Writer/director Rian Johnson has been pretty upfront about the fact that a bevy of Star Wars: The Last Jedi deleted scenes would be on the Blu-ray. Indeed, that time is fast approaching, and the home video release of the ambitious The Force Awakens sequel includes quite a few deleted scenes and a couple of entire sequences that were removed from the film. This being Star Wars and all, fans did some digging and already learned that one of the big deleted sequences involves the Caretaker Village on Ahch-To. The thinking was that this sequence was the third of three “lessons” Luke (Mark Hamill) promised to teach Rey (Daisy Ridley). As it turns out, however, that’s not the case.

EW has a breakdown of all the deleted scenes, supplemented by quotes from Johnson himself, but it’s the breakdown of the Caretaker Village sequence that’s the most interesting. This deleted sequence found Rey discovering a sea of lights encroaching on the Caretaker village, and Luke explaining that this was a warring tribe here to raid the village. Rey, understandably, wants to help, but Luke says a Jedi would simply let this play out—going down and attacking the raiders would just lead them to return with more fighters next time, when Rey won’t be there to help.

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Image via Lucasfilm

Frustrated, Rey runs down against Luke’s advice. The rumors were that a conversation afterwards would reveal that this was the “third lesson”, but Johnson says that’s not so. The sequence served a different purpose:

“Originally it was just a breaking point for her. Okay, he’s gone too far. This is the point where she finally says, ‘Okay, if you’re not gonna help, then I’ve wasted too much time here.”

This sequence was directly followed by the penultimate “ForceTime” sequence where Luke discovers Rey and Kylo communicating:

“In her next-to-last Force connection she has with Kylo, which is the very intense one, the context for that was her coming off this rejection and angry moment with Luke,” Johnson says. “When we take that segment out, suddenly she’s coming into that Force connection after leaving things in a hopeful place with Luke, at the end of the temple lesson… It’s much more of a crushing reversal when Luke finds her in the hut [talking to Kylo]. You get the sense that she and Luke were actually making progress, as opposed to, oh, things were screwed up.”

So, about that “third lesson.” Johnson acknowledges it’s not directly addressed in the movie, “but says there are things about the movie that fans can choose to interpret as his final instruction to Rey.” But Johnson declined to elaborate further, admitting that this may or may not be something that’s picked up in Star Wars: Episode IX, which J.J. Abrams is writing with Chris Terrio.

You’ll be able to pore over all the deleted scenes when The Last Jedi hits Digital HD on March 13th and Blu-ray on March 27th.

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Image via Lucasfilm
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Image via Lucasfilm

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