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Star Wars: The Last Jedi first full trailer: Rey faces an unexpected choice

Porg!

Aja Romano writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.

The next chapter in Star Wars’ ongoing saga is drawing nigh, and fans can now get a substantial taste of what’s to come with the arrival of the first full trailer for Star Wars: Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, hitting theaters this December.

Directed by Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi is the follow-up to 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII— The Force Awakens, and picks up where its characters left off: with Rey (Daisy Ridley) undergoing Jedi training at an ancient Jedi mountain temple in the care of an apparently much-changed Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).

The trailer, which aired on ESPN during Monday Night Football, did little to dispel the mystery of the film’s title, nor that jarring dictum uttered by Luke in the teaser trailer — but it did give us tantalizing glimpses of the First Order’s vengeance against the Resistance after the action of The Force Awakens. The fight scenes have never looked better, and the stakes have never seemed higher. And there’s a glimpse of the adorable penguin-like porgs, with a cool fox-looking thing to boot — in other words, just what we came for.

We also get a closer look at Kylo Ren’s scar and the resulting moral conflict of his actions in the previous film — as well as some intriguing cliffhanger interaction between Kylo and Rey.

Tickets for the film went on sale through various online ticket sites shortly before the trailer dropped, with showtimes beginning on December 14. The official Star Wars Twitter account also revealed a new poster for the film:

Star Wars: The Last Jedi officially blasts into theaters on December 15.