John Boyega Doesn’t Remember Revealing Episode IX’s Time Jump

John Boyega as Finn in Star Wars: The Last Jedi

A few days ago, we learned that rather than take place immediately after Star Wars: The Last Jedi, like how that movie followed right after the events of The Force Awakens, Star Wars: Episode IX will instead leap forward a year. This update came from Finn himself, John Boyega, but the actor doesn't actually remember revealing this information, as he's had a lot on his plate over the last few months.

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Since Empire's recent piece about Star Wars: Episode IX didn't directly quote John Boyega about the time jump, that led to one fan asking Boyega on Twitter whether he actually confirmed this or if the writer had assumed this from one of Boyega's other comments. Unfortunately, the actor wasn't any help clearing up this matter, as he doesn't even remember taking part in this interview in the first place. And as he joked later on when someone suggested he could give another interview later to set the record straight, he's not particularly interested in doing that.

Clearly John Boyega is in need of a break, and I can't blame him, as 2018 was a big year for him. On-screen, he starred as Jake Pentecost in Pacific Rim Uprising and lent his voice to Netflix's Watership Down miniseries as Bigwig. Since August, he's also been shooting Star Wars: Episode IX, and principal photography isn't wrapping up until February. And that's just his professional life; who knows what's been going on his personal life.

It should be noted that Star Wars: The Last Jedi was an outlier among the main saga Star Wars movies, as there have been time jumps between all the other entries. Assuming Episode IX is indeed happening a year after The Last Jedi, then that'll be the same amount of time that passed between The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. It's just enough time for our characters to have evolved a little bit, but not so much that they feel radically different.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi ended with almost all of The Resistance being destroyed by The First Order, but the handful of survivors left over were able to escape from Crait thanks to Luke Skywalker's welcome distraction. Leia felt that despite their small numbers, The Resistance had enough to rise again, but as Oscar Isaac previously revealed, when Episode IX picks up, these rebels are attacking The First Order as a "ragged" guerrilla force. So while the Resistance is still chugging along a year later, evidently their ranks haven't grown enough to carry out large-scale attacks against Supreme Leader Kylo Ren's forces.

Star Wars: Episode IX opens in theaters on December 20, 2019, so stay tuned to CinemaBlend for continuing coverage. In the meantime, head to our 2019 release schedule to find out what other movies are coming out this year.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.