What Damon Lindelof Really Wanted to Do With Rey, Finn, and Poe Before Lucasfilm Fired Him
The moment the credits rolled on ‘The Rise of Skywalker’ in 2019, ‘Star Wars‘ found itself in an identity crisis that has quietly defined everything the franchise has done since. The sequel trilogy had introduced a wave of new heroes to carry the saga forward, only for their futures to remain stubbornly uncertain as Lucasfilm struggled to chart what came next. That uncertainty, it turns out, sat at the very heart of a ‘Star Wars’ screenplay that never made it to the screen.
Damon Lindelof, the prolific writer behind ‘The Leftovers,’ ‘Watchmen,’ and the upcoming HBO series ‘Lanterns,’ was brought in by Lucasfilm to develop a Rey-focused film set after the events of ‘The Rise of Skywalker,’ a project that generated enormous buzz before collapsing in the early months of 2023. For over three years, Lindelof said little publicly about what happened or what his vision actually looked like. That silence ended this week.
During an appearance on The Ringer-Verse’s “House of R” podcast, Lindelof addressed what he called the bantha in the room, confirming he was fired from a ‘Star Wars’ movie after two years on the project. He was candid about the creative ambition behind his approach, explaining that he and collaborators Justin Britt-Gibson and Rayna McClendon were trying to do something genuinely unconventional with the material. Their version was built around the tension between nostalgia and reinvention, not just as a Lucasfilm development problem, but as the fan debate that has followed the franchise since the sequel trilogy. As Lindelof put it on the podcast, the plan was to stage that argument inside the story itself without breaking the fourth wall, which he described as doing the Protestant Reformation inside ‘Star Wars.’
Lindelof also revealed that he and Lucasfilm were actively looking for what he called the center of ‘Star Wars’ following the end of the sequel trilogy, and believed that Rey, Finn, and Poe had solved that problem. In his view, the arrival of ‘The Force Awakens’ made the answer obvious, with those three characters poised to become the launching point for everything that followed once the new trilogy was complete. His lingering question, one he posed openly on the podcast, was whether Mando and Grogu have since taken that place instead.
The writing process ultimately proved too difficult to sustain, with Lindelof describing challenges around tone, canon, how the film connected to ‘Episode IX,’ and whether it was meant to launch an entirely new trilogy. Lindelof and Britt-Gibson departed the project in early 2023, with Steven Knight brought in to replace them. Knight himself later left in October of 2024, and George Nolfi has since taken over screenwriting duties as the film continues its difficult road through development.
The timing of Lindelof’s comments is notable given that this week marks ‘Star Wars” first theatrical outing since 2019, with ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ expected to open to between $80 million and $100 million domestically over the Memorial Day weekend, a performance that many observers believe will shape what Lucasfilm does next with the broader franchise. The Rey film, meanwhile, has no confirmed production start date and remains without a release window.
Lindelof’s blueprint for a ‘Star Wars’ movie built around the war between nostalgia and reinvention may have been too conceptually daring for the studio at the time, but given how loudly that same debate still rages among fans today, it raises a fair question: was the idea ahead of its time, or simply impossible to land? If you had the chance to see Lindelof’s version of a post-sequel ‘Star Wars’ story with Rey, Finn, and Poe at its center, would that have been the direction you wanted the franchise to take?
