Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker trailer prepares us for the end

Disney's biennial D23 Expo is underway, and of course that means we're going to learn a lot more about upcoming Star Wars projects. Chief among these projects is undoubtedly Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the final movie in both the sequel trilogy and the Skywalker saga as a whole. Today Disney delivered a trailer for The Rise of Skywalker, and though it doesn't have a lot of new footage from the movie, what's there is definitely worth checking out.

Officially, Disney calls this a "D23 Special Look" instead of a trailer, and perhaps that's because it's partially comprised of footage from previous films. For roughly the first half of the trailer, we're shown scenes from earlier films, from Luke and Darth Vader crossing lightsabers in the Emperor's throne room to Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan facing off against Darth Maul.

The idea, of course, is that we're approaching the end of the narrative that began with Episode 4, so the look back at some of the iconic moments in the series isn't entirely uncalled for. When we actually get to footage from The Rise of Skywalker, we see scenes that include the Resistance squaring off with the First Order in what appears to be the opening shots of an epic space battle and Rey crossing blades with Kylo Ren, just as we'd expect them to in the final movie of this trilogy.

The biggest surprise of the trailer comes at the very end, where we see Rey dressed in black robes and wielding a red, double-bladed lightsaber. Jedi heroes being tempted by the dark side are nothing new, so this could just be a vision of one of Rey's potential paths, but maybe this isn't a red herring and Rey actually turns to the dark side at some point during this movie.

That seems unlikely, but we wouldn't put anything past Disney when it comes to keeping the Star Wars franchise feeling fresh. We'll have to wait until the movie is in theaters to find out what Rey's dark side turn is all about, but that won't be happening until December 20th. In the meantime, expect to see at least a few more trailers that expand on this one.