How far away is December?

Too far for Star Wars fans, who are being forced to spend the next four months decoding what exactly the latest teaser for the upcoming Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker is trying to tell us (or how it's trying to trick us).

The second look at the upcoming JJ Abrams-directed feature premiered at Disney's D23 convention in California on the weekend, and on Monday night the studio released the footage online ahead of the film's December 20 release.

It garnered millions of views in a matter of hours, and sent Reddit and YouTube fan communities into overdrive, principally because what the heck is going on with Rey?

Things might get dark

The teaser begins with a through-the-ages montage, covering the previous eight instalments in the franchise going back to 1977's original Stars Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Towards the end, we see Daisy Ridley's Rey and Adam Driver's Kylo Ren doing battle on a ship, surrounded by crashing waves, before the screen goes black.

In a voiceover, we hear Emperor Palpatine/Darth Sidious say, "your journey nears its end".

Suddenly, there's a shot of Rey with a deadly stare.

This is the shot that has fans frothing. ( YouTube )

Her robe, white in previous shots and in a teaser released in April, is now black. She pulls out a lightsaber.

The colour of her lightsaber is red.

The bad colour.

The colour of the Sith.

Has she gone to the Dark Side?

Is Rey now a baddie, or is this a clever marketing ploy to make you think she is a baddie?

In other words, does Disney just really want to make you question everything you know about a 42-year-old franchise so you'll buy a movie ticket come December?

After all, it wouldn't the first time Disney, and particularly director JJ Abrams, has used that old Force Power of misdirect for the purposes of virality.

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In 2013, his production company Bad Robot released a short video titled Stranger with black-and-white cinematography, some high-school-poetry voiceovers and the phrase "soon he will know". Was it a film? A TV series?

Soon we did know: it was a novel by Doug Dorst that Abrams had a hand in creating, but we only found that out after much online discussion.

Abrams did something similar with the 2008 film Cloverfield, which was teased with so little information it forced people to start speculating, giving the movie a lot of free publicity.

The earlier marketing materials for The Rise of Skywalker had Rey in white. ( Supplied: Lucasfilm via AP )

As for what this new Star Wars clip tells us, fans have theories.

One of the prevailing guestimates at the moment is that Rey realises she is a clone, perhaps of Anakin Skywalker.

Another is that Emperor Palpatine is controlling her from beyond the grave. He is the narrator in the teaser, despite being killed off in Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, and the first look for The Rise of Skywalker in April touched on this idea that "no-one's ever really gone".

Yet another theory: this shot of Rey with the double-sided red lightsaber is actually a Force vision.

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Meanwhile, Abrams revealed at D23 on the weekend how it is that Carrie Fisher, who died in 2016, was able to reprise her role as Princess Leia, who we see briefly in the new teaser.

Abrams said they were able to use footage left over from The Force Awakens, saying he couldn't imagine Leia not appearing in the final film of the Age of Resistance trilogy.

Princess Leia is back, despite the loss of actor Carrie Fisher. ( Lucasfilm )

"The character of Leia is really, in a way, the heart of this story," he said.

"We could not be more excited for you to see her final performance as Leia."