Picture this: the most anticipated blockbuster of 2015 possibly of the whole decade thus far opens with the iconic text crawl everyone's come to know and expect, woven as it is into the fabric of pop culture, parodied and riffed on by dozens if not hundreds of its descendants. From there, the camera pans across space, to some indelible piece of action. In the first film, it was a Star Destroyer chasing a Rebel ship; Empire, the ice planet Hoth; Jedi, probably some Ewoks or something. In The Force Awakens, the film could very well open with...a severed hand. Floating in space. Gross. But not just any severed hand, oh no the hand that Luke Skywalker lost during the climactic battle against Darth Vader, when all those clearly signposted daddy issues came to the fore, at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. Yep, one rumour suggests that the MacGuffin for the new Star Wars film is Luke's disembodied hand. How the whole plot hinges on a severed limb remains to be seen. Some have suggested it fuels the entire conflict, with John Boyegas Finn and Daisey Ridleys Rey said to encounter it on a desert planet (Tatooine?), leading them to track down the wizened old Han Solo and Chewbacca to return it. Because they probably really miss that old hand. Thing is...that's insane. But it makes a crazy kind of sense, doesn't it? It's one of the few loose threads/hands left over from the Original Trilogy, a way to connect the old and new generations. Still gross, though.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
