Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker editor reveals final shot wasn't reused footage

Note: There are spoilers for The Rise of Skywalker below, so beware if you've not yet seen it.

If you happened to think the final shot in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was the same footage from an earlier scene in the movie, it turns out you'd be wrong.

The final moment in the film sees Rey (Daisy Ridley) at Owen and Beru Lars' former moisture farm on Tatooine while looking at the horizon to see two suns setting – echoing the scene in Star Wars: A New Hope where Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) watches the same suns setting.

Rise of Skywalker co-editor Maryann Brandon has now confirmed that the last shot of Rey wasn't reused from earlier in the film. However, it was captured when they were shooting a previous scene taking place on Pasaana while filming in the Jordan desert.

"That shot was shot in the desert where they shot the sequence on Pasaana, but it was shot for that shot," Brandon explained to ComicBook.

"It was specifically shot for that and then ILM (the visual effects company) created a lot of that shot, so that's a question for Roger Guyett (visual effects supervisor) and the artists at ILM, how they created it.

"I picked the shot of Rey, which I know was shot in the same desert. It wasn't already in the film, it was for that sequence."

Also regarding the final scene, the movie's co-writer Chris Terrio has answered criticism over its not-so-climactic conclusion to the Skywalker Saga.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is out now.

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Adam Silverstein

Adam Silverstein is a freelance sub-editor and writer at Digital Spy, and he specialises in music, TV and movies.