One of the earliest rumours during the beginning of the Star Wars Episode VII production cycle was that the original script by Michael Arndt was going to focus on the children of the original trilogy's heroes, leaving the likes of Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher in what would amount to cameo roles. JJ Abrams wasn't so hot on that so he drafted in Lawrence Kasdan, who co-wrote The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, to come up with a totally new plot that involved all of the old guard. Emphasis on old. So now we know everybody who's in the film, pretty much - old and young, fighting together against...something - but plot details are pretty thin on the ground. Officially, anyway. Because if you know where to look, there's still plenty of "leaked" script details that have appeared online these past few weeks. And apparently the plot revolves around Luke Skywalker's severed hand! It's one of the weirdest pieces of speculation but it seems to have been confirmed by a Twitter photo by Abrams, seen above, featuring the sort of makeshift robotic prosthetic our heroic Jedi got saddled with after his (SPOILERS) dad cut it off at the climax of Empire. Yep, that's all it takes for people's crazy theories to be confirmed. The most common idea for how Luke's severed arm, which plummeted from the skies above Bespin, ends up kickstarting the whole plot is that it'll be found - possibly alongside the lightsaber it was wielding - by Daisy Ridley and John Boyega's characters. Recognising it to be a powerful Jedi weapon, they decide they need to get it back to its rightful owner, which is how they end up meeting Han Solo and Chewbacca. Which means that Episode VII is, essentially, The Search For Luke.
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/
