Star Wars Episode X

Stars. Infinite, indifferent, ancient.

Then the curve of a planet rises from the lower frame -- ochre and dust-red, vast and familiar. TWIN SUNS hang at its equator, one larger, one trailing. TATOOINE. Old as any world in the Outer Rim, and twice as forgotten.

A sound before a shape: R2-D2, chattering in the dark. Urgent little trills, the electronic equivalent of someone who has been sitting in silence for too long and can no longer manage it.

An X-WING drops out of hyperspace. Scarred white hull, gold accents on the fuselage -- a ship that has been repaired so many times the repairs have become part of its identity. The Resistance crest, faded but present.

Inside the cockpit: REY. Mid-twenties. Composed in the way that people are composed when they have had to work very hard at it. Her eyes are on the planet below. R2 chatters from the astromech socket behind her.

REY (quiet)

R2. I need you to be quiet for a minute.

R2 responds with a skeptical descending trill -- the droid equivalent of: I've heard that before.

REY (CONT'D)

We're here for Obi-Wan Kenobi. The man who trained Luke Skywalker. Who watched over him from the desert below for twenty years.

She pauses.

I need to think.

R2 goes very still. A different kind of quiet -- recognition, not obedience. Then: one long, low note. Not question. An acknowledgment.

REY (CONT'D)

You knew him.

One beat. The low note again. Yes.

REY (CONT'D)

Then you understand why we have to find him.

She turns back to the planet. The twin suns catch the cockpit canopy and split into prismatic light across her face. She does not blink.

The X-Wing banks into the upper atmosphere. Heat shimmer immediately -- the air thick and copper-colored. The twin suns are high and relentless.

Rey's hands move over the controls with the ease of someone who has done this ten thousand times. But her eyes are not on the instruments. She closes them. Just for a moment.

Coordinates surface in her mind -- not from a chart, not from a database. Simply known, the way certain things are known when you stop trying to remember them. She opens her eyes. Sets the heading. The X-Wing descends.

Rock formations the color of old bone. Sand that has been here since before anyone was keeping track.

The X-Wing settles between two outcroppings with a hiss of landing gear -- the repulsors kicking up a halo of fine red dust that drifts slowly in the still air.

Silence. Then: the wind. A low constant sound, patient and indifferent.

REY drops from the cockpit to the sand. The heat hits her full -- a physical pressure, the kind of warmth that has weight. She breathes it in. She does not find it unpleasant.

R2-D2 drops from the astromech socket on his landing strut and immediately sinks two centimeters into the sand. He bleeps a sharp, indignant complaint.

REY

Stay with the ship.

R2 launches into a rapid, indignant sequence -- rising tones, falling tones, the electronic equivalent of a very thorough argument.

REY (CONT'D)

I have to do this alone. I know you don't like it.

R2 goes quiet. Not agreement -- the specific silence of someone who has registered an objection and is now waiting to be proven right.

Rey turns toward a low dark opening in the rock face, perhaps fifteen meters ahead. A breath of wind moves a thin veil of sand across the threshold. She looks at it for a moment.

She does not hesitate. She goes in.

Dark. Low. The smell of old stone and dust and something else -- a quality of presence, like a room where someone lived for a very long time and is only recently absent.

Rey moves deeper, touching the walls. The rock is smooth in places -- worn by years of passing hands, or one pair of hands over decades. She ignites her lightsaber.

GOLD. The blade catches the space: small, worn, deeply human. A sleeping alcove carved into the stone. A hook on the wall where a cloak once hung, the absence of it still visible in the way the hook is angled. A low flat stone at the center -- a seat, or an altar, or both. Grooves worn into its surface. Decades of patient hands.

Rey kneels before the stone. She runs her fingers along the grooves. She closes her eyes.

She reaches into the Force. She does not strain. She waits -- open, still, without agenda, the way she was taught.

A BLUE LIGHT. Small, at the edge of the chamber. Warm as candle. A shape assembles itself from the light with the patience of something that is in no hurry: tiny, ancient, enormous ears, enormous eyes, a walking stick that does not quite touch the floor.

YODA. He regards her with the specific expression of someone who has been expecting a visitor and is mildly amused that it took this long.

YODA

A long way, you have come.

REY

Master Yoda. I'm looking for --

YODA

Kenobi. Yes. Know why you are here, I do.

He moves -- or appears to move, the way Force ghosts appear to move: a suggestion of motion, the stick tracing a small arc.

Rey watches him. She is steadier than she expected to be.

YODA (CONT'D)

Watching, I have been. Your meditations. The voice. The calling that brought you to this cave.

REY

Then you know what I want.

YODA

Build a new Order. Guidance you seek, to begin again. Hmm.

He is quiet for a moment. When he speaks again, the amusement is gone.

YODA (CONT'D)

Must not, you should. The old Order -- not simply defeated, it was. It failed. Grew rigid.

Grew afraid of attachment while on power it depended. Trained warriors and peacekeepers called them. And helped, without knowing, to create the conditions for Palpatine's rise.

REY

The galaxy needs Jedi. Someone has to stand against the dark.

YODA

Stand against the dark, yes. But the Jedi Order -- the answer, it is not. The answer, you must find yourself.

REY

Where is Kenobi?

Yoda regards her. A long moment.

YODA

Gone. Truly gone, Kenobi is. Since the fall of the Empire, appeared to no one he has. At peace. As he earned.

Rey closes her eyes. She lets it land. The journey, the hope of it, the long reach across the galaxy toward a voice she thought she could find. She lets all of it land and then she sets it down.

When she opens them: Yoda is gone.

The cave is gold with her saber only. She is alone.

Then -- another presence. Warmer. More familiar. The air changes temperature the way it does when someone you love enters a room.

LUKE SKYWALKER appears at the edge of the light. Blue-white, like all Force ghosts. But younger than the Luke she knew on Ahch-To -- before the years of self-imposed exile took their weight. He looks at her with the love of someone who knows her completely.

LUKE

You came all this way.

REY

You knew he wasn't here.

LUKE

I knew you needed to find out for yourself.

He moves through the space -- the cave that was someone else's entire life for twenty years.

LUKE (CONT'D)

My father was haunted by dreams that felt like prophecy. followed them. That following led him to the darkest choice he ever made. Dreams can be warnings or they can be traps. The Force doesn't always tell you which.

REY

My dreams are different. They're about building something. Not destroying.

Luke regards her. Measuring, but not doubtful.

LUKE

A new Jedi Order will not protect the galaxy. It will paint a target on everyone inside it.

REY

Then what do I do?

LUKE

You already know.

He begins to fade -- not dramatically, not a farewell, just the gradual diminishing of light.

REY

Luke --

Gone. The cave is dark except for her gold blade.

She stands alone for a moment. She extinguishes the saber. She breathes.

Then she walks out.

Bright. The twin suns. She blinks against the light.

R2-D2 rolls toward her immediately -- faster than his legs should allow -- already emitting a rapid sequence of concerned tones. Where were you? What happened? Are you hurt? Why did that take so long?

REY

He's not here. He's been gone since the Empire fell.

R2 is quiet. A long, careful note -- the sound of old grief, the sound of a droid who keeps the memories of people no longer living.

REY (CONT'D)

It's alright. I found something else.

She doesn't explain. She walks toward the ship. R2 follows, still skeptical, but close.

SUPER: "TATOOINE. THIRTY YEARS EARLIER."

A workbench outside a cluttered salvage yard. The twin suns are dropping -- both together, the sky going copper and deep purple in the west. The last light is the best light here: brief and extraordinary and wasted on no one.

A boy sits at the bench. Seven years old. Small for his age. Dusty in the way that children are dusty on Tatooine -- it is simply the condition of existing here. He is working on coupling -- his hands precise and unhurried, the hands of someone who understands machines in a way that has nothing to do with training.

This is YOUNG ANAKIN SKYWALKER.

His eyes keep going up. The suns. The sky at the edge of the suns, where the color is deepest. WATTO's voice rasps from inside the shop -- a reminder, a dismissal, impossible to tell which.

Anakin sets down the coupling. He looks at the sky one more time: the way you look at something you are saving up, storing against a future you cannot yet name. Then he goes inside.

Rey sealed in the cockpit. Pre-flight checks. R2 in the socket, quieter than usual -- still processing, in the way droids process things they have been carrying for a long time.

She reaches for the ignition.

R2 chirps sharply -- one specific, urgent tone. The droid equivalent of: stop. Look up.

She looks up.

A shadow falls across both suns. The MILLENNIUM FALCON descends through a whirlwind of red dust -- ungainly and inevitable, the way it always is -- and touches down thirty meters away with the specific grace of a ship held together by affection and maintenance performed in that order.

Rey opens the hatch. Steps out onto the wing.

A voice carries across the sand before the figure reaches the ramp.

POE (calling out)

You're really hard to find, you know that?

POE DAMERON jogs down the ramp. Grinning, relieved -- the specific relief of someone who was not quite willing to admit he was worried. Behind him, FINN -- taller in his ease, watching Rey the way he always watches her, like someone confirming that what he cares about is still real.

FINN

We tracked R2's signal. How long were you planning to --

REY

How did you know I was here?

A beat. Poe and Finn exchange a look -- one of their looks, the kind that carries a full conversation in a fraction of second.

POE

That's the thing. We need to talk.

They stand in the shade of the Falcon's hull. The sand is still. R2 has stationed himself between the ships, watching the sky with the attentiveness of someone who has learned that the sky is where trouble arrives from.

Poe lays it out. He speaks plainly, the way someone speaks when what they are saying is bad enough that decoration would be obscene.

POE

The New Republic is gone. Not defeated -- restructured. Absorbed from within. The apparatus of a new Empire assembled so slowly and so thoroughly that by the time people understood what it was, it already was.

Finn watches Rey as Poe talks. He can see what it costs her to hear this.

POE (CONT'D)

The new Emperor calls himself Darth Plagueis. Ancient Sith. Master of Sidious. Supposedly killed by his own apprentice decades ago. He wasn't.

REY

How large is his force?

POE

Three times the First Order at its peak. And the stormtroopers -- Rey, they're Force-sensitive. Trained from birth, programmed as soldiers. All of them.

REY

Force-sensitive stormtroopers --

FINN

They're not like us. They've never had a choice about what they are.

A beat. That lands on Finn in a specific way -- he does not look away from it.

REY

Where are they now?

R2 SCREAMS from the X-Wing. Not a beep -- a full, shrieking alarm tone, sustained and escalating. The droid rolls backward, dome tilting up.

They look up.

THREE GRAND STAR DESTROYERS fill the upper atmosphere. Enormous.

The scale of them wrong in the way that impossible things are wrong -- they block the light, not all of it but enough that the desert goes a shade darker. Shadows fall across the sand like a second sunset.

TIE FIGHTERS descend in tight formation. They land in a perfect perimeter around both ships -- precise, unhurried, certain.

SUPER-STORMTROOPERS emerge. Bigger than standard. The armor heavier, darker. They move with a precision that is not drilled but felt -- each one carrying their placement in the Force the way a load-bearing wall carries weight. They form a half-circle around Rey, Finn, Poe, and R2.

Twenty of them. Standing still.

Rey's hand goes to her saber.

FINN

Don't.

She looks at him.

FINN (CONT'D)

They're Force-sensitive. It won't work the way it usually works.

She tries anyway. Raises her free hand. Reaches for the Force-suggestion -- the will pressed outward like a hand on a door: you don't need to do this. Turn around. Leave.

The nearest Super-Stormtrooper tilts its helmet. Regards her with something that might be curiosity. Does not move.

Rey drops her hand.

She looks at Poe. He looks at Finn. Finn looks at the troopers.

She places her saber on the ground. Poe and Finn raise their hands.

R2 emits one long, sustained, outraged note from thirty meters away -- the sound of a droid who has opinions about this and is registering them formally.

REY (to herself)

Okay.

The troopers close in.

They are marched through corridors designed to reduce. Ceilings forty meters high. Floors that eat sound. Every surface clean and cold and matte-grey -- the aesthetic of thing that does not need to impress you because it has already won.

Rey keeps her eyes moving. She is counting exits, turns, trooper positions. Finn walks close to her. Poe counts troopers.

Neither says a word. There is nothing to say that the troopers should hear.

Dark. Built to reduce. Low light from sources concealed in the ceiling -- not dramatic, functional, the light of a room whose occupant does not require atmosphere because he is the atmosphere.

DARTH PLAGUEIS sits elevated -- ancient, massive, the specific ugliness of a creature who stopped worrying about the appearance of ugliness centuries ago. His face is long, pale, deeply lined -- the lines not of age but of patience, carved by waiting. He wears no hood. He does not need one. His eyes: yellow-gold, and behind them the specific quality of a mind that has had nothing but time.

He regards them the way a collector regards items at auction. Interested. Unhurried.

He waves away the escort. The doors close.

Silence. Just the hum of the ship and the particular quality of a room containing something very old.

PLAGUEIS

Granddaughter.

REY

I'm a Skywalker.

PLAGUEIS

Names are choices. Blood is not.

He descends the dais stairs slowly. No performance in it just the movement of something very large and very patient.

PLAGUEIS (CONT'D)

Sidious did not kill me. The wound was real. Death was not permitted. I have the power to prevent death in those who master the secret. I waited. I planned. I watched my apprentice rise and fall and rise again and finally extinguish himself in his obsession with your bloodline.

He pauses. Something in his expression that might, in another face, be affection.

PLAGUEIS (CONT'D)

I find it almost touching.

You ended his story. I am not angry. He had become a liability. What I am --

He looks at her directly for the first time. Full attention -- the weight of centuries focused.

PLAGUEIS (CONT'D)

-- is interested.

REY

What do you want?

PLAGUEIS

What no Jedi has ever had the patience to accept. The Sith did not arise from the Jedi. The Jedi arose from the Sith. The first Force users were not peacekeepers. They were explorers -- hungry, unconstrained. The Order came later, as a reaction. A binding. I was there.

I remember.

REY

You're lying.

PLAGUEIS

I'm very old. I have no reason to lie.

A door opens behind the throne. THE SITH APPRENTICE enters. A child -- perhaps ten years old, horned, the red and black facial markings precise and deliberate, as if applied ceremonially.

The child moves with a stillness that is unnatural in something so young. No fear. No hurry. No performance.

The child speaks in a flat, clear voice.

SITH APPRENTICE

We have arrived at Exegol. As requested.

PLAGUEIS

Bring them to the surface. All of them.

I want them to see.

Finn and Poe, locked in together. Small cell. Cold.

Finn sits against the far wall. Poe paces -- four steps, turn, four steps.

The Super-Stormtrooper outside the door shifts slightly. Listening.

POE

On a scale of one to ten, where ten is the last time we were imprisoned --

FINN

Don't.

POE

I'm just saying we've been in worse.

FINN

We have not been in worse.

Poe lowers his voice.

POE

Rey will --

FINN

Rey is in a separate cell. We have to assume she can't help us right now.

A beat. Finn looks at his hands.

FINN (CONT'D)

I felt them. When they surrounded us. In the Force.

POE

What did they feel like?

FINN

Loud. Like a frequency I didn't know existed until it was right in front of me.

The cell door opens. REY is thrown in -- half-conscious, cut at her temple, her wrists bound. Finn is across the room before Poe has moved. He catches her. She murmurs something against his shoulder.

REY

Master Skywalker...

She comes fully alert. Looks around. Registers the cell.

REY (CONT'D)

How long have we been --

POE

Twenty minutes. You're fine.

FINN

You have a cut on your --

REY

I'm fine.

She stands. Steadies herself against the wall. She tells them -- Plagueis's claims about Sith history, the survival, the patience, the centuries of waiting. Poe absorbs it. Finn watches her face.

FINN

You're shivering.

REY

I know.

FINN

That's not the cold.

REY

I know what it is.

She says the word quietly, almost to herself.

REY (CONT'D)

Exegol.

Finn and Poe go still. They know that name.

Through the cell wall, a sound -- or not a sound. A pressure. The specific weight of a place where the dark side does not visit but lives. It registers in the body before the mind: a wrongness, subtle, total, like the air before storm that has been building for a thousand years.

The cell door opens.

Everything Exegol is.

Permanent lightning -- not flashes, not storms, but a constant churning of the upper atmosphere, purple-black, electric, as if the planet itself is in a state of perpetual unresolved energy. The air smells of ozone and age and something older than both. The light here is not natural it is the light of a world that has been soaking in the dark side for so long it has become a different kind of sun.

Rey, Finn, and Poe are herded across a blasted plain. In the distance: the SITH CITADEL. Not built -- grown from the rock over centuries, its spires irregular and wrong, the architecture of a thing that does not need to be visited, only approached.

EARLIER)

SUPER: "TATOOINE. THIRTY YEARS EARLIER."

A small, clean room. Clean in the way that poverty kept with dignity is clean -- not much here, but what is here is cared for. Soft cloth at the window. A mat on the floor.

SHMI SKYWALKER sits on the edge of her son's sleeping mat, singing -- barely above a breath, an old song, the kind that predates the words and survives them. YOUNG ANAKIN lies with his eyes mostly closed. She thinks he is asleep. She is wrong, and she knows she is wrong, and she continues anyway because the ritual is the thing.

ANAKIN

I'm not asleep.

SHMI

I know.

ANAKIN

You always know.

SHMI

You always know that I know.

He opens his eyes fully. Smiles -- the real smile, the one he doesn't use with Watto.

SHMI (CONT'D)

How was your day?

He tells her about the coupling he fixed -- a fuel coupling on one of Watto's salvage ships, a problem that no one else had figured out. He describes it with precision and pleasure, the way some people describe music, or a view from a high place. She listens with full attention.

He trails off. Looks at the window. Through it: stars, hard and clear and absolutely motionless.

ANAKIN

I want to go to all of them.

She follows his gaze. She does not tell him he cannot.

SHMI

Which one first?

ANAKIN

All of them at once. I'd go very fast.

A beat. She smooths his hair. He catches her hand. Holds it for a moment.

SHMI

No one can stop you from dreaming, Ani.

ANAKIN

Goodnight, Mom.

SHMI

Goodnight, my love.

She leaves. The door closes softly.

Anakin lies still. Through the window: one star moves slowly across the frame -- a ship, probably, or a satellite. He watches it. His eyes track it through the dark until sleep takes him.

The star crosses the edge of the window and is gone.

Vast. Ancient. The walls are not flat -- they are layered, striated, as if the citadel accreted over centuries, one dynasty of darkness building on the bones of the one before it. Lightning from the surface is channeled through conduits in the stone, blue-white and irregular, turning the room into a place of moving shadows -- nothing here is ever fully lit or fully dark.

At the far end: a THRONE. Low. Old. The kind of seat that has been occupied so long it has taken on the character of its occupant, the stone itself worn into something that resembles purpose.

On the throne: a HOODED FIGURE. The only still thing in a room full of moving light.

Rey, Finn, and Poe are brought to a halt before it. The doors close behind them. The escort withdraws.

POE (barely audible)

That voice. I know that voice.

FINN (barely audible)

I know.

The figure rises. Slowly. The SCARLET LIGHTSABER ignites the red light floods the room, fighting the blue-white lightning for dominance, neither winning. The hood falls back.

DARTH SIDIOUS. Restored. Not the lightning-blasted ruin they saw on Exegol or the charred thing from the Death Star. Restored deliberately -- the face worn but clear, the robes clean, the eyes burning with an intelligence that was never diminished by physical destruction. He wears his evil plainly now. He is done with subtlety.

REY

You're dead.

SIDIOUS

You of all people should know that death in this family is rarely permanent.

He descends the dais. His movement is deliberate -- not slow, deliberate, each step placed with the precision of someone who has been planning this particular meeting for long time.

SIDIOUS (CONT'D)

My master restored me. Two masters. One purpose. And you the Palpatine bloodline completing its arc. Stand beside me and the galaxy kneels. It has always been that simple.

REY

The arc is done. The name means nothing to me. I am a Skywalker.

He smiles. The particular smile of someone who expected that answer and has already moved past it.

Then -- a presence in the Force. Cold, enormous, familiar in the specific way that nightmares are familiar: a shape without a face, a temperature, the sense of something reaching across the boundary of death to say: be careful.

VADER'S WARNING. Not words. Just the shape and weight of it.

Then warmer, fainter, barely there at all -- a voice she has heard only once but recognizes immediately.

ANAKIN (V.O.)

Stay strong. Whatever you feel from him -- stay strong.

Sidious raises his hand. The Force seizes Rey -- her arm pins to her side, her feet leave the floor by an inch, the pressure total and immediate. She reaches for her saber. Cannot reach it. She struggles. The scale is wrong: this is a power she has encountered before but never like this, refined and patient, the dark side distilled to a single overwhelming purpose.

The great doors blow open.

BEN SOLO walks in.

Full armor -- the Kylo Ren helmet, rebuilt, the cracks sealed with red. The crossguard lightsaber at his hip, unlit. He walks with the specific weight of someone who has already decided everything and is here only to do it.

He does not look at Rey.

He kneels before Sidious.

SIDIOUS

Rise. Your gift -- as promised. Turn her. Finish what your grandfather could not.

The Force releases Rey. She drops. Ben Solo rises. For the first time -- he looks at her.

REY

Ben --

BEN

Don't.

The GOLD blade ignites. The RED crossguard ignites. Both lights fill the chamber -- amber warmth and hard crimson, competing, neither overwhelming the other.

He charges. She sidesteps, Force-jumps, lands behind him. turns -- always faster than she expects, always exactly as fast as she is. The mirror of training and blood and the connection between them that neither has ever fully closed.

They trade blows. Each impact rings through the stone. The Force crackles at every clash -- not just the sabers but the

space between them, the history between them, visible as heat shimmer.

Finn pulls Poe back to the wall. Poe watches Rey.

REY

I don't want to fight you.

BEN

You don't have a choice.

REY

Ben. Look at where we are. Look at what he's made you.

He charges again. She catches the blow, redirects, drives him back. He finds his footing. Presses hard -- relentless, controlled, the fighting style of someone who trained to win at any cost and never fully let go of that training.

Kylo forces her back toward the throne. She catches herself at the base of the dais. She looks at Sidious -- watching from above, that patient smile, his attention fixed on her saber hand.

She sees it. What he wants. For her to use the gold blade on Ben. To turn the death of Han Solo's son into the moment that breaks her open and pours the darkness in.

She breaks from Ben. Turns. Throws her saber to her left hand.

Ben's crossguard flies from his grip on a Force-pull -- across the room, straight toward Poe and Finn. Rey catches it from the air with her right hand.

She stands: GOLD in the left. RED in the right. Warm light and hard light. The whole room held in two colors.

SIDIOUS

Yes. Kill him. Take his power. Your grandfather would have.

She looks at Ben.

He is unarmed. His chest heaves. Through the cracked visor: his eyes. Confused. Exhausted. Still fighting something that has been fighting him since he was a boy.

The rage comes. Real. Earned. She does not deny it -- for Luke, for Han, for Leia, for everything the darkness took. She raises both blades.

She brings them down.

BEN SOLO COLLAPSES.

The room goes quiet. Just the distant sound of Exegol's lightning.

Rey stands over him. She is shaking. The gold blade dims in her hand. She looks at the red in her other hand and extinguishes it. She kneels.

The helmet is cracked wider now. Through it: his eyes. Not Kylo Ren's eyes -- Ben Solo's eyes. The blue returned. The conflict finally, fully resolved in the only direction it had left to go.

BEN

Thank you.

His body stills. The Force releases him. He is gone.

SUPER: "TATOOINE. THIRTY YEARS EARLIER."

Night in the yard. The twin moons are up -- smaller than the suns but bright enough to work by. ANAKIN, age nine now, kneels beside the canvas-covered shape of his podracer. A massive thing for a boy to have built from nothing. A massive thing for anyone to have built from nothing.

He checks a coupling by feel. His hands are still. Then the feeling comes.

He has lived inside it his whole life -- that current, that hum below everything, the Force before he knows to call it the Force. But tonight it is directional. Enormous. Pointing at tomorrow.

He holds very still. He lets it move through him. He looks up.

One star crosses the narrow window of sky above Watto's yard -- moving against the others. A ship. He watches it.

ANAKIN (V.O.)

One day that will be me.

The star crosses the edge of the sky above the yard and is gone.

Rey rises from Ben's body. She turns.

PLAGUEIS stands at the base of the dais. He descended silently -- she does not know when. The SITH APPRENTICE stands at his side, watching with that unnatural stillness. Observing. Calculating.

PLAGUEIS

Impressive. And now?

Rey raises her hand. The gold lightsaber lifts from the floor and crosses the room to her. She takes it. She looks at Plagueis.

PLAGUEIS (CONT'D)

You cannot kill us both. The Force does not give you --

The saber leaves her hand.

It crosses the distance between them in a fraction of a second.

PLAGUEIS FALLS from the throne.

Silence.

The Sith Apprentice looks at Plagueis. Looks at Rey. Then turns and walks, unhurried, through a side door. Gone -- where, and what for, the room does not know.

Rey feels the cold settle in her immediately. Not the darkness -- not quite. But the cold that comes after. She has killed two Sith Lords and a man she cared about in the space of four minutes, and the cost of it will take years to reach its full accounting.

She sinks to the floor. She weeps -- not with guilt alone but with the specific grief of someone who has won everything that needed winning and lost everything that needed losing at the same time.

Later. The bodies have been moved. The Knights of Ren have withdrawn -- no masters, no orders, the hierarchy dissolved by the simple fact of absence. One KNIGHT OF REN remains, standing before Rey in a Force grip, his feet an inch off the floor.

Rey sits on the throne. Not comfortably. With the weight of someone doing something because it needs to be done, not because it fits.

Poe and Finn stand nearby, not sure what to do with their hands.

REY

Your masters are gone.

KNIGHT OF REN (straining)

You cannot hold this throne. The Empire does not end because --

REY

The Empire ends here. Tell everyone you meet.

She releases the grip. He drops. Staggers. For a moment -- long moment -- he considers the weapon at his hip. He does not reach for it. He walks out.

Poe and Finn look at each other.

POE

So.

FINN

So.

REY

Go.

POE

We're not leaving you on --

REY

I'm not asking. Go back to what remains of the Resistance. I'll follow when I can.

She meets Finn's eyes. He holds them for a moment -- that quality of knowing without being able to name what he knows, present in him since the first moment on Jakku. He nods.

They go. The doors close.

Rey sits alone on a throne she will not keep, in a room emptied of everyone, and for the first time in hours the only sound is Exegol's lightning on the citadel walls.

She reaches into the Force. What she finds is not darkness and not peace but something between -- the galaxy suspended, ten thousand inhabited worlds holding their breath. She feels LEIA at the very edge of the living Force: faint, warm, between presence and absence, not gone but going. She feels LUKE further still, quiet. She feels the shape of YODA's amusement like the memory of a fire, long after the fire itself.

She stands. She walks to the viewport. She looks at the stars.

She knows what she is going to do.

The Falcon in orbit above Exegol. The planet's lightning visible through the porthole -- beautiful, in a terrible way, from up here.

Finn is asleep in a crew bunk. Badly -- his face moves through something enormous and silent, his breath uneven, his hands loose at his sides in the way of someone fighting without a body.

He murmurs.

FINN (asleep)

...a senator... a queen... Queen Amidala...

Poe wakes in the other bunk. Stares at the ceiling.

POE

Amidala.

He lies still. He is reaching for something at the edge of memory -- not his memory, something older, like a story heard once at a great distance and only half-retained. Old Republic. Before the Empire. There was a senate. A queen of Naboo. It feels important in the way that things feel important in the dark, without knowing why.

Then a voice. Unhurried. Familiar to anyone who has ever needed to be told something true.

YODA

Loud, you are. Sleeping quarters, this is.

Poe sits up. Hits his head on the upper bunk. Grabs it. Looks toward the doorway.

YODA'S FORCE GHOST. Blue-silver, unhurried, regarding Poe with nine centuries of patience and the mild amusement of someone who has had this particular conversation in many forms.

POE

You're -- you're Yoda.

YODA

Correct, you are. A relief, this is.

Poe stares. He says the name again -- quietly, like testing its weight.

POE

Were you reading my thoughts?

YODA

Read your thoughts, I did not. Feel your feelings, I did. Different, these are.

Outside the porthole: Exegol's lightning moves through the upper atmosphere. Slow. Patient. Breathing.

YODA (CONT'D)

Wisdom comes only from the Force. Power comes only from the mind. Remember this, you must, in what is coming.

POE

Ready, you are not.

Yoda tilts his head. The stick traces its small arc.

YODA

Ready, you are not. Go anyway, you must. The difference, this has always been.

He begins to fade.

POE

Wait -- where is Rey going? What does she do with --

Gone. The doorway is just the doorway again.

Poe sits in the dark. He is very awake.

Finn snores. Dreaming of a republic that died before either of them was born.

Rey in the cockpit. The gold lightsaber rests on the co-pilot seat beside her. R2 in the socket -- quiet, alert, watching her with his dome sensors in the way he watches when he is paying close attention and choosing not to comment.

She keys open a channel. Wide broadcast. Resistance frequencies. Whatever survives.

REY (into comms)

This is Rey Skywalker. The throne on Exegol will not stand. I will not keep it. I don't know yet what fills the space where empire was -- but I know it can't be built alone, and it can't be built the way the old orders were built. If you are listening. If you are what remains -- come find me.

She closes the channel. She sits with her hands in her lap.

In the Force: YODA's quality of approval -- not words, just the shape of assent. The warmth of a creature who has watched people find their way for nine centuries and still finds the finding worth watching.

R2 beeps. One note, quiet. A question.

REY (CONT'D)

Somewhere new.

R2 beeps again -- a second note, different register. Acceptance. Or something close to it.

She fires the engines. She makes the jump.

The blue tunnel of hyperspace. Endless, moving, lit from within.

POE at the controls. FINN beside him, finally properly awake. CHEWBACCA in the co-pilot seat, his great hands moving over the instruments with the ease of someone who has been flying this route or one like it for fifty years. BB-8 in the socket behind Poe, blinking steadily.

Poe stares ahead. The hyperspace tunnel does the thing it always does: makes the ship feel very small and the galaxy very large.

FINN

She'll be alright.

POE

I know.

A beat. Finn looks at his hands.

FINN

I felt something. On Exegol. In the Force.

POE

You've been feeling things in the Force since Jakku.

FINN

I know. But this was different. It was like -- someone turned on a light in a room I didn't know was dark.

Poe looks at him. Really looks.

POE

When we get back -- you tell me everything.

Finn nods. He looks out at the blue tunnel -- the hyperspace stream, endless and moving and going somewhere.

Chewie rumbles. Something low and warm. Agreement, or something older than agreement.

The cave entrance.

A wind moves sand across the threshold -- the same wind, the same sand, indifferent to history.

Inside: the flat stone. The grooves worn into its surface by decades of patient hands. Empty. No one has sat there in very long time.

No one will again.

The one who sat there is not finished -- only elsewhere, distributed into the Force the way all things are eventually distributed: present in the light through the opening, in the worn grooves under the stone, in the quality of patience the cave still carries like a held breath. Waiting. The way someone waits when they know the right student always arrives.

REY. Flying.

She does not know where she is going. She knows she is going. That is enough, for now -- more than enough.

The gold lightsaber rests on the co-pilot seat beside her. R2 is in the socket. He beeps -- a question, quiet, without urgency. Not a navigation query. Something more personal.

REY

Somewhere new.

R2 beeps again. Smaller this time. The sound of something that has been around long enough to know that somewhere new is always how it starts.

Rey smiles.

They fly.

The blue tunnel opens ahead of them -- endless, and moving, and going somewhere that has not happened yet.

TITLE CARD: "In a galaxy far, far away, the story is not finished. It is only beginning again."

Star field. Silence. Then — a single X-Wing cuts across the black, dropping toward the ochre curve of a desert planet.

The twin suns hang low. The planet fills the frame.

R2-D2 (urgent beeping)

chirps.

REY (V.O.)

More insistent beeping.

REY (V.O.) (CONT'D) R2 — stop.

A pause. One small, wounded trill.

REY (V.O.) (CONT'D)

find Kenobi's cave.

The X-Wing descends.

Sand and heat and nothing else. The X-Wing sets down near cluster of sandstone formations, worn into curves by a thousand years of wind.

The canopy hisses open. REY climbs out — older than the girl who fought on Exegol, quieter in the way that cost something. Her lightsaber is at her hip. Her eyes read the landscape like a map.

R2-D2 drops from the astromech socket and lands with a thump. He swivels his dome toward the cave entrance cut into the rock face. A low, cautious whistle.

REY Stay with the ship.

R2 beeps a protest.

REY (CONT'D) I mean it.

She walks toward the cave. A breath of wind moves a thin skin of sand across the entrance.

R2 watches her go. He beeps once, quietly, to himself.

Dark. Dry. The smell of old stone and something older — incense, time, absence.

Rey steps inside. She waits for her eyes to adjust. They don't.

She draws her lightsaber. The blade ignites — gold, warm amber — and the chamber fills with living light. Rough walls. A sleeping shelf worn smooth. A low shelf with items long since decayed to shapes.

On the wall: stone with grooved markings — lines, concentric, language or mathematics or both.

Rey touches it. Her fingers trace the grooves.

A blue-silver light blooms at the edge of the chamber. Small. Ancient. The ears are enormous.

YODA stands in the Force, translucent, his gimer stick planted, watching her with those wet, heavy eyes.

YODA Expected you, I did not.

REY

YODA

not. (a breath)

REY

better.

Yoda is still for a long moment.

YODA

REY Master Yoda —

YODA

(beat)

would.

REY

same way.

YODA

clothes, easy it is to wear.

His light dims, contracts — and he is gone.

The amber light from the gold blade holds the chamber alone.

Then, from the far corner: another light. Blue-silver. Taller. Leaner.

LUKE SKYWALKER stands in the Force — younger than his death, the same quiet humor in the set of his jaw.

REY Master Luke.

LUKE

fell.

REY Do you know why?

LUKE

say. Through other people. (carefully)

paths. I know.

REY This isn't a dream.

LUKE My father thought that too.

The gold blade dims — not extinguished, just... quieter.

REY

LUKE

A beat. She looks at him — trying to find an argument. She can't.

Luke's light fades. He is gone.

Rey stands alone in amber light. She extinguishes the blade.

Dark.

She walks out.

The heat hits her. Both suns press down. R2 rolls to meet her, whistling an anxious question.

REY He's not there.

R2 makes a soft sound — not a question. Acknowledgment.

REY (CONT'D) He's gone.

She stands still. Both suns behind her. Her shadow stretches long across the sand.

TITLE CARD: "YEARS EARLIER"

A small figure stands at the edge of Watto's scrap yard, face turned toward the horizon. This is ANAKIN SKYWALKER seven years old, dusty, eyes too large and too awake for the life he's in. He watches the twin suns descend: slow, immense, indifferent.

The sky bleeds orange into purple into the first dark.

From inside the shop, a rasping, winged voice:

WATTO (O.S.)

themselves!

Anakin doesn't move for one more second. He memorizes the color. Then he turns and goes back inside.

TITLE CARD: "THE PRESENT"

Rey seals herself in. She pulls up the nav display — it populates with a galaxy's worth of coordinates and she stares at none of them.

R2's camera feed appears in the corner of her screen. He's parked exactly where she left him.

A sharp burst of static — then R2 SCREAMS a warning. His dome spins.

Shadow falls across the cockpit glass. Then another shadow. Then the light from both suns cuts out entirely.

Rey looks up.

Three GRAND-STAR-DESTROYERS hang in the sky — vast, angular, motionless. They block the horizon the way mountains do.

Then: the crackle of her comms.

POE DAMERON (V.O.)

sitting in that X-Wing.

REY Poe?

FINN (V.O.)

REY I'm fine. How did you —

A shadow of a different kind: the MILLENNIUM FALCON descends through the blowing sand, loud and lopsided and exactly right, and sets down thirty meters away.

POE (V.O.)

something you need to hear.

The Falcon's ramp drops. Poe steps out — flight jacket, hands up because of the TIEs already screaming overhead.

POE The New Republic is gone.

She stares at him.

POE (CONT'D)

one. And the Emperor — (beat) His name is Darth Plagueis.

REY That's not possible.

FINN

That's what we said.

POE

He's been —

— waiting.

Rey looks at the three Star Destroyers.

REY

POE

very, very long.

A TIE FIGHTER drops out of the sky and lands ten meters from them, kicking up a wall of sand.

SUPER-STORM-TROOPERS drop from the landing ramp — not standard issue. Heavier armor. They move with an unnatural stillness. Their faces are blanked behind dark visors but something behind the visors is aware. Too aware.

Rey raises her hand. She pushes a wave of Force-suggestion toward the lead trooper.

The trooper does not slow. Does not blink.

Rey drops her hand from her saber hilt.

FINN (quiet) Force-users?

REY (quiet) Some of them. Yes.

Poe's hand moves toward his holster. Rey stops him with a look.

REY (CONT'D) Don't.

We'll go.

She steps forward. Finn and Poe exchange a glance. They follow.

Vast. Dark. Built at every proportion to make the person standing in it feel small — ceilings that cannot be seen, walls that recede. The only light falls on the center of the room and the elevated throne.

DARTH PLAGUEIS sits in it. He is large in the way of very old things — not tall, but dense with accumulated weight. His face holds what a face looks like after centuries of wanting. His eyes are pale, cataract-ringed, completely alert.

Finn and Poe are escorted out by troopers. The doors seal.

Rey stands alone in the pool of light.

PLAGUEIS Granddaughter.

REY I don't use that name.

PLAGUEIS

matters of preference.

REY Neither is the Force.

Plagueis studies her.

PLAGUEIS No. It is not. (rising, slowly)

makes the story simple.

REY And your version?

PLAGUEIS

called the walls wisdom.

REY

something so convenient.

A thin pause. Plagueis almost smiles.

PLAGUEIS

gone.

The side door opens. A small figure enters — a child, no older than ten, with the red-and-black facial markings of species Rey doesn't immediately recognize. Small horns. Calm, flat eyes. A Sith Apprentice.

SITH APPRENTICE

Exegol.

Plagueis does not look away from Rey.

PLAGUEIS Bring them to the surface.

TITLE CARD: "YEARS EARLIER"

A low room. A mat on the floor. A single lamp burning oil.

SHMI SKYWALKER sits on the edge of Anakin's mat. She sings low, formless, more rhythm than melody. The kind of song that exists only to say: I am here.

Anakin, age nine now, lies still. Eyes closed. She thinks he's asleep.

SHMI (softly) I know you're awake, Ani.

His eyes open. Caught.

ANAKIN Sorry.

SHMI

She pushes a strand of hair from his forehead. Through the high, narrow window above: a fragment of star field.

ANAKIN

She looks at the window. The stars.

SHMI All of what?

ANAKIN

Shmi is quiet for a moment.

SHMI

ANAKIN

SHMI

She smooths his hair one more time.

SHMI (CONT'D) Goodnight, Ani.

She moves to her own mat and lies down. The lamp dims.

Anakin lies on his back, eyes open. One star crosses the window frame — moving, slow, a ship maybe or a moon. He watches it until it's gone.

He lies awake a long time.

TITLE CARD: "THE PRESENT"

Small. Metal. A grille in the floor and a grille in the ceiling and nothing else.

Finn and Poe sit against opposite walls.

POE

Resistance base.

FINN

weak to ignore.

POE And now we're in a box.

FINN

Destroyers appeared, Poe.

POE

Tatooine.

FINN

signal —

The door opens. Two Super-Storm-Troopers carry REY in and drop her on the floor. She lands hard, semi-conscious. The door seals.

Finn is at her side in an instant.

FINN (CONT'D) Rey. Rey, look at me.

Her eyes flutter. She's not badly hurt — shaken, something pulled from her.

REY (barely) Master Skywalker...

FINN

POE

somewhere else.

FINN

POE

school.

Rey's eyes open fully. She pulls herself upright against the wall.

REY Plagueis.

FINN Yeah. We met him.

REY We're here.

POE Exegol?

She nods. All three of them register it at the same time something wrong in the air, a pressure below the sound of the

ship's engines, a cold that has nothing to do with temperature.

The cell door opens.

The transport sets down on cracked obsidian. The sky above Exegol is purple-black and perpetually electric — lightning moves through it in slow, enormous sheets.

Rey, Finn, and Poe are marched toward the fortress entrance. Two massive blast doors, carved with Sith script.

Finn looks up at the sky.

FINN (quiet) I hate this planet.

POE (quiet) Yeah.

The blast doors open.

Another throne room — but older than Plagueis's. The stone here is original, not built. This chamber was cut from the rock of Exegol itself.

A hooded figure sits on the throne. Still. Waiting. The way something waits that has been waiting for a very long time.

Finn and Poe are pulled away by guards. Rey is brought forward alone.

The figure speaks.

SIDIOUS (O.S.) Granddaughter.

Rey goes still. She knows that voice.

The figure rises. The hood falls back. The scarlet lightsaber ignites — double-bladed glow — and in its light:

DARTH SIDIOUS. Restored. Not reconstructed — restored. The lightning-mapped face, the yellow eyes, the patient, enormous hunger.

SIDIOUS

easily.

REY You have a master now.

SIDIOUS A temporary arrangement.

REY No.

SIDIOUS You will reconsider.

He raises his hand. A Force-grip closes on Rey's arm — pulling, twisting. She digs in. Her jaw locks.

In the Force, barely: the whisper of VADER'S presence — warning, urgent. And beneath it, faint as breath:

ANAKIN (V.O.) (barely audible) Stay strong.

The blast doors open.

BEN SOLO enters.

Kylo Ren's armor, rebuilt along the same cracked lines, red resin in the seams. The crossguard saber on his belt. He walks with the same terrible certainty. He stops before Sidious and kneels.

Sidious releases Rey. She drops to one knee, catching herself.

SIDIOUS (to Ben) Rise.

Ben rises.

SIDIOUS (CONT'D) She is your gift. Turn her. Complete what you could not

Darth Vader.

Ben looks at Rey. Something unreadable behind the mask.

The gold blade ignites. Warm light in the cold dark.

Ben ignites the red crossguard. The two colors compete — gold and red, warm and cold.

They face each other across the stone floor.

REY I don't want to fight you.

No answer. He charges.

Rey force-jumps — he passes beneath her and spins, already correcting. She lands and turns. They clash — blades lock, gold pressed against red, sparks falling between them.

REY (CONT'D)

He shoves her back. She catches herself on one foot.

His crossguard saber swings wide. She ducks under it, feints left. The blade passes over Poe and Finn — who drop flat.

The crossguard saber wrenches free of Ben's grip.

It spins through the air. Rey's left hand comes up. The red saber slaps into her palm.

She stands with both blades — gold in her right hand, red in her left. Gold and red light on her face.

Sidious, from the dais:

SIDIOUS

be.

Rey looks at Ben Solo. Unarmed. Waiting.

The rage is there. She can feel it — the weight of everyone she has lost, everyone the Sith have broken.

The gold blade comes up.

And comes down.

The red follows.

Ben falls.

Rey stands over him. She kneels. She pulls the cracked helmet away with one hand.

His eyes are blue. Ben Solo's eyes.

BEN (barely) Thank you.

And he is gone.

Silence.

Rey stands. She turns from Ben's body and faces the dais.

PLAGUEIS stands at the edge of it — he has moved here from his own ship at some point, observing. Measuring. His pale eyes do their arithmetic.

Rey raises her hand.

The gold saber leaves it.

It crosses the room in a line of warm light.

It strikes PLAGUEIS.

He falls from the throne. The sound of it — dais stone meeting something ancient and heavy — echoes.

Then silence.

Rey lets the air back into her lungs. The gold blade extinguishes on the floor. She calls it back to her hand.

She feels the cold move through her — not temperature. Something inside.

Her eyes close. When they open: a hint of darkness at the edges. She blinks it away. Once. Twice.

Her eyes clear.

She looks at Ben's body for a long moment.

She weeps. Not loud. Not performed. Just the fact of it.

TITLE CARD: "YEARS EARLIER"

Anakin, age nine. The yard is dark. A canvas cover drapes the half-built podracer.

Anakin kneels beside it in the dust. His hands move under the canvas by feel — checking a coupling, verifying a fuel line connection. He doesn't need light. He knows where everything is.

He stops.

His hands rest on the frame.

Something moves through him — not wind, not sound. Directional. Enormous. It points at tomorrow the way a compass points at a pole. He doesn't have a name for it yet. He doesn't need one.

He sits very still and lets it move through him.

The stars above Mos Espa are thick and close.

Anakin pulls the canvas back into place. He stands. He goes inside.

TITLE CARD: "THE PRESENT"

The room has emptied. The bodies of the fallen remain but the living have cleared out.

Rey sits on the throne. It fits her the way bad things sometimes fit — easily, wrongly.

A KNIGHT OF REN stands before her in a Force grip — lifted foot from the floor, struggling. The last one.

REY

Emperor.

She releases him.

He drops to the floor.

Before he can rise, before he can reach for his weapon, he is still. The Force has left him. He falls on his side, dead — not killed by a blade. Killed by the absence of what sustained him.

Rey looks at her hand. She extinguishes the saber.

The chamber holds nothing now.

The Falcon drifts in the dark above Exegol. Exegol's lightning plays through the small porthole windows.

Finn is asleep on the upper bunk. He mutters. Then louder:

FINN (in sleep)

Poe, on the lower bunk, opens his eyes. He listens. Finn goes quiet. A snore. Poe stares at the ceiling.

POE (to himself) Queen of Amidala. What does that...?

A sound in the cabin. Not mechanical. Not ship noise.

Poe sits up fast and cracks his head on the bottom of Finn's bunk.

POE (CONT'D) Agh —

In the doorway: blue-silver light. Small. Ancient.

YODA stands in the Force, watching Poe hold his head.

POE (CONT'D) Yoda.

YODA

do.

POE I didn't shout.

YODA About to. (settling)

Poe stares at him.

POE

thoughts?

YODA

(a beat) Feel your feelings, I did.

Silence. Exegol's lightning throws slow blue shadows through the porthole.

From the upper bunk, Finn begins to snore again — dreaming of a senator, a queen, a republic that is gone.

YODA (CONT'D)

His light dims. He is gone.

Poe lies back carefully, protecting his head. He stares at the ceiling for a long time.

The X-Wing hangs in the dark above Exegol. Rey runs pre-flight. Her hands know these controls now — they are no longer Luke's hands or anyone else's. They are hers.

She keys the comms.

REY

Resistance frequencies.

REY (CONT'D)

throne. (beat) I can't promise you order or

She cuts the transmission.

In the Force — faint, warm, enormous-eared — the shape of YODA'S amusement. Ancient approval, offered without words.

She makes the jump.

Hyperspace takes her.

SERIES OF SHOTS

The MILLENNIUM FALCON banks away from Exegol and punches to hyperspace — Chewie at the controls, BB-8 rolling between the seats, Poe and Finn side by side looking out at the stars.

A desert cave on Tatooine. The stone with worn grooves on the wall. The lamp of amber lightsaber light is gone. The room is empty and dark and very old. A breath of wind moves sand across the entrance.

Mos Espa. Night. A small window. Anakin Skywalker, age nine, asleep at last, the Force moving through him like a tide vast and warm and full of everything that has not yet happened.

The black between stars. Rey's X-Wing crossing it — small, alone, going somewhere.

TITLE CARD: "IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY, THE STORY IS NOT FINISHED. IT IS ONLY BEGINNING AGAIN."

\*\*FADE OUT.