Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker gets a trio of new Empire magazine covers, teasing Rey and Kylo Ren’s epic final showdown. As most people know by now, Star Wars 9 serves as the conclusion to the Skywalker saga, providing a definitive end for the story that began with the original film back in 1977. Even by their standards, Lucasfilm has been extremely secretive about the film, revealing as little as humanly possible in both a teaser trailer from Celebration Chicago and a D23 special look. But soon, the studio is going to have to peel back the curtain a tiny bit more.
There are now under three months remaining until Star Wars 9 opens in theaters, which means the marketing blitz is about to hit. Just yesterday, Disney held the global reveal for the Triple Force Friday event, revealing new characters and details from The Rise of Skywalker. As the promotional campaign revs up down the homestretch, Empire is going to have a spread covering the movie. In preparation of that issue, the new covers have been revealed.
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Today, the magazine unveiled three separate covers. There are special collector’s editions for Rey and Kylo Ren, as well as the subscribers’ cover featuring the two young Force users standing back-to-back. Check them all out in the space below:
Once again, Kylo Ren is seen wearing his repaired helmet, held together by red bonding material. This look has been very prevalent on marketing materials so far, as it’s featured on new toy packaging and on the latest cover of Star Wars Insider. Since it was a major turn of events when Kylo decided to destroy the mask early on in The Last Jedi, it will be interesting to see what compels Kylo to rebuild it, and how often it’s seen in The Rise of Skywalker. Hopefully, J.J. Abrams has his organic reasons for bringing the helmet back, and it’s not just a cheap gimmick to create new merchandising opportunities. As for Rey, there isn’t anything groundbreaking about her appearance here, but it’s still exciting to see these two characters together, representing the eternal struggle between light and dark in Star Wars.
As for the upcoming Empire issue, fans will be curious to see what details are contained in the magazine. Earlier this year, Star Wars 9 was the subject of a massive Vanity Fair spread, which featured a gallery of new still images and few other reveals (like the name of the new desert planet, Pasaana). That’s likely the benchmark for what Empire will have, especially since the movie is so close to release and Lucasfilm has really taken things to the next level keeping things under wraps. There probably won’t be any big spoilers in the pages, but at this point, fans will be happy to receive any little thing they can get.
Source: Empire
- Star Wars 9 / Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019) release date: Dec 20, 2019
