ScreenCrush’s WookieeLeaks is a weekly roundup of everything Star Wars! From Episode 7, to the upcoming spinoffs and the TV shows, if it pertains to that long ago, far away galaxy, we’re covering it here, bringing you our expert analysis. This week, we parse through the latest spoilers, watch the season finale trailer for Star Wars Rebels, and listen to cast and crew tell us absolutely nothing.

The Beginning and the End of The Force Awakens

You know the drill by now, Star Wars fans. We are going to be getting into spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens in a moment. Well, to be more specific, we are going to get into some potential spoilers, because some of the stuff we are going to be talking about here simply does add up. Either what we heard before was wrong, this new stuff is wrong, or everything is wrong. But this is what happens when you play the Game of Spoilers: either you get things right or you get butthurt because you couldn’t figure out the plot of a movie 11 months in advance.

Anyway, today’s spoilers are all about the (supposed) opening scenes and the (supposed) closing scenes of the movie. We’re going to get started with the ending because it seems awfully unlikely. You know what to do. Spoiler alert and such.

This story comes from Making Star Wars and it’s a weird one because it directly contradicts many of their previous spoilers and articles. They seem awfully confident about this, but they also seemed confident about details that directly contradict this new information. In other words, who knows what to believe at this point? Anyway, this batch of spoilers claims that Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker is barely in the film and that he only pops up for a brief cameo right before the film cuts to credits.

Here’s how they say it goes down:

The heroes suffer a great blow when they lose their mentor figure. But after a great duel with Rey and Finn versus Kylo Ren, the heroes return back to the base as heroes. At this point, it becomes clear that their current adventure together has come to an end.

We follow our main hero, Rey as she says goodbye to the important players in the film, Leia, Poe, and so on. Meanwhile BB-8, Artoo-Detoo, and See-Threepio decode a puzzle. Rey makes a special stop to say goodbye to Finn in the medical bay.

Rey, Chewbacca, and BB-8 then get into the Falcon and take off. Chewbacca playfully messes up her hair in an endearing gesture. Things are going to be alright, is what the Wookiee is trying to say, as far as I can tell.

I imagine like all Star Wars films, the end is silent with music playing. That’s just my take though. But it seems likely here. They fly away to a new planet and the Falcon lands.

Rey walks up the stone steps. She comes up to a figure and puts the Lightsaber in his hand. It's Luke Skywalker.

The End.

The stuff prior to the final paragraph sounds convincing enough (and lines up with the big, huge rumors from last week), but that ending? We don’t buy it. The folks over at Star Wars 7 News have broken it down already, so we’ll just echo what they had to say. Unless LucasFilm paid Mark Hamill to hang around the set and pretend to be filming, including sending him to a very difficult location on an Irish island for three days, it flat-out doesn’t make sense for him to be in just one scene in the finished film. We know that J.J. Abrams loves playing mind games with fans, but would he really spend so many resources faking a bunch of Luke Skywalker scenes only to deliver a single shot in the final cut?

Our suspicion about this rumor only has us approaching the next batch of spoilers from Making Star Wars with extra caution. To be fair, their description of the film’s first act lines up with a lot of other sources. It could be a load of crap, but if it is, it’s a load of crap that fooled everyone, not just them. If you’ve been following spoilers for the past few months, none of this should surprise you. If not, this is what everyone thinks the first 20 minutes of Star Wars: The Force Awakens looks like:

The film does open with a lightsaber in space. It falls to the ground in a savannah environment during the day. It is quickly discovered by a farmer named Naka. Naka accidentally ignites the weapon and starts a fire with it. At first he runs, but then turns around and obtains the weapon. I assume he snatches the weapon so it is not destroyed in the fire.  Naka then takes the weapon to his elder called The Vicar.

The Vicar is most likely played by Max von Sydow. It is most likely a code name too. Chances are they didn’t need to name the character during filming so they just went with the title The Vicar. Anyways, the Vicar appears to contact the Rebels and this brings Poe Dameron to the planet.

Later that night, Poe Dameron arrives and retrieves the lightsaber from The Vicar. The only problem? They’ve brought the Empire there as well (not sure if the Empire followed Poe or intercepted the initially transmission he received). Poe sees Stormtroopers are coming and he places the laser sword safely in a little droid: BB-8. The droid flees and the heroic Poe Dameron prepares to fight!

Concurrently, a young Stormtrooper named Finn enters a situation that will drastically change his life forever. When his best friend dies in battle and he allows a few innocent villagers to escape, Kylo Ren orders him arrested and the village burned to the ground. Because Finn just isn’t naturally evil enough, he finds himself in the brig of a Star Destroyer with a Rebel pilot. Finn never learned to fly. Finn has the knowledge how to get out of the brig and Poe is their best chance to fly out of there. They hatch a plan to steal a TIE Fighter and make a run for it.

And that brings us to our final potential spoiler of the day: the identity of the character played by Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o. We had previously heard rumors that she would be playing the owner of a Cantina and that her character would be heavily enhanced with CGI. Although we can’t say anything for sure quite yet, this report only backs those claims up. If true, she’ll be playing a diminutive alien with a face that will be heavily altered through motion capture:

Lupita was filmed doing her scenes on her knees, she was wearing kneepads. She had CGI markers on her face and was wearing head apparatus with a camera and extremely bright light pointing directly in her face, this alone points towards only her face being used as opposed to CGI beig added to her face. Secondly each of her scenes were filmed twice over with a “Little Person” filming the same as her, this is either a place holder for a CGI character or Lupita’s face is being placed on a smaller persons body. I was told the “Little Person” was very forceful and pushing there way past the bar members legs and knocking them out the way, which still fits with the character being an authority figure in this establishment.

Here’s our question: why hire someone like Nyong’o for this part? Wouldn’t an actress of her caliber be better utilized elsewhere? This could be a great character, but some of us were already imagining her armed with a lightsaber or blasting Stormtroopers. So, if this is true, kudos to Abrams for casting outside the box ... even if we can’t help but be slightly bummed out.

Chatting With Cast and Crew

Last Sunday, Lupita Nyong’o and Felicity Jones attended the Academy Awards, the former as a presenter and the latter as a nominee for Best Actress in The Theory of Everything. Naturally, MTV caught up with both of them on the red carpet and asked the most pressing question possible: what is it like to be in a new Star Wars movie?

Jones, who is supposedly set to play the female lead in Gareth Edwards’ upcoming standalone film, couldn’t say anything worth transcribing. Nyong’o could say even less. You can watch them both say nothing in the video below.

Meanwhile, SlashFilm spoke with screenwriter Gary Whitta about his work on Edwards’ standalone film (Chris Weitz took over a few weeks ago) and while he also cannot say anything specific, he managed to not say anything specific with a lot more words. The short version of the interview: it was very hard and I worked very hard and it was great. Here’s a sample:

I think any time you’re dealing with something that has some personal significance to you, you instinctively approach it with a great degree of appreciation and respect. I grew up with Star Wars, it played a pivotal role in setting me on my lifelong course as a writer, so to have the opportunity to contribute a new piece to the ongoing legacy of that is both humbling and daunting.

With this film set to go in front of cameras a little later this year, we should start to hear more details in the coming months. Imagine the quotes we will get when Whitta and Jones and everyone else is actually allowed to talk about their work! Imagine how much fun we will have with actual quotes!

Star Wars Rebels Trailers and Art

And like that, the first season of Star Wars Rebels is about to come to an end. Here’s the trailer for the season finale, which seems to promise the death of at least one major character:

There is no need to despair, though. Disney is already deep into production on Season 2 and we imagine that this could easily run for four or five years. Heck, it will run until Disney decides to create another series to take its place. Animated Star Wars isn’t going away. Ever.

Anyway, the season finale will feature another appearance by Darth Vader and he’ll look like this:

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Kinda hard to screw up Darth Vader, though. In slightly more interesting news, a cool piece of concept art tied to this year’s Star Wars Celebration has been unveiled and if you’re the kind of person who enjoys scanning busy pictures looking for details, this will provide you with about five minutes of entertainment. Let us know if you find Waldo.

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