Possibilites for the Rian Johnson Trilogy

All we know at this point is that Rian Johnson has signed on to create a new trilogy for Star Wars. It seems likely, although certainly not set by any official announcement, that that the RJT (we just coined that. It's our thing. Suck it, Internet!) will not be about the Skywalkers. So what would it be? Or perhaps, more accurately, when would it be? Bob Iger, CEO of Disney, mentioned during the earnings call yesterday that the new movies would focus on “a corner of the galaxy that Star Wars lore has never before explored.”

That's pretty much all we have to go on at this point. Bob Iger, given his position in the penthouse at Disney, may have been speaking in some general form, so his exact quote may need to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt. Does the quote assume old EU stories relegated to "legends" status don't actually count? Does it mean that anything in the EU is actually considered having "never been explored"? Or are we to take it that the subject matter will be something we really can't even imagine at this point?

io9 did a nice piece on this subject. They propose 3 major eras that are ripe for storytelling. The first would be ancient history in the Star Wars timeline. Mining only the loosest framework from the old EU, the RJT could be about the Old Republic. There is just about nothing in the new canon that discusses this time period, other than an occasional passing reference, as far as I am aware. It's an era that is very popular with fans, and the story could be told with all new characters, or even some characters ripped from the old EU, that have nothing to do with the Skywalkers.

The second era would be to tell stories within the Skywalker 9-episode arc. The subject could take place in a part of the galaxy that is not known or understood by most casual fans (like, say, the Unknown Regions) which could conceivably be almost entirely disconnected from the events told in the currently existing movies. Or, it could be more like Rebels, where the storytelling takes place adjacent to events we are familiar with, but introduces new elements not explored in the films.

And the third era would be in the future, past the events of Episode IX. To this point, Kathleen Kennedy recently made a statement (that may be taken with the same grain of salt as Iger's) that alluded to future films that take the new heroes from the Sequel Trilogy and explore their fates. (She mentioned Rey, Poe, Finn, and BB-8 specifically.) Fans know that the old EU ventured as far as about 130 years past the events of Return of the Jedi, before being erased by the creation of the sequel trilogy itself.

To further complicate the speculation, Disney's announcement of an upcoming live action TV show makes it harder for fans to guess, or even wish for, the subject matter. Do we want to see stories about the Old Republic? If so, would that be better told by a film trilogy, or on the small screen as a series? Maybe the series takes place during the Skywalker Arc, but the RJT goes into the future?

Personally, I think the best bet, at least without the benefit of having seen The Last Jedi or Episode IX yet, would be that the RJT is about Rey/Finn/Poe after Episode IX, with the OT characters safely in the rear view mirror. It would make sense that Disney would want to continue the saga from the perspective of these characters, rather than essentially scrap them and move on to something else entirely. It would be to Disney's advantage to have fans make a long-term investment with them, rather than constantly having to adjust to all new heroes. With regard to Iger's statement, the Galaxy could potentially emerge from Episode IX to be very different than it was prior. Grey Jedi, for example. Or some kind of confederation or coalition of different governments ruling various parts of the galaxy that must overcome immense differences to take on a new extra-galactic threat. Such a RJT would satisfy the quotes from both Iger and Kennedy.

Then a TV show would be free to explore something completely different. I would be very interested in an Old Republic scenario. But Disney might want to continue the pattern set by The Clone Wars and Rebels, by exploring the time between ROTJ and TFA, perhaps from the point of view of where the First Order came from, and what was going on in the Unexplored Regions. This could potentially have very little to do with the New Republic, or even the Jedi Order, and avoid any weirdness of having to re-cast Luke, Leia, or Han.

My only other choice would be a trilogy based on the adventures of Hondo Ohnaka.

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