This post contains deeply weird spoilers for Star Wars Episode IX: The sex loan luan hanRise of Skywalker. Read at your own risk, for at least two reasons.
It’s been two years since The Last Jedishocked the world by being the first Star Wars movie to be horny on main. Shirtless Kylo Ren Force Skyped Rey in the middle of the night to seduce her (to the dark side, but still), Maz Kanata casually insinuated that she banged a “master breaker,” Luke did some weird stuff with milk, and John Boyega entered the movie naked and leaking in a see-through rubber suit. Now that The Rise of Skywalkeris here, those who saw The Last Jedi’s sexual supertext must be wondering: is this one horny too? And if so, how horny are we talking?
Not horny enough, to be honest. The Rise of Skywalker is sure to stir up discourse on what Star Wars means to fans, how well it stuck the landing, and a host of other topics everyone will surely debate in a calm and civil fashion, but there’s very little in the movie that will make anyone wonder “was that scene horny, or am I disgusting?” It’s disappointing, really. The Rise of Skywalkeraims for horny, falls short, and then...well. Then it ruins everything. But first, the good news.
One great thing The Rise of Skywalkerdoes is put the bulk of the movie’s horniness on the square shoulders of its strongest chemical asset: Poe Dameron. Poe knows the galaxy might end in a matter of days and pursues saving the world and getting laid with equal romantic abandon. Part of the reason nearly all of his interactions read as horny is because Poe is played by Oscar Isaac, who could steal your wallet and call it flirting with zero pushback, but the other part is that he’s just...actively generating pants-stirring situations the whole time.
Poe gets in a verbal spat with Rey that could just be two strong personalities clashing, but also, what if they kissed? He falls into a sand cave inches away from Rey’s face and you know what, they could have kissed then, too. The good Ship FinnPoe is unfortunately scuttled in canon, but that was never going to stop Poe throwing long, fiery looks at his BF(F) and holding every hug with Finn for as long as the audience needs to get the message.
By the time The Rise of Skywalker introduces Poe’s presumed ex-lover Zorii Bliss, who looks like the ferocious spawn of Catwoman and a Power Ranger, he’s ready to say the quiet part out loud and ask to kiss her (denied), and straight up proposition her with a raise of his eyebrow at the end of the movie (also denied, which is kind of hot in its own way). Thank god for that, because without Poe’s suggestive nodding, there’s almost nothing else horny about this movie.
It seems impossible that the same film that makes Reylo canon — Reylo, for christ’s sake— has so little to offer on the horny scale. Flash back to The Last Jedi, which charged Rey and Kylo Ren’s almost–hand touch with enough ambient horndoggery to launch an entire genre of fanfiction (Force sex! It’s a thing now!), and compare that lusty subtext with The Rise of Skywalker’s Reylo smooch, which is sandwiched between both kissers literally being dead in a coliseum filled with smushed-up monks. Sure, it’s kind of biblical, but not in thatway. No points awarded, and everyone involved should be ashamed.
Finally, and this is what zaps every last trace of horniness from The Rise of Skywalker, there’s Palpatine. Crusty, musty Emperor Palpatine and the horrifying news that he absolutely fucked. Regardless of how anyone feels about Rey being Sheev Palpatine’s granddaughter from a story perspective, the facts of human reproduction require ol’ Palpy to have canonically banged his way to natural fatherhood — the same Palpatine who appears in the movie as a dessicated corpse and whose whole aesthetic since The Phantom Menacehas been “caftan-wearing creeper Nazi.”
Just to clarify that visual: Rey was born in 15 ABY and her flashback dad doesn’t look older than 35, so that’s Revenge of the Sith–era Sheev Palpatine laying groundwork for his senatorial takeover by day and laying pipe to some random space lady by night. With whom was Palpatine getting down to pound town? Was she nice? Was it freaky? A lot of the Sith-adjacent folks in the extended media have a whole fetishwear thing going on so that’s why it might have been freaky. He colonized her Unknown Regions. Explored her Outer Rim. This is awful. It’s negative horny and Star Wars can’t come back from this, even if Palpatine did.
Not even Poe Dameron’s smoldering stare can outweigh the fact that Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’s biggest twist only happened because Sheev Palpatine had unprotected sex. The simmering horniness of The Last Jediwas a one-time miracle of the Force, and it’s Palpa-turtles all the way down from there. The Force might be balanced by the end of the movie, but The Rise of Skywalker’s horny scale is wildly and forever skewed towards the dark side. Thanks a lot, Sheev.
Topics Star Wars