The internet rumour mill which churns plot details for upcoming Star Wars movies has slipped into high gear over a possible story twist for the upcoming Episode VIII.
That is, the eighth film in the Skywalker family saga, which follows last year's The Force Awakens, and will be released in cinemas in 2017.
The film does not have an announced title, but what is claimed to be a fragment of the film's script has leaked online revealing the film will contain a major twist.
That of course assumes the script fragment is genuine and not either a work of fan fiction purporting to be the real thing, or a red herring deliberately leaked by Disney to maintain the uncertainty surrounding the film's plot.
So, warning: what follows may contain spoilers, of the actual, or invented, variety. The script fragment includes a confrontation between the legendary Jedi knight Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, and the film's new lurking-in-the-shadows villain, Supreme Commander Snoke.
During the exchange, Supreme Commander Snoke implies to Luke that he has, in the past, met Luke's father, the late Anakin Skywalker, also known as Lord Darth Vader.
"What father doesn't see his own creation?" Snoke says to Luke, which to put things in a Star Wars context, is more or less like saying, in your best James Earl Jones voice, "No, I am your grandfather."
Fans may recall that in an earlier film, The Empire Strikes Back, when Vader revealed to Luke that Vader was his father, he said, "No, I am your father."
For the real Star Wars geeks, that does not sit well with the established canon in the story that Vader – then Anakin – was conceived by "the Force", that is, in a pseudo-Biblical virgin birth by Tattoine slave Schmi Skywalker.
But that story element was connected to the controversial "midi-chlorians", added to the Star Wars story by creator George Lucas, which more or less explains away "the Force" as a biological phenomenon rather than a spiritual one.
In case you missed it: "midi-chlorians" are Force-sensitive cells in a person's bloodstream; the more "midi-chlorians", the more sensitive you are to the ebb and flow of the Force. And, frankly. it never sat well with original trilogy fans.
Shout out "midi-chlorians" at the next Star Wars convention you're at, and this will make more sense to you. You might also want to duck.
Whether Snoke should be taken at his word, or his words interpreted metaphorically, remains to be seen. It's also equally likely it's a bunch of Force baloney which will go up in Snoke.
It would follow the template established in The Force Awakens that the three new films will intentionally bow to the original three Star Wars films, with a world-shaking parental revelation earmarked for the second of the three.
And it would also fit neatly with the Disney strategy that the "trilogy" stories in Star Wars focus exclusively on the Skywalker family, leaving the standalone films planned for "every other year" to focus on other elements of the Star Wars canon.
The first of those, Rogue One, is released this December; Star Wars: Episode VIII will be released in December, 2017.
