SPOILERS AHEAD: This article contains spoilers for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. If you want to read our spoiler-free review, click here. The rest of you, read on… but know that you have been warned.
It’s an odd feeling, having finally seen The Force Awakens and no longer needing to be a semi-hermit in order to avoid spoilers. Being cautious about what we read regarding the film had been an ongoing struggle for the better part of the last two years. If you did get spoiled about any aspects of the new movie, you likely have one place to blame, and now we know a lot more about what went into those scoops.
The site in question is called Making Star Wars, and Wired Magazine has done an in-depth interview with Jason Ward, the man who runs the site and who successfully obtained many of the details that were exposed prior to the movie’s release. Ward was just trying to make a successful website about Star Wars, but knew that some unique information about The Force Awakens would go a long way toward achieving that success. He started by making connections at Pinewood Studios in London. He did this long before filming there was ever confirmed, because he knew it was a likely location. Once the filming did get started, his connections there were willing to talk. Most of his answers, however, came in covert coffee shops. Listening to Ward, it sounds like he was a spy, ala James Bond.
Once, I was buying something at [a coffee shop], and I said, ‘Okay, I need to know if Rey is a Solo,’ and they wouldn’t tell me. So I was like, ‘If she is, get me an espresso shot.’ They’d laugh—but when they came back, I knew Rey wasn’t a Solo.
Interestingly, in addition to all of the correct information that Jason Ward was able to obtain, including the familial connections of Kylo Ren and the ultimate fate of Han Solo, he didn’t get everything right. The idea that Rey was a Solo is a rumor that still isn’t completely ruled out. Ward says that it was a conclusion drawn from the interactions known to occur between the two characters. While he doesn’t believe that there is currently a connection between the two, he still wonders if there was in an earlier draft of the script.
It also appears that Ward was the source of the original Luke Skywalker is Kylo Ren rumor. This was due to an early piece of concept art that showed Kylo Ren, but drawn with the face of Mark Hamill. The art was created before Adam Driver was cast in the role, so the face meant nothing, but that wasn’t clear at the time.
How successful were you at avoiding spoilers for The Force Awakens? If you knew details going in, how much did that impact your enjoyment of the film?
