50 Fun Facts About Star Wars Sequel Trilogy

Which seabirds, protected on an Irish island set, led to the creation of The Last Jedi's porgs?

Puffins could not be disturbed during filming, so the effects team dressed each bird digitally as a new creature instead of painting it out.

Which James Bond actor makes an uncredited cameo as a stormtrooper in The Force Awakens?

Daniel Craig wore the white armour without a credit, and composer Michael Giacchino also hid under a stormtrooper helmet in the same film.

Which actor broke his leg when a hydraulic door fell on The Force Awakens' Millennium Falcon set?

Harrison Ford was taken to hospital after the accident, and director J. J. Abrams fractured a vertebra in his back trying to help lift the door.

Which actress appears in The Rise of Skywalker through unused footage shot for The Force Awakens?

Carrie Fisher died in December 2016, so her scenes as Leia were built around leftover takes instead of a digital recreation.

Which villain, believed dead since Return of the Jedi, turns out to be Rey's grandfather?

Palpatine had sent an assassin to find the young Rey, so her parents hid her on a desert world and paid for it with their lives.

What colour is the lightsaber blade Rey builds for herself by the end of The Rise of Skywalker?

Yellow is the colour of Rey's new blade, and its hilt is made from part of the staff she carried as a scavenger.

Finnish basketball player Joonas Suotamo took over which sequel trilogy character from Peter Mayhew?

Chewbacca passed to Suotamo after he doubled for the ailing Mayhew in The Force Awakens, and Mayhew stayed on as a consultant.

Which Irish island, known for its Gaelic monastery, played Luke Skywalker's sequel trilogy hideaway?

Skellig Michael lies off County Kerry, where monks settled between the 6th and 8th centuries, and the first shoot there lasted just three days.

Which city, also a Game of Thrones location, doubled as casino city Canto Bight in The Last Jedi?

Dubrovnik hosted the Last Jedi crew for a week in March 2016, and the Croatian port became the galaxy's gambling capital.

Which composer of all three sequel trilogy scores cameos as a bartender in The Rise of Skywalker?

John Williams appears as Oma Tres, a bartender on the planet Kijimi, in the film he said would be his last Star Wars score.

Which original trilogy hero is killed by his own son, Kylo Ren, in The Force Awakens?

Han Solo calls his son by his birth name, Ben, and pleads with him to abandon the dark side moments before he is killed.

On which desert planet does Rey scavenge for a living at the start of The Force Awakens?

Jakku is where Rey was abandoned as a child, and where she meets the droid BB-8 as it flees with a map to Luke Skywalker.

Which actor plays Kylo Ren, the masked grandson of Darth Vader, in all three sequel trilogy films?

Adam Driver's villain was known to the production only as Jedi Killer until 2014, and one rejected design for him became Captain Phasma.

Which actress plays Rey, the scavenger who trains as a Jedi across all three sequel trilogy films?

Daisy Ridley's heroine began in George Lucas's early notes as a teenage Padawan named Taryn, with Thea and Winkie as other possible names.

Which Attack the Block actor plays Finn, the stormtrooper who defects from the First Order?

John Boyega had impressed director J. J. Abrams in his 2011 film debut and was invited to audition for the part.

Which Guatemalan-born actor plays Resistance pilot Poe Dameron in the sequel trilogy?

Oscar Isaac was offered a role that died early in The Force Awakens, but Poe survived and ends the trilogy as a general.

The Force Awakens, the first sequel trilogy film, is which numbered episode of the Skywalker saga?

Episode VII arrived in December 2015, 32 years after Return of the Jedi had closed the original trilogy.

Which First Order weapon, built into an entire planet, destroys the New Republic's capital?

Starkiller Base wipes out the Hosnian star system, and the Resistance brings it down by attacking its thermal oscillator.

Which Supreme Leader of the First Order does Kylo Ren kill instead of Rey in The Last Jedi?

Snoke orders his apprentice to kill Rey and dies instead, and Kylo Ren then declares himself Supreme Leader.

Which droid has his memory wiped in The Rise of Skywalker so a forbidden Sith text can be read?

C-3PO's programming forbids him to translate the Sith text on a dagger, so a droidsmith digs it out of his memory and R2-D2 later restores it.

Which Looper director wrote and directed The Last Jedi, the middle film of the sequel trilogy?

Rian Johnson prepared by having his story group watch old war films and samurai pictures, among them The Bridge on the River Kwai and Three Outlaw Samurai.

Which actress plays Vice Admiral Holdo, who rams the First Order flagship at lightspeed?

Laura Dern first played Holdo as a spacey hippie, close to the character in the book, until the director had her eccentricities toned down.

Which ship does Luke Skywalker's Force spirit give Rey for her last flight in The Rise of Skywalker?

His X-wing carries Rey to the Sith stronghold along with a second gift from Luke, the lightsaber that once belonged to Leia.

How does Luke Skywalker face Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi's final battle without leaving his island?

As a Force projection, Luke draws the First Order's fire from another planet while the Resistance slips away, and the effort costs him his life.

Which dark side power does Rey unleash by accident, destroying a transport, in The Rise of Skywalker?

Force lightning bursts out as Rey tries to save a captured friend, and for a while she believes she has killed him.

Which First Order officer is revealed as the Resistance's spy in The Rise of Skywalker?

General Hux leaks secrets to undermine Kylo Ren, not out of sympathy for the rebels, and is shot by a rival once his cover story fails.

Which Return of the Jedi veteran comes back in The Rise of Skywalker leading a relief fleet?

Lando Calrissian carries a cane modelled on Cloud City in the film, and arrives over the Sith fleet with ships from across the galaxy.

Rey duels Kylo Ren on the wreck of the second Death Star, on a moon in which star system?

Endor is where the station exploded in Return of the Jedi, and Rey searches its ruins for a Sith wayfinder.

Which Resistance mechanic stops Finn from sacrificing himself in the speeder attack of The Last Jedi?

Rose Tico is played by Kelly Marie Tran, who had never seen a Star Wars film before she went for the part.

Which remote planet does the completed map lead Rey to at the end of The Force Awakens?

Ahch-To is where Rey finds Luke Skywalker on a clifftop and holds out his old lightsaber, the last image of the film.

On which planet does the Resistance make its last stand, in an old Rebel base, in The Last Jedi?

Crait shelters the last survivors in a fortress that the First Order breaks open with a siege cannon.

Which droidsmith, voiced by Shirley Henderson, helps the heroes on Kijimi in The Rise of Skywalker?

Babu Frik pulls a set of coordinates out of a droid's head on Kijimi, at the price of everything else the droid remembers.

On which hidden Sith planet does Rey confront her grandfather at the climax of The Rise of Skywalker?

Exegol can only be found with a Sith wayfinder, and Rey flies there alone before sending its coordinates back to the Resistance.

Which bodyguards of the Supreme Leader do Rey and Kylo Ren fight side by side in The Last Jedi?

The Praetorian Guard attack the moment their master falls, and the brief alliance ends when Rey refuses to rule the galaxy beside Kylo Ren.

Which actor, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films, plays the First Order's Supreme Leader?

Andy Serkis wore motion-capture gear for a villain whose gold robes were chosen to stand out against his red and black throne room.

J. J. Abrams based which sequel trilogy character on his late high school English teacher?

Maz Kanata, a pirate more than a thousand years old who runs a tavern in a castle, was modelled on a teacher from Palisades Charter High School.

Which stormtrooper designation of Finn's nods to Princess Leia's cell number in the 1977 Star Wars?

FN-2187 also honours 21-87, a 1963 short film by Arthur Lipsett, and Poe turns its first two letters into the name Finn.

Which producer took over from George Lucas as president of Lucasfilm before the sequel trilogy?

Kathleen Kennedy was asked over lunch in New York to co-chair the company, and Lucas made her succession a condition of selling it.

Which director left Episode IX in 2017 after co-writing a draft titled Duel of the Fates?

Colin Trevorrow kept a story credit on The Rise of Skywalker, and ideas from his draft survive in it, among them a Star Destroyer armed with a superlaser.

George Lucas compared selling Lucasfilm, the deal behind the sequel trilogy, to which life event?

A divorce was his image in a television interview, where he called the first six films his children and found The Force Awakens too retro.

George Lucas's unused sequel trilogy outline revived which prequel villain as a crime godfather?

Darth Maul was to return on robotic legs and train a new apprentice, Darth Talon, as the two main villains of the trilogy.

J. J. Abrams compared Kylo Ren's repaired helmet in The Rise of Skywalker to which Japanese craft?

Kintsugi mends broken pottery so that the breakage stands out, and the patched mask was meant to show how fractured its wearer had become.

Luke's and Kylo Ren's clashing accounts of one night in The Last Jedi recall which Akira Kurosawa film?

Rashomon lends its name to stories told from clashing viewpoints, and the film shows three versions of the night Luke considered killing his nephew.

J. J. Abrams said the First Order grew from imagining Nazis regrouping after fleeing to which country?

Argentina came up as the writers pictured a defeated regime's survivors working together again, which is how the First Order rises from the ashes of the Empire.

Under which working title did The Last Jedi begin principal photography in February 2016?

Space Bear was the cover name on the production when Disney chief Bob Iger confirmed that the cameras were rolling.

Which company made the app-controlled BB-8 toy that sold over a million units in 2015?

Sphero was in a startup programme when Bob Iger showed its executives secret set photos of the droid, and it won the toy licence months later.

At which English studio complex were all three films of the Star Wars sequel trilogy based?

Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire housed the main sets, while location crews travelled as far as Iceland, Ireland and Jordan.

Which famous director suggested J. J. Abrams to Lucasfilm for The Force Awakens job?

Steven Spielberg put the name forward, but Abrams turned the film down at first and had to be persuaded to take it.

Which co-writer of The Empire Strikes Back returned decades later to co-write The Force Awakens?

Lawrence Kasdan and the director planned the story on long walks through Santa Monica, New York, Paris and London after an earlier writer left.

In a Saturday Night Live sketch, Kylo Ren goes undercover as a radar technician with which name?

Matt was the disguise in a 2016 Undercover Boss parody, worn to learn what his employees really thought of their commander.