But wait, what? All that history, all that emotion…does it mean nothing? Here’s where we pick up with Rey giving the lightsaber to Luke, only for the despairing old Jedi to toss it over his shoulder. They don’t have to be skipped permanently, but they’re not necessarily a factor in Rey’s story. We’re skipping over the Mandoverse-the Disney+ shows that include The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. While she would definitely be curious about Luke and his past, that can wait a beat. She would naturally gravitate toward understanding those she has come to know personally. Instead, think about what Rey would be picking up at this point, what she would be wondering about, and what she might be learning about what happened in this galaxy before her. Before continuing on to The Last Jedi, this is the perfect chance to fill in those blanks.īut Rey Order does not go back to 1977’s original Star Wars. When Rey meets Luke in that moment and holds out the lightsaber, Mark Hamill gives it a look weighted with all the history and heartbreak that his character knows-but Rey doesn’t. And when they meet the broken, tired Luke in self-imposed exile at the end of The Force Awakens, they don’t have to struggle to match him to the young Jedi they’ve seen save the galaxy before, or (as my daughter did) assume he is that other wise old guy with a beard. New viewers don’t have to know what those things mean. Watching Star Wars in Rey order makes this okay. The voices speaking to her through the Force (Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi) and the vision of Luke Skywalker’s duel with Vader in The Empire Strikes Back are all strange and confusing. When she grasps the Skywalker lightsaber, she doesn’t know its history the way we longtime fans do. In many ways, that’s the entire point of the scene, as The Last Jedi would emphasize: Rey also struggled to see the legend of Luke Skywalker in the man standing before her. She strained to comprehend the brash young hero from Return of the Jedi as this forlorn, gray-bearded man in a brown cloak. Sure, Han Solo and Leia Organa probably looked a little grayer around the edges to her-but the most dramatic and noticeable change was in Luke, who was unrecognizable to her.
We had watched the original trilogy together already, but I realized in that moment that she had no sense at all that these films were decades old. “Look!” she declared in the hushed movie theater. In trying to devise a new watch order for Star Wars, I kept thinking of my six-year-old daughter’s reaction to the ending of The Force Awakens, when Rey finally comes face-to-face with a world-weary Luke Skywalker in exile.
There’s no single right answer or correct order, since each variation creates a different experience of the franchise-enhancing some surprises, undermining others, and providing a different perspective on the stories no matter how many times you’ve seen them.
What’s the best way to watch the Star Wars movies in order? might be the most frequently asked of the “frequently asked questions” in the galactic fandom.
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