Top Ten Questions and Plot Holes in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
This list covers the many plot holes in The Rise of Skywalker, and there are lots! Parts of this will overlap with the Biggest Problems list that I made a while back too.The first time we see him in the flesh, he's hooked on some crazy machine. He's also on the world of Exegol, far away from where Endor's Death Star blew up. Furthermore, he says he's "already died before," which could explain things, but not so much coming back to life. I don't buy into "Sith magic" as a thing, for the record.
Reasons. Actually, he did mention in Revenge of the Sith that Darth Plagueis taught him everything. He may have taught him how to rebuild life.
You have to understand how the first two Death Stars (ANH and ROTJ) were destroyed. They were almost completely exploded. Almost all particles and structures were wiped out and disintegrated in the explosion. Yet, the remains of the ROTJ Death Star are located on one of the moons.
Major spoiler that most people probably overlooked: Finn can feel the Force in this movie, and at some points, he wanted to tell Rey about it but never got the chance. His apparent Force sense helped tremendously in the Battle of Exegol. However, you have to understand that Finn has no real past to speak of unless he was connected by some chance to a Jedi or another Force user (possibly Mace Windu). It's hard to say just how Finn was able to feel the Force.
I bet he's related to Mace Windy.
Naturally, films don't pay much attention to how much weathering and erosion decompose things. Therefore, it's pretty crazy that the Sith dagger the group finds manages to be a central puzzle piece to reaching the remains of the Death Star. It's even crazier that, given it has been in the desert for so long, it has not eroded. Maybe it's some Sith magic again.
Maybe Sith artifacts like that don't erode.
This is probably the most forgettable one since it happens at a midway point between locations, but there are quite a few lightspeed skips done in the Millennium Falcon. Poe, who's piloting it, goes from planet to planet with lightspeed skips near notable gravity wells (planets). This contradicts something in Empire Strikes Back, where the Rebel fleet had to flee into space before launching the lightspeed maneuver.
This is the only actual plot hole on this list. All the others have explanations.
Unlike the last plot hole, this one contradicts something from the previous movie, where they mentioned that ships have been unable to track other ships through hyperspace. The Supremacy, the big Star Destroyer in that movie, had state-of-the-art technology that allowed it to happen. However, the Star Destroyer was destroyed. Yet, the First Order managed to equip their fighters with this technology to chase the Falcon through hyperspace jumps.
Seriously, that thing has been submerged under the water in the last movie. The Visual Dictionary of The Last Jedi confirmed it was wrecked by Luke himself before it was submerged. With it being submerged for so long, the electronics would have short-circuited long ago.
The blue lightsaber, as I like to call it, refers to the one Anakin Skywalker had. It was passed down to Luke, lost in Empire Strikes Back along with his hand, and ended up in The Force Awakens, with Rey wielding it until it was split in half by the Force users Rey and Ren. Accordingly, it is the same one from those movies. However, I'm left wondering if it really is the same lightsaber, as there's no visible sign of damage, or if it is a completely different blue lightsaber altogether.
There's so much I want to say about this one. How were the Star Destroyers constructed there? Why didn't Palpatine do this earlier in the other movies to take over the entire galaxy? And more importantly, considering the importance of Kyber crystals, which are used to power the Death Stars and their reactors, how much of the resource was used up? How did these Star Destroyers, each equipped with planet-killing lasers, end up having this much Kyber in them?
That's a lot of Star Destroyers. It looks like the Sith preferred quantity over quality of the fleet ordered by the Emperor. It's poorly built.
After the lightsaber duel with Rey and Ren and Han Solo's fantastic appearance as a memory to Kylo, Ben Solo sets off, but how exactly? Rey stole his specialized TIE fighter and fled to exile in Ahch-To. Ben was on the Death Star wreckage, and his only real options were to find locals who have spaceships or to find a derelict one that was actually operable in some way. But it's never explained.
The Newcomers
Nobody. Palpatine would NEVER have a love interest. Plus, he killed his own family and other people's loved ones, and he hated love himself.
Found family is important in Star Wars. Rey Skywalker tarnishes this importance by implying that kissing someone from your found family (even though he was not technically a Skywalker) is not incest, which means that found family doesn't matter, which is not true!
Honestly, people, of COURSE, Finn could use the Force. The ability can blossom in ANYONE. The real question is: Why didn't he reveal it sooner? (or at all) Finn had so much potential, and they threw it away!