George Lucas' Plans For The Third Star Wars Trilogy

[Agent Z]

“I had planned for the first trilogy to be about the father, the second trilogy to be about the son, and the third trilogy to be about the daughter and the grandchildren. Episodes VII, VIII, and IX would take ideas from what happened after the Iraq War,” Lucas says in Star Wars Archives. “‘Okay, you fought the war, you killed everybody, now what are you going to do?’ Rebuilding afterwards is harder than starting a rebellion or fighting the war. When you win the war and you disband the opposing army, what do they do? The stormtroopers would be like Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist fighters that joined ISIS and kept on fighting. The stormtroopers refuse to give up when the Republic win.”

But the Imperial remnant Lucas describes wouldn’t have been the main threat of the new trilogy; their fight would’ve created a power vacuum that allowed the long-simmering power base of Star Wars’ criminal underworld—an idea Lucas has long been fascinated with, and had big plans for—would’ve risen to confront our heroes and the remnant alike. Led by a familiar face: Darth Maul.

“They want to be stormtroopers forever, so they go to a far corner of the galaxy, start their own country, and their own rebellion. There’s a power vacuum so gangsters, like the Hutts, are taking advantage of the situation, and there is chaos,” Lucas continued. “The key person is Darth Maul, who had been resurrected in the Clone Wars cartoons—he brings all the gangs together. [Maul]’s very old, and we have two versions of him. One is with a set of cybernetic legs like a spider, and then later on he has metal legs and he was a little bit bigger, more of a superhero. We did all this in the animated series, he was in a bunch of episodes.”

https://io9.gizmodo.com/george-lucas...ore-1845643919

[Anthony W]

Better than what we got.

[Jackalope89]

https://io9.gizmodo.com/george-lucas...ore-1845643919

While the Legends time line is still my overall favorite (Chewie, no!), that actually sounds like an interesting story line. Far better than the utter mess the ST became (Force Awakens did have potential going forward, but man was it wasted).

[Slowpokeking]

I don't think Maul would fit a big bad role too well. Darth Plagueis would be a better choice if you don't want anything new.

[Sacred Knight]

Its a different, if only slightly different, main antagonistic formula over basically just the Empire 2.0. I mean, a crime syndicate isn't new, but it was never the driving force of any films before.

[sunofdarkchild]

One thing I'm not a fan of is him having Luke take toddlers to train as Jedi again. Considering that he was around 20 when he started training to be a Jedi, the way the Jedi were depicted as being partially responsible for their own demise in the prequels, and the fact that there would need to be a new Jedi order pretty quickly, I feel like Luke should specifically be looking for people who are older and can give their own consent to being trained as a Jedi.

[ChrisIII]

I think a bit of the criminal stuff did survive-Disney's sequel trilogy EU has the First Order often make deals with the underworld in order to help them out. (This is also implied a bit in TLJ as well).

[Starter Set]

Some good ideas but i'm on the opinion that any sequel should have been at least 3 or 4 generations later and not involve at all Luke, Leia and Han.

Let our heroes enjoy the victory they won, you know. Any direct sequel to the OT can only lessen what they and the Alliance accomplished.

Don't kill the past, respect it and go on your own adventure you lazy bastards.

[BeastieRunner]

Based on some future Disney plans they've announced/leaked, it sounds like this is the way they are going but with the First Order swapping out with the Empire and Rey being swapped for Leia and Finn with Luke.

[ChrisIII]

Some good ideas but i'm on the opinion that any sequel should have been at least 3 or 4 generations later and not involve at all Luke, Leia and Han.

Let our heroes enjoy the victory they won, you know. Any direct sequel to the OT can only lessen what they and the Alliance accomplished.

Don't kill the past, respect it and go on your own adventure you lazy bastards.

That's kind of what they did with Dark Horse's LEGACY. Han, Leia, and co (although they still had their share of tragedy) passed on but the Republic+Jedi they built pretty much endured for a century later before things went bad again. Luke's a force ghost (Well, either that or a drug hallucination) but he's not grumpy Luke.

[WebLurker]

10characters

[ChrisIII]

Funny thing is around the time of ROTJ, in interviews Mark said that a sequel trilogy (as told to him by George) would have Luke as an Obi-Wan/Merlin style character passing "excalibur" on to the next generation, and also said it would happen in the 2010s. Which is, more or less, how things kind of played out.

[Serpico Jones]

I thought the First Order and the resistance were the worst things in the sequels. Empire vs rebels rehash was such a boring idea. I also don’t like the fact that both of the lead characters are diet versions of Luke and Vader.

[SuperiorIronman]

It sounds slightly different to what we got.

Ultimately though I find the whole thing for nothing since while it sounds interesting it would've never worked. I don't doubt they could've gotten Maul but Leia is a hard one especially given it'd have been so long since ROTJ we would've had the gap regardless even if this was made shortly after the Prequels. And even still Carrie Fisher's death would've thrown a wrench into things as well as Covid happening shortly after Episode 9 actually did come out, had Carrie lived it's still not a movie that'd have happened.

You'd have needed this to have been a thing pretty quickly after ROTS and that just didn't happen as they prepped for The Clone Wars. You also got the Disney purchase a few years later and while they did keep some of what Lucas wrote, this was simply never meant to be. George would've needed to begin this shortly after 2005 for this sequel trilogy to have been possible.

[ChrisIII]

Wonder if Maul would be Ray Park with Sam Witmer doing the voice, like in Solo (Witwer also did the Clone Wars voice but Ray was back for the makeup in live-action).

However, wouldn't Maul be quite elderly at this point? I mean, it kind of worked with the Emperor since 90% of the time he's not really that physical a character and was decrepit already. Maul on the other hand....