Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy has teased the potential return of several Star Wars characters featured in the newest trilogy of films.

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Asked about the future of the film franchise following the conclusion of the Skywalker saga, Kennedy told MTV News: "You know, there is an appropriate time [before considering the reappearance of key characters]. We’re using this appropriate time as an opportunity to see where we’re going now that we’re leaving the Skywalker saga behind.

"But there’s no question that there’s certain characters that we’ve created, certainly in the last three movies, that we may very well wanna see down the line in the future."

Which means that we may see the return of Rey, Finn and Poe in a brand new trilogy, released after the upcoming final instalment of the current trilogy.

ANALYSIS – by Sci-Fi Editor Huw Fullerton

The eventual return of the new trilogy’s Star Wars characters played by John Boyega, Daisy Ridley and Oscar Isaac should be of little surprise to fans given that Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill were all tempted back to the franchise decades after their last appearances.

The real question is, though, what sort of reappearance would Finn, Rey and Poe be involved in? Supposedly, Episode IX ends the “Skywalker saga,” while future planned films are reportedly set in completely different time periods, ruling out a passing-the-torch storyline to ANOTHER generation of heroes.

And if they’re not set to be part of another trilogy, does that mean our new Star Wars stars would crop up in more spin-off movies? Star Wars TV shows? Or will they just have to wait until another decade or two has passed before another collection of filmmakers decide to reboot the galaxy far, far away all over again?

Plus, you might think these three would fancy a break after nearly five years of non stop Star Wars-ing – so maybe we SHOULDN’T count on rejoining them any time soon.

But Kennedy added that, while there was a wide scope for new Star Wars narratives, the studio was wary of fan fatigue:

"We have to be careful that there is a cadence to Star Wars that doesn't start to feel like too much. We don't have a crystal ball. We tried a little bit with Solo to see if we could do two movies a years and whether or not there was really an opportunity for that and we felt that's not going to work so we backed off of that a little bit. But it doesn't mean we don't think about lots of different stories because that's the exciting thing about this universe."

Meanwhile, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is set feature the surprise return of another original character – Ian McDiarmid’s Emperor Palpatine (aka Darth Sidious) – whose distinctive cackle could be heard at the end of the Star Wars Episode IX’s first trailer.

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Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker will be released in December 2019

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