Adam Driver Was Told Where 'Star Wars: Episode 9' Would End Up Before Filming 'The Force Awakens'

Adam Driver has been keeping a Star Wars secret for several years, and it's not something mundane like Kylo Ren getting his helmet back in Star Wars: Episode 9. In a new interview, Driver says he's known for a long time "where it was all going," so read on as we narrow down the possibilities of what he's talking about.

Speaking with Deadline, Driver compared the experience of working on the HBO series Girls to working on the Star Wars movies, dropping one particularly interesting bit of information at the end:

"With Girls, there wasn't really an end in sight, so it was fun to develop it as I went, and to think about where it was all going. With Star Wars, I had one piece of information of where it was all going, and that's where it has been in my head for a long time, and things were building towards that."

So has Driver really known for years about how this trilogy will come to an end? Let's dig into that idea.

"I was very thankful there was no slip of paper that was handed to me that said, 'Rey's parents are so and so,'" Star Wars: The Last Jedi writer/director Rian Johnson told us when that film was released, mentioning that while The Force Awakens co-writer/director J.J. Abrams "might have had thoughts in his head", he "didn't dictate them" to Johnson. That sentiment seemed to apply to Johnson's entire tenure working on the sequel – he's said that his early pitch to Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy was to approach that film as a story which tested all of its heroes, and it sounds like he was given the opportunity to make whatever storytelling choices he wanted along the way.

But now that Abrams is back in the driver's seat for Episode 9, he'll naturally want to incorporate any overarching ideas he may have had all those years ago into this final movie in the trilogy. Daisy Ridley once said she believed "there was some sort of general consensus on the main storylines that would happen in the trilogy," and now that Abrams has returned, it seems like he's going to be able to execute that plan to complement what happened in The Last Jedi.

With that established, let's discuss some possibilities of what this secret could be that Driver's been keeping for years.

This option could be something as simple as Abrams telling Driver that Kylo Ren is redeemed by the end, or even that Kylo dies. Remember when LOST star Matthew Fox said he knew for years how the series was going to end? It turns out that all he really knew was that it would end with a close-up of character Jack's eye closing, which was a mirror of the opening shot of the series. Driver may have a more in-depth idea for Star Wars since he said "things were building towards" this piece of information he's been harboring, but I just wanted to note the chance that it could be something very small.

Speaking of something small, maybe Abrams told Driver about how the mysterious Knights of Ren factor into the story of Episode 9. A segment of the Star Wars fan community seems absolutely obsessed with these characters, despite them having no lines of dialogue or character names and appearing only in flashback form in The Force Awakens. Could they somehow be the key to the end of this trilogy?

No one is more sick of the "Rey's parents" discussion than I am, but I can't ignore the possibility that since Abrams is back, he may retcon Johnson's decision to have Rey's parents be "nobody" and end up revealing that she's related to Kylo in some way. Last April, Simon Pegg explained that Abrams initially had an entirely different plan for Rey's parents than what we saw in The Last Jedi, so maybe this reveal is what Driver's referring to.

Considering what little information we have about Episode 9 at this point, these seem like the most likely options. I'm guessing someone will follow up with Driver about this after Episode 9 arrives on December 20, 2019, so we'll probably have to wait until then to get more details about the Star Wars secret he's been keeping since 2014.