t want to skip ahead two years,” Johnson said. “I want to see the very next moment of what happens.” But more than that, he discussed the major character arcs of the film.
The director said “a large part of the movie” will focus on Luke Skywalker—why he ran away and what he plans to do next, especially now that a young woman named Rey showed up on his mountainside armed with his father’s lightsaber. More so, Johnson says “part of what [Rey’s] dealing with the is realization that she has this power and this gift. She’s taking her first step to coming to terms with this thing inside her that she never knew was there and is just starting to reveal its potential.”
Obviously, that’s not some big, monumental revelation. The film was obviously going to be about those things. But it’s one of the first times Johnson has talked about the film on the record, and it gives us a few threads to pull until the next piece of information is revealed.
Episode VIII opens December 15. We don’t know when we’ll hear about the title or see a trailer, but April’s Star Wars Celebration Orlando seems like a good guess.