All rise: The frenetic pace of The Rise of Skywalker

The Rise of Skywalker proves that asking too many questions in the finale without explanation is a faulty web to finish.

“It should be all rise, baby,” are the words that Barney Stinson declares in an episode of How I Met Your Mother. He’s referring to a mixtape he made — remember those? — and how there’s a misconception that mixtapes should inevitably rise and fall to keep people pumped and wanting more.

Not Barney’s CD, though, and not The Rise of Skywalker, either.

The opening crawl of TRoS is just the beginning, literally, as the words “The dead speak!” are plastered immediately across the screen and opens the return of Emperor Palpatine. From there, we hop immediately into an overbearing plot that is tough to keep up with and follow the breadcrumbs from the previous installment, The Last Jedi.

Yet, there’s the twist: The Rise of Skywalker is a near walk back of everything established in The Last Jedi. Following the breadcrumbs is, of course, impossible because the essence of Episode 9 is essentially to erase what occurred in Episode 8. The final result is a disjointed, confusing set of three multi-billion dollar movies that ultimately didn’t satisfy the fans of new or old. We thought we would surely get better movies than the prequel trilogy, but alas the ending result is subpar.