# Star Wars: Duel of the Fates

Star Wars: Duel of the Fates (also known as Star Wars: Episode IX – Duel of the Fates) was the original draft of the third film in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. Named after the franchise's musical composition of the same name, the script was written in 2016 by Colin Trevorrow and Derek Connolly while Trevorrow was attached as director. After Trevorrow left the project in 2017, it was replaced with a script by J. J. Abrams and Chris Terrio that became 2019's Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, although the film retained modified ideas from Duel of the Fates.
A draft of the script of Duel of the Fates was leaked online in January 2020, shortly after the release of The Rise of Skywalker. It garnered attention due to The Rise of Skywalker's polarizing reception and inspired fan-made adaptations.

## Plot

The First Order, led by General Hux as its chancellor, now controls the galaxy and has shut down all intergalactic communications. Still free from the First Order's control, Rey, Finn, Poe Dameron, Rose Tico and BB-8 steal a Star Dreadnought from the occupied planet of Kuat and take it to Korilev, where General Leia Organa leads the remaining members of Resistance, who have set up a new base.
Kylo Ren uncovers a Sith holocron in Darth Vader's castle on Mustafar, prompting him to seek training from Tor Valum, a 7,000-year-old alien who once mentored Darth Plagueis, Emperor Palpatine's master. During his training, Kylo battles a phantom of Vader and gains the ability to absorb life energy, using this power to kill Tor Valum. Meanwhile, Rey, having trained under the Force spirit of Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To, learns from ancient Jedi texts that a device capable of restoring galactic communications is hidden in the old Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Finn, Rose, R2-D2, and C-3PO are dispatched to Coruscant to retrieve it, while Rey, Chewbacca, and Poe travel to Bonadan in order to locate the planet Mortis, as Rey has seen a vision of herself dueling Kylo there. Leia convinces Lando Calrissian and his smugglers to join the Resistance for an attack on Coruscant.
On Coruscant, Finn and Rose find and activate a device that could help Leia spark a galaxy-wide rebellion, but their presence is soon discovered by First Order troops. Rose is captured, but Finn escapes after battling a stormtrooper named RK-514, whom he defeats and spares. RK-514 defects, and together they convince other stormtroopers to join their cause. Meanwhile, on Bonadan, Rey, Poe, and Chewbacca locate Mortis, but they are ambushed by Kylo's Knights of Ren. After defeating them, Rey, in a moment of anger, uses Force lightning to kill one of the Knights upon recalling that they were responsible for her parents' deaths. Fearing her descent into darkness, Rey decides to go to Mortis alone, leaving Poe and Chewbacca to return to the Resistance base.
Back on Coruscant, Finn leads a revolution against the First Order, aided by droids, citizens, and the defected stormtroopers. Leia, Poe, Chewbacca, Lando, and a Resistance army arrive to join the fight. With the First Order's defeat, Hux takes his own life. After escaping captivity, Rose reconfigures the hyperdrive of the First Order's flagship, sending it crashing into Coruscant as it attempts to flee.
Kylo and Rey arrive on Mortis, where Kylo experiences a vision of his father, Han Solo, while Rey sees a vision of her parents—whom Kylo reveals he killed. The two clash in a fierce battle, during which Kylo blinds Rey before approaching a Jedi Temple rumored to house an ancient power. There, he is confronted by the spirit of Luke Skywalker. Despite Luke’s warnings, Kylo presses forward, while Luke offers guidance to Rey, who faces Kylo once again. Rey declares that her former masters were wrong to reject the dark side and embraces both light and dark, using this newfound balance to defeat Kylo.
Kylo attempts to kill Rey by draining her life energy, but Leia reaches him through the Force and persuades him to stop. In a final act of redemption, Kylo transfers his own life force to Rey, healing her but sacrificing himself. Before dying, his last words reveal Rey’s true birth name: Rey Solana. As she nears death, Rey is visited by the spirits of Luke, Yoda, and Obi-Wan Kenobi, who give her the choice to stay dead or return to life.
Back at the Resistance base, Finn, Poe, Rose, and Chewbacca are honored with medals. Finn and Rose settle on Modesta, where they raise Force-sensitive children. Rey visits their home, promising to teach the children about the Force and the importance of maintaining the balance between light and dark to ensure lasting peace across the galaxy.

## Development

In August 2015, Colin Trevorrow was announced as the director of Episode IX; he wrote a script titled Duel of the Fates with frequent collaborator Derek Connolly. The draft dated December 2016 would have required changes due to the death of actress Carrie Fisher (who played Leia Organa) the same month. The script draft was leaked online in January 2020 (while The Rise of Skywalker was in theaters). A number of Twitter users expressed that they would have preferred to see Trevorrow's Duel of the Fates over The Rise of Skywalker, which was written by J. J. Abrams and Chris Terrio. Major differences featured in Duel of the Fates are that Rey—who has the last name Solana—is not related to Palpatine (Darth Sidious), Kylo Ren seeks to be trained by Sith Master Tor Valum (who was going to be revealed as the master of Darth Plagueis), and the final battle centers upon the previously established planets Coruscant from the prequel trilogy and Mortis from The Clone Wars animated series. Other differences include that Rey is blinded by an unredeemed Kylo Ren, Luke's spirit has a more significant role, and R2-D2 suffers severe damage. The R2-D2 scene is the only one which Trevorrow has officially commented on, noting on Twitter that the droid would have been repaired. As part of an online Comic-Con event, Trevorrow called his departure from the film "traumatic" and showed a spaceship model, called a TIE marauder, he designed with his son for the unmade film.
Some story elements survived in The Rise of Skywalker, notable examples including Kylo finding a Sith artifact in Darth Vader's castle on Mustafar and the transference of Force energy, and Rey using Force Lightning against an enemy.
While an initially reluctant Lando helping save the day by surprisingly arriving leading a fleet of spaceships made it into the final film, in Duel of the Fates, Lando was originally going to be introduced as enjoying a life of luxury by owning a cabaret bar. The views of Lando's portrayer Billy Dee Williams aligned with that more than was ultimately made, as he stated that due to Lando's gambling backstory, he imagined old Lando as a rich "Las Vegas entrepreneur and showman like Steve Wynn", and that he favored that to the military general side of Lando. The cabaret bar was replaced with Lando being on exile on a desert planet, which was noted as less what people would expect from Lando by Screen Rant. Entertainment Weekly noted that Lando would have made sense in the planet of casinos depicted in The Last Jedi. Director Rian Johnson considered placing Lando in the scene and returning him to his morally ambiguous roots, by having him betray the heroes again, but ultimately replaced him by creating the less moral character of DJ.
According to the website Polygon, the desert planet where Lando was found was the final addition to the film, as noted in its officially written artbook by Phil Szostak. In regards to the unmade Duel of the Fates script, the artbook noted only a few images related to the unfilmed script made it to the book, and that it did not even list Trevorrow's name among the main creative forces of the film. It also described the leaked Duel of the Fates concept art as coming from earlier drafts.
A TIE fighter Echelon ship statue survived in the Disney theme park Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, the ship was developed by Colin Trevorrow during his work on Episode IX before being replaced as the film's director.

## Reception

The draft gained attention due to the mixed response to The Rise of Skywalker. Upon release, The Rise of Skywalker was criticized by some film critics and Star Wars fans for, in their view, not connecting to the previous two films in the sequel trilogy and retconning events of The Last Jedi, its alleged plot holes (Palpatine's return and his relationship to Rey being the most prominent), and its treatment of minority and female characters, particularly Rose Tico, Poe Dameron, and Finn. Actress Kelly Marie Tran's screentime as Rose was reduced from 10 minutes in The Last Jedi to less than two minutes in The Rise of Skywalker, while Poe's new backstory as a smuggler was seen as racist towards Latinos due to him being portrayed by Guatemalan-born actor Oscar Isaac. Finn's actor, John Boyega, also criticized the film for sidelining characters played by people of color, including him, Tran, and Isaac. Eliana Dokterman, writing for Time magazine, called the film and its claimed retcons "problematic", perceiving Abrams' choices as having been made to appease the complaints leveled by a toxic contingent of online fandom angered by The Last Jedi, in particular online trolls who harassed Johnson and several cast members, most notably Tran.
Before the draft was revealed as real, Esquire described it as too good to be fan-fiction, calling the script "worldclass", and in contrast criticized The Rise of Skywalker as cowardly for not killing any main character, other than Palpatine, "the old man that was already dead", and Ben Solo whom he deemed "irredeemable from the start". Nerdist notes that Rey remained a nobody, as compared to making her a Palpatine, which in their view undermined the meaning of The Last Jedi. Inverse states that Duel of the Fates has two massive flaws in its roles for Leia and her son, Kylo Ren. However, Inverse praised the discarded script for multiple reasons, including being darker and less reliant on nostalgia and retcons than the final film, as well as connecting better to The Force Awakens due to providing an explanation for Rey's visions of the Knights of Ren.
Collider made a video praising the unmade script in April 2021. According to Comic Book Resources the unmade script was heavily political somewhat beyond Finn's plotline, noting it sought to explain how the social class worked in the franchise (continuing from The Last Jedi), and comparing the themes to contemporary films like Us and the Oscar-winning film Parasite. It noted in the opening act that migrants helped the First Order due to financial bankruptcy, and that the communications blockade was a parallel for censorship. It also compared the stormtroopers' conditioning to imperialism, in the sense that indigenous children have always been forced to forget their cultures and native languages in re-education camps. Comic Book Resources called Disney and Abrams cowards for depoliticizing the ultimately made film. The website later published a detailed opinion on why the unmade script would have been better than the one Abrams rewrote, calling most of the unmade arcs better including those of Rey, Hux, Kylo Ren (as the main villain), Luke Skywalker, Rose Tico, and Finn.
Some websites perceived Trevorrow's unmade script as closely aligned with the themes of the previous films of the saga, mainly The Last Jedi, and some also perceived it as giving other star characters more to do. John Boyega concurred with this, stating that the released film by Terrio and Abrams denied him of the "big hero moment" that the unmade film intended for his character, for instance when he leads an army into battle against the First Order holding a Rebellion flag, which was developed as concept art. Finn was also going to convince stormtroopers to defect the First Order and lead them into battle against it. The concept art of Finn's speech while holding the flag, as well as dialogue from the unmade film, were shared on social media and compared very positively and paralleling a speech given by Boyega during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. In November 2020, Boyega revealed that the controversy surrounding the diminished roles of the characters played by people of color in The Rise of Skywalker led him to have a "very honest conversation" with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who supported his claims. Boyega also said he would like to see Duel of the Fates adapted into a television series, particularly an animated one. Some sources have suggested that aspects of the script could be incorporated into other future Star Wars media. A filmed deleted scene from The Last Jedi Blu-ray showed a similar plotline where Finn caused a stormtrooper revolt against Captain Phasma; some websites felt the scene should have been kept in the final film.
Various media sources have compared the unmade script and the controversy surrounding it to Zack Snyder's Justice League, a director's cut representing Snyder's original vision before he had to step away from the production and it was reworked for theatrical release by Joss Whedon. The failed course correction attempt was also compared to the ones of the James Bond films Diamonds Are Forever and No Time to Die, which were well-received upon release. The BBC compared the controversy to the one surrounding the Game of Thrones ending, and the female Ghostbusters, being negative about Abrams' choices. The Simpsons made an episode titled "Do Pizza Bots Dream of Electric Guitars" for their thirty-second season where the plot was about Homer Simpson and Comic Book Guy trying to prevent Abrams from doing a film featuring characters from Homer's childhood. Shortly after the release of The Rise of Skywalker, a rumor was circulated concerning an alleged "Abrams cut" of the film, which was quickly debunked. A subsequent unsubstantiated rumor claimed that George Lucas would release his own version of The Rise of Skywalker even though he had no involvement with the making of the film.
Trevorrow would later acknowledge that his work on Duel of the Fates, even though his version of the film went unmade, helped him as a "practice run" to make a satisfactory finale film to a franchise he grew up with, learnings he would later put into practice for Jurassic World Dominion, which concluded the storyline started in the original Jurassic Park trilogy much like how The Rise of Skywalker concluded the storyline of the Skywalker Saga, even recruiting several of the people he worked with in Duel of the Fates for Dominion, such as production designer Kevin Jenkins.

## Adaptations
### Fan-made comic adaptation

Graphic artist Andrew Winegarner produced a comic version of the script in March 2021. The fan-made comic adaptation of the unmade script is 7 parts long, and its author shared it for free on his website. IGN noted that the author stated that he adapted the unmade script due to his disappointment over how The Rise of Skywalker deviated from expectations that had been set up by the first two films of the sequel trilogy, and was a "retread of Return of the Jedi." He also noted the unmade script was not fan fiction because Trevorrow received credit as a writer in The Rise of Skywalker. CinemaBlend was positive about the fan-made comic, having opined in January 2020 that Lucasfilm should adapt the unmade script into a comic, along the lines of The Star Wars, which adapted the original unmade script of the original Star Wars film (1977). Inverse was positive about the fan-made comic adaptation while noting that the opinion that an unmade version of a film would have been better is common when the officially released version of the work was negatively received. He also compared the comic to the Star Wars Infinities comics, which told alternate stories to the ones of the films.

### Fan-made animated adaptations

Duel of the Fates also received a fan-made animated parody adaptation on the YouTube channel Mr Sunday Movies. Inverse was positive about the parody, noting that it was more of a comedic overview of the details of the unmade script, rather than a serious adaptation. Another website, Digital Spy, compared the style of the animation drawings to the one of Nintendo's video game The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
CinemaBlend was positive about the fan-made parody adaptation, and in another article noted that another different, and more serious animated adaptation existed by another YouTube channel, adapting a single scene of Kylo Ren talking to the ghost of Luke Skywalker in the ruins of Darth Vader's castle.