Aside from death and taxes, it seems the only other inevitability in life is Star Wars discourse. To this day, fans still passionately debate the merits and shortcomings of every piece of media in the franchise. Now another unexpected dimension has been added to the fray.
In the wake of the rather lackluster critical reception that surrounded Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker, director Colin Trevorrow's original script for the film leaked online, giving fans a glimpse at what might have been. Trevorrow parted with Lucasfilm over creative differences, resulting in the decision to bring back J.J. Abrams to direct the final, arguably underwhelming film in the trilogy. But Trevorrow still managed to create a script, tentatively titled Duel of the Fates, before all that went down, and now fans can experience it in the much more palatable form of a webcomic.
Thanks to artist Andrew Winegarner, the now non-canon conclusion to what has come to be known as the "Skywalker Saga" has received new life. After initially adapting a few key scenes from the script last year, he ultimately decided to give the entire story the same treatment, the result of which fans can now finally enjoy. He explained that he enjoyed the Duel of the Fates script far more than The Rise of Skywalker, so this ended up being his way of bringing his preferred conclusion into the spotlight. "My dream would be for Marvel to agree to publish my adaptation as a Legends version of Episode IX; as Dark Horse Comics used to do," Winegarner said on his comic's website. For those unaware, "Legends" refers to the now non-canon stories in the Star Wars universe, originally referred to as the "Star Wars Expanded Universe."
Winegarner apparently had several reasons for putting in this much effort. First off, he believes in the importance of preserving Trevorrow's script which exists in a strange limbo state between canon and fanfiction. "Star Wars IS our new mythology," he said. "As such, multiple iterations of stories should be able to exist alongside each other." Secondly, he also took issue with certain character developments in The Rise of Skywalker, saying "My biggest issue with TROS is that all of Rey's agency was completely taken away, both as a character (she’s now only important because of who she’s descended from) and as a woman (she no longer has her own power, she has 'his power')." Perhaps that's one more result of Star Wars tending to reduce its characters to stereotypes.
It can be a valuable experience for fans to enjoy this story that was previously restricted to the dry pages of a script. Not only is it a perfectly valid story in the same way any non-canon Star Wars "Legends" story is, but since it was meant to be a mainline film in the series, it could contain a great many elements that would have otherwise flown completely under the radar. Similar to how characters like Grand Admiral Thrawn made the jump from Legends to canon as part of the surprisingly memorable cast of Star Wars Rebels, giving Duel of the Fates more exposure gives its own unique identity a chance to, perhaps, one day see its own homages in the series.
Naturally, the ironically "lukewarm" reception The Rise of Skywalker received also left many fans wanting something more than just nostalgia from Star Wars, and this webcomic might be just what some of those hungry devotees need right now. It might not be canon, but hey, it's all fiction anyway, right?