If you could continue the star wars movies (ignoring the sequel trilogy) how would you do so

fialleril:

I wouldn’t.

Okay, okay, I know that sounds flip, but I’m actually completely serious. Part of telling a good story is knowing where to end it. And I actually think that Return of the Jedi was a very solid and satisfying end to the narrative arc of Star Wars.

It was a mythic ending to a mythic story, leaving open new and nearly endless possibilities for the galaxy that our heroes could build from the ashes of the Empire. And it was also a deeply personal ending to a story that, in spite of its vast scope, was ultimately a very personal story. Luke Skywalker, the boy from Tatooine, became a Jedi like his father before him, and saved his father in the process. The hero descended into the underworld and came back out again changed, and the world was changed because of his journey. That’s a nearly perfect mythic arc.

It’s maybe worth pointing out, too, that I think there’s a big difference between what I might like to see in a fanfic continuation of the films, and what I would actually want set to film. Fics that function as epilogues or continue the story past the end of the canon are endlessly interesting for many of the same reasons that AUs are: they give writers and readers a chance to explore endless possibilities, to look at characters in new and unexpected ways, to draw out themes in the story that particularly resonate, etc, etc.

And they work so well in part because there is no canon “after.”

The best fandom example I can offer, even though it’s not one of my fandoms, is probably Harry Potter. The Harry Potter epilogue is almost universally hated, and the thing is, that would have been the case no matter what the epilogue contained. Because what people really hate is the way it nails the canon down.

ROTJ was a near perfect mythic ending because it wrapped up all the big themes and allowed Luke to complete his mythic arc in a very satisfying way, but it also left the future open, and that future felt free and bright and full of possibilities.

A story that has such a well-executed and complete arc does not need a sequel.