Not that The Rise of Skywalker didn’t already cover a tremendous amount of ground, spinning across the galaxy from one corner of the cosmos to the other but our end visit to Tatooine almost brought us into contact with some very familiar faces. While we were fortunate enough to see a sandcrawler and Jawas as the Millennium Falcon flew to the now abandoned Lars homestead, at one point we could have encountered another indigenous species, the Tusken Raiders.
Phil Szoztak tweeted art by concept artist Adam Brokbank presenting a scene showing Rey meeting Tusken Raiders inside the homestead, where Luke spent his early years before the slaughter of Owen and Beru, the brutal and tragic action which jump-started his destiny. With Rey ingniting her lightsaber, the tuskens flee – a nod to Anakin’s murderous actions in Attack of the Clones and an act now most likely passed on down Tusken generations, having happened 57 years before.
As it was, Abrams opted to leave out this nod back not only to the original but the prequels, leaving the meeting a moment unseen on screen.
