Original Ending For The Rise Of Skywalker Revealed? [DEBUNKED!]

Now this is certainly…. quite the revelation. Actor Juan Bautista, who played one of the Knights of Ren in The Rise of Skywalker, was a guest on the Popcorn Talk YouTube channel and he revealed that the version of the movie he saw one week (!) before the official release was somewhat different. The movie had an entirely different ending. Click through for more!

UPDATE: It appears Popcorn Time failed to perform a proper background check or otherwise failed to check if their guest was legit. The guest on their show was NOT a Knight on Ren in the movie. A “Juan Bautista” is nowhere to be found in the credits for The Rise of Skywalker.

Rey on Exegol after the final battle

It turns out that the guest on the Popcorn Time show either tricked, cheated or fooled them. I will leave the original article here, but please note that it turns out the guest who speaks about the alternate ending was NOT a Knight of Ren in the movie and is apparently a liar / fraud.

Before I talk about what was revealed here is the clip from Popcorn Talk, it’s about 5 minutes long, so it won’t take much time to watch it:

So, in short, Juan Bautista says / confirms he saw the movie with a different ending. In that version, which was screened one week before the premiere, Rey stays dead and Ben Solo takes on the Skywalker name.

First of all, even though it sounds crazy, why would the actor lie? The next question is, did Lucasfilm really change the movie that late? Mere days before release? It’s not completely unheard of that movies are finished on the evening before the release date, but it certainly raises the question if the post production of The Rise of Skywalker was as tumultous as is rumored. With extensive reshoots and various cuts tested.

A few attentive Reylos found out mere days after release of the movie that the ending has various odd things going on. First, the scene between Ben and Rey on Exegol, when Ben brings Rey back to life and then dies, has various sloppy continuity errors. Rey’s reaction to Ben’s death does not seem to fit the scene she is witnessing either, i.e. it’s not a reaction she would show if he had really just died. And later on Tatooine it seems they repurposed a previous shot of Rey on Pasaana for the twin sunset scene and inserted her into the sunet scene, implying Daisy Ridley was never on location for that shot and didn’t even film a proper greenscreen scene in the studio they could use for the twin sunset. Which could mean the ending was changed so late in the process they no longer had the time to do proper reshoots or pick-ups.

The Reylos came to the conclusion that Ben Solo was originally meant to live, they also erroneously believed that Rey and Ben Solo are on Tatooine together. This seems to be wrong. The revelation now contradicts that, Rey was dead and Ben Solo, now Ben Skywalker, was alive.

I can see why Disney might have wanted to change the ending, imagine if the virtuous heroine had died and the ex mass murderer had taken on the Skywalker name… Some people on Twitter would have been furious. But why change it so late? Why even put that ending in the movie? In my opinion it would have made more sense on some levels, Ben had much more reason to take on the Skywalker name than a Palpatine who only had extensive contact with people bearing the name “Organa” or “Solo”.

Does this lend credence to the rumors that there are various cuts of the movie? That there are various versions of the ending?

If Juan Bautista is not trolling us, and why would he, then I hope that Lucasfilm will release the deleted scenes one day. They will certainly not, but I think it would be very interesting to see what the original (at least at the time the movie was screened) ending was.

The only explanation I have: Abrams filmed various bits and pieces for different endings, so he did film scenes for the Rey Skywalker ending, but he also filmed scenes for a Ben Skywalker ending. Perhaps Lucasfilm was still not sure with which version to go. But that they were still not sure one week before release is interesting.

What do you think? If Ben Solo had lived on as Ben Skywalker and Rey had died – would it have changed your opinion of the movie for better or for worse?

Leave your thoughts in the comments!

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