Will ‘Star Wars: Episode IX’ Atone For Disney Betraying George Lucas?

George Lucas was initially reluctant to sell off the Lucasfilm franchise he’d built from the ground up to Disney. Rightfully so – he’s spent decades developing and exploring the galaxy far, far away. Negotiations for the sale even included the sale of Lucas’s Star Wars storylines for a sequel trilogy. Almost immediately upon the sale, however, Disney abandoned those stories in favor of their own … betraying George Lucas in the process.  

Disney CEO Bob Iger has a new book coming out, and as comicbook.com points out, he certainly has a lot to say. We reported yesterday how Iger admitted that Disney did too much too fast with Star Wars. Iger also talked about Disney’s take-over of Star Wars, and betraying George Lucas:

Now, in the first meeting with him about the future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed, and while this whole process would never have been easy for him, we’d gotten off to an unnecessarily rocky start.… I could have handled it better … should have prepared him for the meeting with J.J. and Michael and told him about our conversations, that we felt it was better to go in another direction. I could have talked through this with him and possibly avoided angering him by not surprising him.”

~ Bob Iger

Will Disney atone for betraying George Lucas with The Rise of Skywalker?

In a prior interview (HuffPost tells us), Lucas laid out his plans for a sequel trilogy, wherein he would:

… get into a microbiotic world, a world of creatures that operate differently than we do. I call them the Whills. And the Whills are the ones who actually control the universe. They feed off the Force. We’re vessels for them. And the conduit is the midi-chlorians. The midi-chlorians are the ones that communicate with the Whills. The Whills, in a general sense, they are the Force.”

~ George Lucas

One of the biggest rumors about Emperor Palpatine’s return in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker centers on Darth Sidious inhabiting the form of another. That could be Kylo Ren, Rey, or someone else entirely. If that rumor holds true, it would seem that Lucasfilm may be making amends for betraying George Lucas … from a certain point of view. If sentient beings are but vessels for the Whills, such a notion could easily explain how Palpatine makes his return.

Will The Rise of Skywalker make amends for betraying George Lucas and satisfy the father of Star Wars? We only have another few months to wait and see; Star Wars: Episode IX hits theaters December 20.

Sources: comicbook.com; HuffPost