Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker Final Trailer Breakdown

The closing chapter in the sequel trilogy. The end of the Skywalker Saga. The final trailer for Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker is here – let's dig in and find the juicy bits.

We open on a shot of a lush, dense jungle (know any forest moons that might fit that particular description?), and Rey hurtling between the trees, deflecting blasts. Time has passed since we last saw Rey 'floating rocks' on Crait, so expect her powers and confidence to have grown in the meantime.

She might be faster, stronger, Jedi-ier – but a neat cut reminds us that this is still the Rey we met in The Force Awakens all that time ago, when she was scavenging from the wreckage of a Star Destroyer on Jakku. Here, she's loose in the carcass of another fallen ship – could this one be the Death Star wreckage we've seen in all the trailers so far?

This kind of huddle is pure Star Wars – a tactical confab between the Resistance, which has grown significantly in number since Rey rescued the surviving members on Crait in The Last Jedi. Look closely, and it seems Poe Dameron is taking charge, Lando Calrissian is listening intently, and there's a Mon Calamari (that's an Admiral Ackbar-esque squid-guy to the non-hardcore) among the crowd too. The First Order doesn't stand a chance… right?

Among the new Resistance fighters, we'll be meeting one played by Lord Of The Rings and Lost alumnus Dominic Monaghan – and here's our first glimpse at him. He's stood next to Billie Lourd's Lieutenant Connix, and judging by the look on their faces – and Rose's – there's something very bad happening just out of shot.

"People keep telling me they know me," intones Rey. "No one does." Well, that chimes nicely with what the film's co-writer Chris Terrio told us about the big questions The Rise Of Skywalker will get to the heart of. One will be 'Who is Rey?' – not just in a literal sense regarding her parentage. "Who is she as a character?" he teased. "How will she find the courage and will and inner strength and power to carry on what she's inherited?"

And here comes Kylo Ren, claiming he does know Rey – setting shippers aflame, internet-wide. The Force-linked conversations between our Light Side and Dark Side figures in The Last Jedi revealed a mysterious connection. Expect the tangle of theories about where this is all going to get knottier.

Star Wars has been visiting ice planets for yonks – but never one like this. In fact, is it a planet? Is it a pure ice asteroid? Is it an iceberg on a surface of water? Whatever it is, it looks stunning – and if you glance at the underside of it you'll see that it isn't a pure reflection of the top half, instead showing something more structured. Could that be a civilisation? There must be something of note here, considering how many TIE fighters are zooming in.

Now that is a statement piece of furniture. A stone-hewn throne flanked by jagged shards, this is surely a seat befitting the Emperor and few others – but for now in the trailer it remains empty. Drawing from a design intended for the original trilogy, the throne is based on a 1981 sketch by concept artist Ralph McQuarrie, one of his ideas for the Emperor's throne room in Return Of The Jedi.

Talk about epic – this is a gigantic Star Destroyer rising up through the surface of what looks like ice, flanked by flashes of blue lightning. A natural atmospheric disturbance, or a Force-related weather pattern?

We saw earlier in the trailer that the Resistance has grown considerably – and here's the fleet to prove it. The Millennium Falcon has plenty of company in a whole host of other ships, ready to take on the Star Destroyer fleet. There's a Mon Calamari cruiser, variations on familiar freighters, and to the right of the Falcon is Ghost – a ship that will be familiar to Star Wars: Rebels viewers.

And here's another new ship, a water speeder that our heroes are riding out to the wreckage of the Death Star. With its lopsided design and the way it skims over the crashing waves, it's reminiscent of the rusty V-4X-D ski-speeders the Resistance used during the Battle of Crait in The Last Jedi. The journey across to the remains of the Death Star looks just as treacherous as whatever's to be found there.

This is the toy you're all going to want at Christmas – that's Babu Frik, a little alien who specialises in droid repair, which explains why he has his tiny mitts tinkering around in the back of C-3PO's head. Hopefully he know what he's doing up there.

Get your tissues – this line is a total heartbreaker, spelling potential disaster for the droid who's survived the entire Skywalker saga so far. What's 3PO doing? "Taking one last look, sir, at my friends," he says. Sobbing? Us? No, just a bit of dust in the old eye…

New species alert! As glimpsed in concept art, the Resistance is now riding on space-horses – or, as they're more officially known, Orbaks. Leading the way is Naomi Ackie's new character Jannah, joined by Finn and a bunch of other fighters, with BB-8 rolling alongside them on the ground. Except, it's not ground – it's the exterior of a ship in the heat of battle, with Star Destroyers, dogfights, and more ominous lightning flashing in the background. Stunning.

One of the most dramatically potent scenes in The Last Jedi saw Rey and Kylo Ren standing in the burning embers of Snoke's throne room having battled the Praetorian Guard – each fully expecting the other to join their cause. Except, it didn't quite work out that way. And now, here they are in the ruins of the Death Star throne room, facing each other once again, Rey with her lightsaber out, and Ren without his lit. Is this conflict or conciliation? Consider us intrigued.

Complicating things even further, here we once again see Rey and Ren fighting together, destroying a plinth on which sits Darth Vader's old bashed-up helmet. That piece of armour was something Ren clung to in The Force Awakens – so why is he happy to slice it up now? Who's on which side? And how does it all connect to the glimpse of Dark Rey we got in the D23 footage? And that's before we even get into the question of where this takes place. There are hints of Cloud City here, if it had a major First Order makeover. Could this be Supreme Leader Ren's snazzy new abode? Get that man a Billy bookcase!

Another angle of that stunning battle shot from earlier – the Resistance fighters, riding Orbaks across the top of a Star Destroyer, with a whole fleet of the weapons-packed Imperial ships in the background. Frankly, it hardly seems like a fair fight.

And here he is – at least, we think so. All we have to go on is that black cloak. But surely this is Emperor Palpatine, somehow back from the great beyond having carked it at the end of Return Of The Jedi. He might not be in such great shape though – from what little we can see here, it looks like he might be wired up to some kind of life-support. You'd need it too if you'd been flung down a shaft by Vader.

Despite all the danger, the resurgence of the dark side, the return of Palpatine, we end on a note of hope – Rey, with the Skywalker lightsaber, and the voices of Luke and Leia telling her: "The Force will be with you…" "…always". It's beautiful stuff, bringing the saga full circle and uniting our heroes from across the eras.