Yesterday I wrote about Episode VIII. Unfortunately, we never saw the promise of that great film fulfilled in a sequel that continued its themes and narrative arc. Instead, we got Episode IX, which was dead on arrival.

When I wrote about IX two years ago—a lot of words, by the way—I mentioned an idea for an alternative crawl that would have opened a much different, far better capstone to the Star Wars trilogy of trilogies.

I’m on record, and have been from the beginning, as a lover of Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi. When I was on Twitter, I enjoyed having friendly—key word, that—debates with others about it. In fact, just last month I introduced myself to a senior academic at another institution, a person I’ve read but have never met before, and as he shook my hand he said, “Oh, I know who you are. You’re the one who thinks The Last Jedi is a good movie.”