With 'The Rise of Skywalker', the 'Star Wars' saga has reached its ninth and final episode.
JJ Abrams is back in the saddle as director and there are a lot of loose ends to tie up.
'The Rise of the Skywalker' finds Daisy Ridley's Rey still training to be a Jedi at the headquarters of the Rebel Alliance.
Meanwhile Adam Driver's conflicted bad guy Kylo Ren has stumbled across a Sith wayfinder device that takes him to the planet Exegol.
There he meets Ian McDiarmid's Dark Lord Palpatine who reveals to him the true identity of Rey and hatches a plot to prevent her becoming the last Jedi and destroy the entire Rebel Alliance.
While this is going on, John Boyega's Finn, Oscar Isaac's Poe and Joonas Suatomo's Chewbacca retrieve a message from a spy within the First Order confirming Palpatine is alive.
With Rey discovering in Luke Skywalker's.Jedi texts a clue as to location of the Sith artefact that will lead them to Palpatine, she bids farewell to Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia and joins Chewbacca, Poe, Finn and the trusty droids, Anthony Daniels' C-3PO and BB-8 on a perilous trip to the desert planet of Passana.
There they encounter Billy Dee Williams' Lando Calrissian but Kylo Ren uses his powers to psychically trace where Rey is and sends Stormtroopers to find them.
Lando leads them to the location of a dagger which is inscribed with a Sith language instruction on how to locate the wayfinder.
However C-3PO will not translate it because his programming tells him it is a forbidden language.
As the crew prepare to go to the planet Kimji to find someone who can extract and translate the text, Kylo Ren and his forces turn up and seize the Millennium Falcon.
They also capture Chewbacca and he faces off against Rey in a battle of wits that will have potentially deadly consequences.
Can Rey finally reach her full potential as a Jedi?
Will Kylo Ren overcome his guilt over killing his father or will he successfully flip Rey over to the Dark Side?
Will Palpatine and Kylo Ren reveal to Rey her true identity and set a trap that will wipe out the Rebel Alliance?
Or will they be thwarted by the spy within their ranks?
All of these questions are, of course, answered as Abrams and his fellow screenwriter Chris Terrio take audiences on one more rollercoaster ride through the galaxy.
As Rey and Ren wrestle with the fate of the universe, new characters like Keri Russell's Zorri Bliss, a spice smuggler from Poe's past, turns up still harbouring a sense of betrayal
Naomi Ackie also features as Hannah, an ex Stormtrooper and ally of the Resistance who bonds with Finn.
Dominic Monaghan depicts a Rebel Alliance trooper Beaumont Kin, while Jodie Comer of 'Killing Eve' fame and Billy Howle appear in flashback as Rey's parents.
Among the ranks of the First Order, Richard E Grant hams it up as a new villain, Allegiant General Pryde.
Recent characters like Domhnall Gleeson's camp second-in-command of the First Order, General Hux return.
Lupita Nyong'o and Shirley Henderson voice the characters Max Kanata and Babu Frik.
Kelly Marie Team reprises her role as Rose Tico, the Resistance mechanic from 'The Last Jedi'.
And, of course, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill also join the late Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia for one last outing as Han Solo and Luke Skywalker.
Ridley, Isaac, Boyega, Driver and McDiarmid gleefully sink their teeth into a meaty storyline and the entire cast seems to have a lot of fun bringing the saga to a close
With 'The Force Awakens', Abrams took on a beloved franchise and proved that he was more than just a mere fanboy but was capable of crafting a compelling tale that paid its dues to George Lucas' original trilogies while creating new icons.
Rian Johnson made a decent fist of moving Abrams' tale on with 'The Last Jedi' - even if there were moments where the film felt a little bloated.
Abrams' return to the director's chair in many ways is the most challenging faced by a 'Star Wars' director.
In this final episode, he must resolve a lot of narrative threads without losing his grip on the need to keep delivering the kind of action that fans of the franchise expect
Luckily, he understands this and keeps the action rolling with 'The Rise of Skywalker' never feeling flabby or weighed down by plot exposition.
All the 'Star Wars' elements you desire are there - heroes who stay on the right side of being wiseasses, camp villains, light sabre duels a plenty, dramatic planet landscapes, chirpy droids, epic space battles, emotional farewells, plot twists and John Williams' soaring musical score.
Abrams understands how invested the most dedicated fans of the franchise are and foregrounds the battle of wills between Kylo Ren and Rey as the main thrust of the film.
He mines a sexual tension between them that has been boiling up over the previous two films.
And as a result, Driver and Ridley dominate proceedings.
Indeed, Ridley shows how much she has grown into a role that holds its own against the saga's greatest heroes like Obi Wan Kenobi, Princess Leia, Han Solo and Luke Skywalker
As final installments of a beloved saga go, 'The Rise of Skywalker' is a fitting and impressive end to the 'Star Wars' story.
But, like the Marvel movies, don't expect the curtain to fall for good.
With 'The Mandalorian' TV series already out and other TV and movies planned, Disney isn't going to bury a money spinning franchise like this anytime soon.
The challenge will be coming up with TV shows and films like 'Rogue One' that are worthy of the final trilogy.
That will not be easy to pull off.
May the Force be with them.
('Star Wars': The Rise of Skywalker' opened in UK and Irish cinemas on December 19, 2019)
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